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 2011, please see any panel proposals below and our Biennial Conference page.

Calls for Proposals

September 1, 2010. Call for Panelists Writing Original Eco-fiction, ASLE Biennial Conference, Bloomington, IN, June 21-26, 2011.

When we write creative nonfiction prose about the natural world, we are free to write as essayists, science popularizers, journalists, and the like, mingling natural history with factual (or quasi-factual) information about ourselves and other historically real human beings. But when we write fiction and wish to say something ecologically significant, we have additional, or perhaps altogether different, conventions to consider, conventions most readers expect from stories and novels--e.g. dramatic action, dialogue, character development, plot, and symbol. If you are struggling with these considerations as you write original eco-fiction and would like to take part in a panel discussion on the topic at next year's biennial conference in Bloomington, please e-mail Allison Wallace at allisonw@uca.edu by September 1, 2010. Briefly describe your project and include a short excerpt of your work within the text of your message.

September 19, 2010. Gardens (joint session sponsored by the SEA and the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment). The Society of Early Americanists’ Seventh Biennial Conference, 3-5 March 2011, Philadelphia.

Panel Chair Name: Thomas Hallock
Affiliation: University of South Florida St. Petersburg
Email contact: thallock@mail.usf.edu

Early Americanist scholarship on literature and the environment has typically focused upon exchanges across vast space: explorations of unfamiliar territories, trans-Atlantic networks, the kind of imperial imaginings that Mary Louise Pratt defined as "global consciousness." How did the smaller space of a garden serve as a setting for new identities and/or forms of sociability? What possibilities for friendship, affection and affiliation did maintaining a garden – whether for work and leisure – open? How do we unpack the human relationships that were transacted within a commercial, ornamental, or kitchen garden?

September 30, 2010. Animal Minds: proposed panel at the Biennial ASLE Conference, June 21-26, 2011 in Bloomington, Indiana.

Seeking abstracts for a pre-formed panel to be proposed for the ASLE Biennial Conference at Indiana University. Literary, cultural, scientific, media studies, or other approaches to the notion of non-human animal “mind,” including but not limited to animal consciousness and subjectivity; animal “voices” and literary ventriloquism; animal narrators; animal communication or emotion; concepts of animal souls, afterlife, etc. Please email a 300-word abstract and a brief bio by September 30 to:

Mary Ellen Bellanca
Associate Professor of English
University of South Carolina Sumter
bellanca@uscsumter.edu

October 1, 2010.  Teaching Sustainability: Multidisciplinary Perspectives and
Approaches, Panel at the 2011 ASLE Biennial Conference, Bloomington, IN, June 21-26, 2011.

While an increasing number of US Colleges and Universities are making environmentally sustainable practices a focus of campus operations, educating for sustainability is yet to become a curricular focus across all degrees and disciplines, the necessary foundation for a significant paradigm shift that some call the “sustainability revolution.”  I am seeking proposals on specific approaches to integrating sustainability education into the curriculum: for example, as part of the graduation requirement; through the creation of new courses in a wide range of disciplines or that are interdisciplinary (all disciplines welcome); by re-designing courses so as to incorporate an educational experience aligned with the principles of sustainability; by creating interdisciplinary programs on sustainability.

Depending on the level of response, multiple panels or formats (traditional
session, roundtable, or paper jam) will be considered. Please send a 600
word proposal by October 1 to Paula.Willoquet@Marist.edu. Please include
contact information and bio.

October 1, 2010.  Religion and Environmentalism in Literature, Panel at the 2011 ASLE Biennial Conference, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, June 21-26, 2011.

Thomas R. Dunlap provocatively argues, in his book Faith in Nature, that environmentalism can be interpreted “as an expression of the human impulse toward religion,” defining religion, with William James, as the “belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto” (4-5). In a similar fashion, Lawrence Buell suggests, in an essay for the collection There Before Us (ed. Roger Lundin), that, “however much religion is repressed or theorized out of existence by western intellectual discourse, its resources will still be needed and called upon not just to dramatize but also to conceptualize humankind’s relation to the nonhuman” (235).

This panel-in-formation seeks abstracts of 600 words that deal with the question of the relationship between religion and environmentalism in literature. What are some examples of environmental literature that might, under these or other paradigms, be read as also religious (or, conversely, religious works that might be read environmentally)? What do the religious aspects (formal, theological, or otherwise) of those literary works contribute to the overall goals of environmentalism, especially to the task of, as Buell puts it, “conceptualiz[ing] humankind’s relation to the nonhuman”? Additionally, papers might address the question of whether or not it is necessary, as Dunlap seems to imply, that environmentalist works subscribe to a belief in an “unseen order,” encouraging humans to strive for “harmony” within that comprehensive order. Do literary works help us formulate any alternative versions of religious environmentalism that do not rely on the language of “order,” which might be difficult to square with a Neo-Darwinist, non-teleological understanding of nature?

Please send 600-word abstracts to Andrew Hatcher (ashatche@indiana.edu) by October 1, 2010.

October 22, 2010.  The Politics and Aesthetics of Global Waste, Panel at the 2011 ASLE Biennial Conference, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, June 21-26, 2011.

Seeking proposals for a pre-formed panel on the politics and aesthetics of global waste, as represented in literature from a variety of periods, places and genres. From “excremental postcolonialism” (Esty) to the postmodern “apotheosis of trash” (Yaeger), what is the form of literary waste? How does literature engage with discarded things, degraded species and devalued spaces? How do writers revalue both local and global ‘waste’?

Please send 600-word abstracts to Sarah Harrison at skharrison@wisc.edu no later than October 22nd 2010. Proposals from all disciplines and perspectives are welcome. Depending on the level of response, roundtable or paper jam formats may also be considered.

October 29, 2010.  What’s this Science Fiction Doing in/to/for My Environmentalism?  Panel Sponsored by The Science Fiction Research Association at the 2011 ASLE Biennial Conference, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, June 21-26, 2011.

Rachel Carson’s “A Fable for Tomorrow,” Edward Abbey’s Good News, Scott Russell Sanders’s Terrarium—these are science fiction works written by writers whom we most often identify as canonical environmentalist figures. Science fiction authors often address important issues of environmental concern in their works, and exploring these works is an important and growing effort in ecocritical literary and film criticism. But why might environmentalist writers be attracted to science fiction to the extent that the genre’s narrative devices (extrapolation, cognitive estrangement, etc.) frequently show up in their writing, or to the extent that some have even written genre science fiction?

The goal of this roundtable discussion is to flesh out the implications of science fictional thinking for environmentalism. What is useful and fruitful in such thinking? Are environmentalist forays into science fiction valuable and productive, or do they threaten to render issues such as climate change and peak oil as fictional, sensationalist scenarios?

This roundtable is sponsored by the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA), a new professional affiliate organization of ASLE. To be considered for the 4-12 participant panel, please submit a 100-200 word position piece outlining your proposed input on this topic. Proposals that frame the roundtable issue within the theme of the conference (“Species, Space, and the Imagination of the Global”) are especially welcome. Send your proposal in the body of an email to Eric Otto at eotto@fgcu.edu by Friday, October 29th. See http://www.indiana.edu/~asle2011/call.shtml for more information about the conference.

Conferences of Interest

1-4 September 2010.  Environmental Change - Cultural Change: a joint conference of ASLE-UK and EASLCE.  University of Bath, 1-4 September 2010.  For more information see http://www.bath.ac.uk/esml/conferences/e-c-c-c/