ASLE Affiliated Conferences
We will post here any calls for papers or information on conferences related to ASLE and affiliated organizations, including international groups, ASLE-sponsored panels at other conferences, and ASLE-sponsored off-year symposia. For information on submitting a paper to the ASLE Conference in 2009, please see our Biennial Conference page.
Calls for Proposals
October 31, 2008. Proposed Panel for 2009 ASLE Conference. We are seeking presenters for a panel, “Theatre in an Age of Eco-crisis,” to be proposed for the ASLE conference, June 3-6, 2009 at the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia. This panel is being formed to address the ramifications of a central question: How are theatre artists, producers and scholars responding (or how might they respond) in our ecological era.
Panelists might frame their answers to this question in a number of ways:
• Through eco-critical readings of contemporary plays and performance;
• By bringing attention to: plays and performances that address issues of environmental justice, or plays and performances that support and promote an eco-centric worldview;
• Through the exploration of eco-centric approaches to playmaking, performance training, directing or design;
• By considering the extent, range and/or effectiveness of eco-critical approaches to theatre and performance;
• Through examples of sustainable practises and the minimization of carbon footprints in the planning, production and touring of performances;
• With reference to: applied theatre, site-specific dramaturgy, or art/science collaborations;
• Through an examination of environmental activism as a form of theatre;
• Or with respect to any other aspect of theatre scholarship, production, training or practise.
Presentations related to the conference theme, "Island time: The Fate of Place in a Wired, Warming World" are invited, but a variety of approaches to issues concerning ecology and theatre are equally welcome. Please send an abstract (maximum 250 words) of your proposed presentation to Sheila Rabillard (rabillar@uvic.ca) and Nelson Gray (ncgray@uvic.ca). The deadline for submission of proposals is October 31st, 2008.
December 1, 2008. Panel: American Literature and the Environmental Humanities: Charting Directions. This is an ASLE-sponsored panel to be held at the American Literature Association's 20th Annual Conference, May 21-24, 2009, Boston, Massachusetts. While many of us may say that we are working in the "environmental humanities," few scholars have offered either full definitions of this new area of study or full statements about how work in the environmental humanities enhances our studies of literature and culture. This panel will consider how the emerging field of the environmental humanities might contribute to the study and teaching of American literature and culture.
Please submit 200-word abstracts by email attachment by December 1, 2008 to: Rochelle Johnson at rjohnson@collegeofidaho.edu.
Conferences of Interest
July 10-13, 2008. ASLE-UK Fifth Biennial Conference: Activism, Apocalypse, and the Avant-Garde. The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. Plenary speakers: Timothy Morton (University of California, Davis), Kate Rigby (Monash University), Rebecca Solnit. This international conference will bring together literary scholars, activists and practitioners to consider and discuss important interfaces between the discipline of eco-criticism and studies of ecology, the modern period, post-colonialism and the notion of apocalypse. The organizers anticipate that a publication of selected essays will be delivered by this event. Panels will include topics in humanities disciplines and from the sciences on the relationship of humankind to its environment. For more information visit http://www.ppls.ed.ac.uk/nature/asle08.htm#.