Biennial Conferences

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Fourth Biennial Conference of ASLE : "Making a Start Out of Particulars"

19-23 June 2001
Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff

The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) invites proposals for its Fourth Biennial Conference, to be held June 19-23, 2001, at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. Taking as our theme a phrase from William Carlos Williams' Paterson -- "To make a start / out of particulars" -- we seek proposals for papers, panels, roundtables, field sessions, workshops, and other verbal performances that pertain to relations of language and place. We construe "place" in senses both local and global, as informing motion as well as settlement, in travel and tourism, homesteading and homelessness, city streets and wilderness parks and preserves: we invite proposals on any aspect of these. We especially invite proposals for sessions that amplify and extend topics to be featured in plenary sessions and roundtables: gendered, ethnic, and classed perspectives upon language and landscape; relations between biology and ecocriticism; ecological approaches to composition, rhetoric, literacy and pedagogy; urban nature writing; regionalism and nationalism in critical environmental studies. We seek proposals for poster sessions, to which a special space and exhibit time will be assigned. And as always, we welcome presentations on all aspects of literature, language, and environment, including readings of environmentally-inflected creative nonfiction and poetry.

ASLE's ranks are growing; we face an increasing tension between keeping our conference inclusive and keeping our program schedule manageable. To maximize the number of people who can present -- and to enhance the interest of sessions and the attention spans of attendees -- we will favor proposals for sessions involving at least three and preferably more participants. We invite those wishing to organize or join such sessions to post notices to the ASLE listserv and/or to allied lists: Diversity-L, ASLE-CCCC (the ecology and composition list), and others listed on the ASLE web site. We encourage session formats in which several presenters discuss their work and engage in conversation about it rather than read papers verbatim, making that work otherwise available to those who wish to read it in entirety -- a format used with success, for example, at MLA sessions on environmental literature. We do not proscribe formal paper proposals or individual submissions and will strive to create coherent sessions out of those we receive. But we will appreciate your efforts to band together and pre-organize your contributions, as it were, to create sessions that arrive fully-fledged, involving many.

The deadline for applications is JANUARY 19, 2001. To submit a proposal, send a 1-2 page abstract to:

Randall Roorda
ASLE 2001 Program Coordinator
Department of English
University of Kentucky
Lexington, KY 40506-0027

OR, you are encouraged to submit electronically, by cutting-and-pasting your proposal (no attachments, please!) into an e-mail message to: rroorda@pop.uky.edu. Please type "ASLE 2001" as the subject line to your message, so the computer will filter your message into the designated mailbox.