Current Conference Calls For Papers
Please consult this resource for information on conferences you might wish to present at or attend. Deadlines for calls for proposals are listed first; conferences of interest have dates of the actual conference listed first. If you would like to submit a call for papers to be posted, please email Amy McIntyre, ASLE Managing Director.
Calls for Proposals
January 15, 2012. Society for the Study of American Women Writers conference proposed panel: Young Adult Literature and Gender. Please email Breyan Strickler with a 300-500 word abstract and one page CV if you would be interested in being part of a proposed panel on young adult literature and ecofeminism/gender (with a connection to citizenship, since so many are dystopian and that is the theme of the conference). Society for the Study of American Women Writers conference, in Denver, CO, October 10-13, 2012. We would hear back about our proposal in May, 2012.
Note that your focus should be on American women writers.
Proposals due January 15 to breyan.strickler@loras.edu
Conference site: http://ssaww2012.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/ssaww-2012-panel-calls-for-papers/
January 23, 2012. Under Western Skies 2: Environment, Community, and Culture in North America, Mount Royal University, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, October 10-13, 2012. www.skies.mtroyal.ca
Building on the success of Under Western Skies: Climate, Culture, and
Change in Western North America in October 2010, Under Western Skies 2
welcomes
academics from across the disciplines as well as members of
artistic and activist communities, non- and for-profit organizations,
government, labour, and NGOs to address the environmental challenges
faced by human and nonhuman actors across North America. UWS 2 will take
place on Mount Royal University campus in the LEED Gold certified
Roderick Mah Centre for Continuous Learning.
With its mandate for both interdisciplinarity and community outreach, UWS 2
broadens
the geographical scope of the inaugural conference but retains its wide
call for contributions from all environmental fields of inquiry and
endeavor,
including the humanities, natural and social sciences, North American studies,
public policy, business, and law. Artistic, creative, and non-academic proposals are also welcome.
A selection of papers will go forward for an edited book publication or special
journal
issue following UWS 2. (The collection of edited papers stemming from
UWS 2010 is forthcoming from Wilfrid Laurier University Press as a part
of its
Environmental Humanities Series.)
Proposals should run no more than 250 words in length and be attached to an email as a .doc or .docx file. Proposals for readings, panels, screenings, displays, and workshops are also welcome. Direct all proposals, together with brief bio and contact information, to Dr. Robert Boschman at rboschman@mtroyal.ca and to Dr. Mario Trono at mtrono@mtroyal.ca.
Check for regular updates regarding UWS 2 at the conference website:
www.skies.mtroyal.ca. Closing Date: Monday, January 23, 2012.
January 30, 2012 (extended deadline). Literature, place and the environment in 19th-21st century literatures: Paradoxes of the threshold. 25-26 October 2012, Université de Louvain (Belgium).
Human beings continuously experience the threshold space between what separates them from and what connects them with the world. Literature and theatre have never ceased to question this dimension, which fore and foremost involves words, discourses and representations. Immersed in their environment, human subjects however maintain with the latter a relationship that is fundamentally problematic, as exemplified in the multiplicity of forms this relationship can take. Between radical solutions of inclusion (when humans fit in with the world in a mode that is significantly utopian) and exclusion (when they attempt to separate from it) appear a whole range of possibilities: humans colonize the world, denature and even destroy it, convert it, inhabit it, build it, respect it, submit to it, venerate it ; they fear it to the extent that they feel persecuted by it. The present conference will attempt to highlight specific paradigms (mastery, hospitality, reverence, engulfing, e.g.) that structure human experience (eminently cultural) with what surrounds us, an experience that is inherently paradoxical since it calls for a balance that cannot be achieved.
If this paradoxical relationship with the world is considered as a permanent anthropological feature, one can argue that it has been dramatically reinforced since the beginning of the industrial era to the extent that is has lead to aporia. How do literature and theater testify to this crisis? How do these artistic endeavours enable us to rethink these questions? What kind of responses do they offer? These are some of the questions this colloquium will address. Several investigatory areas will be privileged: 1) How do (digital) technologies change the subject’s anchorage in space and how do literature and theatre give voice to this spatial dimension? 2) What are the new literary and theatre motifs associated with this crisis (waste, ghettoization, new urban and rural configurations, ecological agendas) and how are they transcribed into form? 3) Contemporary human experiences of the environment are generating new (literary) paradigms or challenging/modifying those that have existed (from the wild child to Frankenstein, to name some extreme examples)? How have scenarios and literary figures been re-worked /re-appropriated in contemporary writings? 4) How do critical discourses, in particular the literary discourse, take into account (or not) this fundamental dimension of human experience, at the theoretical, conceptual and historiographical levels? 5) Where 19th and 20th century literature and theatre address a specific crisis related to the
threshold dimension, have they engendered as a result new genres, new aesthetics, or even artistic forms?
This international colloquium is organized by the research center Ecriture, création, représentation : littératures et arts de la scène (ECR) of the Université de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgique). The center includes specialists in the fields of theatre studies, literary studies from different geographical/linguistic locations (French and francophone, Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch/Flemish and English). The focus of the colloquium will consequently be apprehended from an international perspective. For practical reasons, French and English will be the languages of the event but proposals in German, Spanish, Dutch, and Italian are welcome as well. Abstract (about 250 words) for 20-minute presentations should be sent to Véronique Bragard (Veronique.Bragard@uclouvain.be) before January 30th 2012.
January 31, 2012. “NATURA LOQUENS:” Eruptive Dialogues, Disruptive Discourses. Contributions are invited for the 5th EASLCE International Conference on “Natura Loquens: Eruptive Dialogues, Disruptive Discourses,” to be held in Tenerife, Canaries, SPAIN, 27-30 June 2012. Organised on behalf of EASLCE (the European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and Environment) by the University of La Laguna, Faculty of Philology, and the Department of English and German Studies.
There is an ongoing debate nowadays over the agency of Nature and the necessity of reopening the definition of what counts as speech. One would need to differentiate between new insights about animal communication and the idea that non-animal and inanimate nature “signify,” or the suggestion of biosemiotics that life itself is a process of signification. Thus, Nature often presents articulated reactions which can be both eruptive and disruptive. We expect to bring to the arena of this academic meeting, placed at the very foot of Mount Teide (Spain’s highest volcanic peak, with an altitude of 3718 m.), as manifold eruptive dialogues as possible. Attention will focus on the contrasting relationship between Nature and humankind, ever in perpetual and delicate interrelationship since the history of humankind and especially after the emergence of the so-called Anthropocene Era (P. Crutzen). In effect, the ability to speak and communicate made it possible to detach this Homo sapiens genus from other animal species, establishing thus a hierarchy that has been working until present day. Such Aristotelian human “loquacity” is based on a “great chain of being” (A.O. Lovejoy) that places this Homo loquens in a superior position, being able to structure and articulate the universe. If we were able to deconstruct and reverse this idea in order to acknowledge Nature’s ability to speak out (Christopher Manes, David Abrams), then multiple and creative conversations could be established, so as to reconstruct the natural order of things. While environmental concerns grow louder and more frequently today, traditional disruptive discourses that posit the idea of nature as an impediment to human progress do continue to emerge and spread out. The main purpose of this conference is then to reenact, rethink and fluidize the dialogic balance between Nature and human knowledge, engaging in an intellectually fairer and more empathetic communication.
Proposals for papers (EITHER standard papers 2500 words/20 minutes OR contributions to paper jam sessions 1250 words/12 minutes) and panels (3 papers OR 5 jam session papers) are now invited. The primary conference languages will be English and Spanish, but (following our practice at previous EASLCE conferences) proposals for panels in other European languages are also welcome. Please submit proposals for panels or individual papers (title plus 250 words), together with a brief bionote (4-5 lines), and complete contact data, to Professor Juan Ignacio Oliva (jioliva@ull.es) by 31 January 2012, indicating your IT requirements.
February 5, 2012 (Deadline Extended). Sowell Collection Conference, Lubbock, TX, April 26-28, 2012. Created through the generous support of former Texas Tech University Regent James Sowell, the Sowell Family Collection in Literature, Community and the Natural World houses the personal papers of the United States’ most prominent writers on the natural world. Writing with a profound respect for the grandeur and fierceness of the land, these writers are deeply engaged with questions of land use and the nature of community; the conjunction of scientific and spiritual values; and the fragility of wilderness. In addition to published books, materials available for research purposes include correspondence; drafts of manuscripts; research notebooks; diaries and calendars; and photographs, computer files, and film. With this collection of natural history writers, The Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University is rapidly becoming one of the finest repositories of natural history materials in the world.
Writers of the Sowell Collection include Rick Bass, Max F. Crawford, David James Duncan, Gretel Ehrlich, Edward Hoagland, Clyde Jones, William Kittredge, John Lane, Barry Lopez, Walter McDonald, Bill McKibben, Susan Brind Morrow, Gary Paul Nabhan, Howard Norman, Doug Peacock, David Quammen, Pattiann Rogers, Sandra Scofield, Annick Smith, and Ro Wauer.
To celebrate this extraordinary group, the Sowell Collection is hosting a conference in Lubbock, TX, from Thursday, April 26th to Saturday, April 28th, 2012. David Quammen, Gretel Ehrlich, and Barry Lopez will be in attendance. We invite proposals for individual presentations and panels that engage with the work(s) of any of the writers whose work the collection holds. Scholarly and creative submissions from multiple disciplines are welcome.
For individual submissions, please include a 250-word abstract, your full name, affiliation, contact information, and A/V requests. Proposals for panels (three presenters) must include an abstract and all the above information for all presenters. No more than one presentation per conference please. The deadline for all submissions is January 16, 2012.
Conference website: http://www.swco.ttu.edu/Sowell/Conference.php
Submit abstracts to Diane Warner (diane.warner@ttu.edu) or Andrew Husband (andrew.husband@ttu.edu).
February 6, 2012. SSAWW Triennial Conference: "Citizenship and Belonging." October 10-13, 2012; Westin Tabor Center, Denver, Colorado.
Conference Website: http://ssaww2012.wordpress.com
For the fall 2012 Conference of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers (SSAWW), we are issuing a special invitation for session and paper proposals linked to the theme of “Citizenship and Belonging.” As in the past, the conference organizers will welcome proposals on any topic related to the study of American women writers, broadly conceived. However, we are also eager to capitalize on the conference opportunity to promote conversations—both “in the moment” and sustained—around a shared theme.
Why “Citizenship and Belonging”? Historically speaking, these have been concerns of American women authors from their earliest writings, published and unpublished, and they remain concerns today. Long before the 1848 Declarations of Sentiments, women writers raised questions about how they could participate in the leadership of new American communities; similarly, contemporary women respond to the day’s political events and social trends in many forms of the written word. Just as women of all backgrounds considered the parameters of “Americanness”—its inherence or its acquisition, its stability or fluidity, its necessity or its superfluity—their contemporary counterparts are using both old-fashioned forms and cutting-edge technologies to reimagine the United States and its people for the 21 st century. Whether one thinks of Harriet Jacobs pondering her own “sale” in 19 th-century New York, Jhumpa Lahiri imagining connections across seas and generations in her short fiction, or young writers seizing the potential of the internet and social media to create their own publishing worlds, women writers have always, and perhaps always will, wrestle with what it means to belong.
Citizenship—how to claim it, how best to exercise it, and where its boundaries lie—is at the heart of much women’s writing. Citizenship can be constructed in many ways, both legally and culturally, and can be explored in terms of race, class, ethnicity, family sexuality, economics, religion, place, and region—in short, from multiple perspectives and through multiple lenses. It can also be investigated as a question of form and genre: what kinds of writing “belong,” and to what realms or entities do they claim entry?
Monday, February 6, 2012: Proposals due to ssawwconf@gmail.com; May 2012: Acceptance notifications sent; June 30, 2012: Program schedule announced. Note: Presenters must be members of SSAWW by the “early/discounted” date for conference registration in the fall of 2012.
Questions about the conference? Contact Sarah Robbins (s.robbins@tcu.edu) or Maria Sanchez (mcsanche@uncg.edu), conference co-chairs, or Deb Clarke, SSAWW President (Deborah.Clarke@asu.edu).
February 15, 2012, (M)other Nature: Inscriptions, Locations, Revolutions. 14th Annual Conference of the Department of English of the University of Bucharest, May 31- June 2 2012, Bucharest, Romania. The conference invites papers on the theme of “nature” from a variety of interpretative approaches, to discuss modes in which the continuous present of (mother) nature – as concept, reality, representation – is configured in conjunction with expressions of cultural history, literary and visual texts, as well as a controversial discourse of immanent otherness, of disjunctive forms, of ironic identity constructions, of equivocation and power codes.
Suggested topics: Art and nature, Environmentalism and literary studies, Eco- / environmental criticism, Mythical translations of nature, Nature and feminism, Nature and spirituality, Nature and mortality, Nature and mothering, Nature and memory, Nature and/in performance, Mother country / tongue v. alterity, The location(s) of nature, Psychoanalytical views on nature, Performance and the environment, Race and literary environmental studies, Colonialism / postcolonialism and the environment, (M)othering signatures and appropriations, (Re)writing nature, (Re)inventing nature, Nature and history, Nature and the technologies of control, Utopias of nature, Spectres of Nature.
Presentations should be in English, and will be allocated 20 minutes each, plus 10 minutes for discussion. Diverse approaches will be welcome, including including examinations of individual works in various genres and media, comparative, transcultural and interdisciplinary studies, and discussions of theoretical issues. Prospective participants are invited to submit abstracts of up to 200 words (including a list of keywords) to litcultstbucharest@gmail.com, with an indication of their institutional affiliation, contact telephone number and e-mail address, and a short bio of up to 100 words. Conference fee: 50 Euro (or equivalent in Romanian Lei), payable at registration. For full Call for Papers, see: http://www.unibuc.ro/depts/limbi/literatura_engleza/conferinte.php
February 29, 2012. Composting Culture: Literature, Nature, Popular Culture, Science: ASLE-UKI Conference. The UK-Ireland branch of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment invites proposals for its 2012 biennial conference. The conference will take place between Thursday 6 – Sunday 9 September, 2012 at the University of Worcester, supported by the university’s Institute of Humanities and Creative Arts. Recent work in ecocriticism largely recognises the complexity of ecological science and philosophy and its social and political dimensions. This has resulted in an increased emphasis on paradigms and perspectives that embrace that complexity: posthumanism; biosemiotics; discordance; consilience etc. Consequently, with regard to its objects of study, ecocriticism might increasingly be characterised as a multidisciplinary act of ecological intervention that has fermented an array of possible reference points – globalisation, science, neuroscience, spirituality etc – into an expanding range of cultural texts, stretching far beyond the literary canon of romantic nature writing that shaped ecocriticism in its early years.
This conference will explore the extent to which correspondences between more complex ecological understanding and cultural forms might be evident, most particularly, in non-canonical texts, or previously unexplored linkages between theories and texts, or in the upcycling of established literary or cultural forms, movements, writers etc. Conceptualised by Jed Rasula as a process of composting where ‘interanimating tendencies’ converge into the possible emergence ‘of newness, of the unpredicted’, this ‘nutritive sensibility’ has recently traversed cultural theory and practice: in Harriet Tarlo’s identification of a conjunction between experimental poetics and radical landscape poetry; in the ‘new nature writing’ of ‘Edgelands’ (Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts), or places like Essex, which acknowledges the blurring of human-nonhuman, rural and urban; even in popular culture, for example in a recognition of technology’s perhaps paradoxical ability to inculcate both deep ecological awareness and a scientific sense of nature as process (as aspired to in Bjork’s recent "Biophilia" project).
Keynote speakers will include:
Thierry Bardini, Université de Montréal, author of Junkware, examining ‘junk’ in nature (DNA) and culture (science fiction) alike
Jed Rasula, Helen S. Lanier Distinguished Professor at the University of Georgia, author of This Compost: Ecological Imperatives in American Poetry
Molly Scott-Cato, University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, Green Party UK Speaker on Economics, author of Green Economics
Along these lines, we now invite papers and proposals that can offer, most particularly, a focus on hitherto neglected or unexplored interconnections between authors, texts, genres, and cultural forms. These might relate, but are not restricted to, the following themes:
Recycling, composting, fermenting, or junk as cultural tropes; Consilience: ecological science and cultural/literary texts; "New nature writing"; New perspectives on Romanticism; Green media and popular culture; Ecopoetics/landscape poetry; Posthumanism; Postcolonialism or globalisation; Biosemiotics and Zoosemiotics; Biotechnology and ecotechnology; Ecological discordance or complexity; "Edgelands"; The canon and ideas of cultural value etc; Rhetoric, metaphor or narrative; Environmental (in)justice; Nature, post-nature, "second nature"; Toxicity; "Social Ecologies of the Imagination"
Individual papers should be 20 minutes. Please send a title and 250 word abstract to David Arnold: d.arnold@worc.ac.uk and John Parham j.parham@worc.ac.uk by the deadline, Wednesday 29 February 2012. Further details – including registration costs and accommodation – will be circulated in the Spring. Our intention is to offer video conferencing, allowing for the participation of international delegates unable or reluctant to travel.
March 1, 2012. "Recovering Thoreau's Topography," panel at the Modern Language Association (Boston, 2013), Sponsored by The Thoreau Society.
Panel organizers: Kristen Case, University of Maine-Farmington, and Rochelle Johnson, The College of Idaho.
How have recent projects in digital mapping, biogeography, cultural geography, and environmental history informed and challenged literary scholarship on Thoreau? This panel will focus on the implications for literary scholarship of these various topographical studies of Thoreau's country. Please send two-page abstract (for a 15-minute presentation) and c.v. by March 1, 2012, to rjohnson@collegeofidaho.edu.
March 1, 2012. Nature and the natural in the humanities: Teaching for environmental sustainability, Workshop at the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK, 27 April, 2012.
http://www.llas.ac.uk/events/6540
Email j.canning@soton.ac.uk by CFP deadline: March 1, 2012.
Climate change and environmental degradation are often described as the pressing concerns of the current generation. This workshop aims to explore ways in which lecturers in the humanities can engage with these issues through the study of literature, language, religion, philosophy, history and art. Relationships between humans, the environment, nature and landscape are themes throughout human history in literature, philosophy, art and religion through struggles with and over nature. A wide variety of literature can be read and reread in these terms-for example Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Thoreau's 'experiment' in Walden and social commentary on the ideology of the rural life such as in Ringuet's Trente Arpents or even the iconic 'road trip' books or movies such as Kerouac's On the Road. The environment and non-human actors play a key role in religions as objects of worship, sacrifice, uncleanness, food (both permitted and prohibited) and designated sacred spaces. In historical terms the natural environment has informed national identity, foundation myths and is seen as a source of economic prosperity and culture.
This workshop will explore how these themes might inform the university curriculum in the humanities. Papers are welcome in, but not limited to, the following themes.
- Relationships between humans and the natural environment in literature, culture, history or religion.
- Language or philosophy and environmental change
- Animals and other non-humans in literature, culture, history or religion
- Fictional and historical landscapes
- Rereading classic texts as environmental texts.
- The preservation, protection and reproduction of and reproduction of historical landscapes, e.g. national parks, living history museums.
March 1, 2011. New Perspectives on German Ecocritical Prose, panel proposed for the 128th Modern Language Association Convention. January 3–6, 2013, Boston, Massachusetts. The rise of the ecologically-oriented approaches to literature and the development of ecocriticism as a scholarly discipline in the 1970s did not remain very long the prerogative of the Anglo-American literature and scholarship. Other national literatures and literary studies have been rapidly developing their views on the connections between literature and ecology; these are often based on different premises and follow their own respective literary traditions.
The German ecocritical approach of today is characterized by a number of general theoretical paradigms, such as the system-theoretical approach of Hofer (2007) and the cultural ecology of Zapf (2002, 2008). At the same time, an active revision of the established literary canon is in full swing; it proceeds in two directions: more and more new literary works and their authors are recognized and studied as ecocritical; at the same time, established works and genres, such as nature poetry, and even whole literary movements, such as Romanticism, are approached from the ecocritical perspective.
This panel seeks to understand the dynamics of the recent developments in both modern ecologically-oriented German-language prose and German ecocritical scholarship. We invite abstracts for papers exploring works of modern German-language literature from the ecocritical perspective. The possible topics include, but are not limited to, historical approaches to German ecocriticism, theoretical and methodological approaches (post-colonial studies, feminism, critical theory, cultural ecology, etc.), different aspects of ecocriticism (cultural, economic, political, aesthetical), as well as analyses of modern German-language prose works from the ecocritical perspective.
Abstracts of 300-500 words may be submitted electronically as MS Word or PDF attachments by March 1, 2012, to: Alexander E. Pichugin, pichugin@sas.upenn.edu. Earlier submissions are encouraged. Selected papers will be presented at the MLA Convention January 3–6, 2013, in Boston. All submissions are considered for a proposed anthology.
March 15, 2012. Native American Literature and Environmental Justice, joint session at the 2013 Modern Language Association (MLA) convention, Boston, 3–6 January 2013. Co-sponsored by Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures (ASAIL) and ASLE. We explore the distinct epistemological framework of indigenous knowledges, asking how literature destabilizes dominant discourses and opens modes of politics to address environmental (in)justices.
Submission requirements: 2 page abstract
Deadline for submissions: 15 March 2012
Contacts: Jan Johnson (janjohn@uidaho.edu) and Janet Fiskio (jfiskio@oberlin.edu).
March 15, 2012. "John Clare: Nature and the Self." Session proposed for the 128th Modern Language Association Convention, January 3-6, 2013, Boston, MA. Papers addressing any aspect of Clare's poetry or prose, especially regarding his representation of the human and nonhuman worlds. 300-500 word abstract by 15 March to Samantha Harvey at samanthaharvey@boisestate.edu.
March 31, 2012. SHARP EYES VII: IS NATURE WRITING DEAD? AN ASLE-AFFILIATED CONFERENCE. June 4-7, 2012, State University of New York College at Oneonta. This conference will be the seventh in the John Burroughs Nature Writing Conference & Seminar series. The theme of this year’s conference was inspired by a statement offered at an Earth Day event at Middlebury College in 2010 honoring John Elder, where an editor from Orion Magazine declared that “Nature Writing is dead.” The obvious rejoinder to such a declaration is “what do you mean by ‘nature writing’?” The 2012 conference will address this issue, and invites papers dealing with writers of natural history such as Henry Thoreau, John Burroughs, and other nineteenth-century authors through the more politically-charged writing of modern writers. We also welcome papers that deal with permutations of “nature writing” that go beyond the natural history essay, including green (and blue) works in the genres of film, fiction, and poetry. As always, papers on any aspect of John Burroughs’s life and work are also encouraged. Papers are delivered to plenary sessions of students, faculty, and visiting scholars. Conference field trips will include a visit to John Burroughs’s Woodchuck Lodge in Roxbury, New York, which is within walking distance of his burial site. Graduate or undergraduate credit is available through SUNY College at Oneonta. Send abstracts or proposals by March 31, 2012, to:
Daniel G. Payne, Department of English
SUNY Oneonta, Oneonta, NY 13820
E-mail submissions should be sent as an MS Word attachment to paynedg@oneonta.edu
http://www.oneonta.edu/academics/english/conferences/johnburroughs.html
April 1, 2012. Nature and the Popular Imagination. The International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture (ISSRNC) is pleased to announce its next conference in Malibu, California at Pepperdine University in August 2012. The conference theme will be "Nature and the Popular Imagination."
For generations, the interconnections between religion and nature have been expressed, promoted, and contested through the incubator of popular culture, including films produced in nearby Hollywood. As a global and symbolic center that reflects and invents nature/religion representations, Malibu and its environs provide a fantastic venue for critical reflection on the religion/nature nexus in the popular imagination. Along with keynote addresses and other scholarly sessions, a number of special events and excursions are in the works, including a scholar-led tour of The Getty Villa in Malibu and opportunities to enjoy the beautiful and famous Malibu coast. Some of these may be offered before or after the official conference period. Affordable on-campus housing will be available to conference participants.
We invite proposals about nature and religion in diverse expressions of popular culture, including films, television, comics, fiction, music, sports, graffiti, clothing, and festivals. As always, while we encourage proposals focused on the conference's theme, we welcome proposals from all areas (regional and historical) and from all disciplinary perspectives that explore the complex relationships between religious beliefs and practices (however defined and understood), cultural traditions and productions, and the earth's diverse ecological systems. We encourage proposals that include theoretical frameworks and analyses, emphasize dialogue and discussion, promote collaborative research, and are unusual in terms of format and structure.
Proposals for individual paper presentations, sessions, panels, and posters should be submitted directly to Sarah Pike at spike@csuchico.edu. It is not necessary to be an ISSRNC member to submit a proposal. Individual paper proposals should include, in a single, attached word or rich text document, the name and email of the presenter(s), title, a 250-300 word abstract, and a brief, 150 word biography (including highest degree earned and current institutional affiliation, if any). Proposals for entire sessions must include a title and abstract for the session as a whole as well as for each individual paper. Proposers should also provide information about ideal and acceptable lengths for proposed sessions, and whether any technology, such as data projectors, are desired. Most paper presentations will be scheduled at 15-20 minutes and a premium will be placed on discussion in all sessions. Proposals will be evaluated anonymously by the Scientific Committee, but conference directors will be aware of proposers' identities in order to select for diversity in terms of geographical area and career stage. Student proposals are particularly welcome. The deadline for proposals is 1 April 2012. For more information, see http://www.religionandnature.com/society/
April 6, 2012. Environmental Science Fiction and the Non-Urban Scape, ASLE-sponsored panel at the 2012 Science Fiction Research Association Conference: Urban Apocalypse, Urban Renaissance: Landscapes in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Detroit, MI, June 28-July 1, 2012.
Ecocritic Patrick D. Murphy notes, "The idea of the land as scape establishes place, whether woods or lake or mountain range, as something separate from human culture" (Farther Afield 13). Proposals are invited that explore how science fiction has addressed this land-as-scape problematic. Has science fiction largely supported a conception of the non-urban ("land," "place," "nature," etc.) as escape from culture? If so, what texts maintain the land/culture divide? Or, has science fiction done much to challenge this divide with an understanding of nature as something we are always in-as something we cannot escape? What science fiction works maintain this more complex view of land and culture, and what do these works contribute to recent efforts to upset conventional notions about "nature" (e.g., Timothy Morton, Slavoj Zizek)?
This panel is sponsored by the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), a professional affiliate organization of SFRA. Please submit a 200-word proposal in the body of an email to Eric Otto at eotto@fgcu.edu by Friday, April 6th, 2012. See http://sfradetroit2012.com/ for more information about the conference.
June 22, 2012. Western Crossroads: Literature, Social Justice, Environment
Western Literature Association Conference, November 7-10, 2012, Lubbock Texas. Lubbock, TX is nicknamed “The Hub City” because it has historically been the crossroads of the vast, multicultural South Plains—home to Native peoples for 15,000 years, first dubbed the Llano Estacado (Staked Plains) by Coronado in 1540, and once referred to as the American Serengeti for its massive herds of buffalo, pronghorn, and deer. The WLA’s 47th annual conference will take place at the Overton Hotel in Lubbock across the street from Texas Tech University. We will honor the careers of Distinguished Achievement Award winners Richard Slotkin and his former student, filmmaker and producer Joss Whedon, and engage with featured writers Annie Proulx, Christina Garcia, Barry Lopez, Naomi Shihab Nye, and others.
The 2012 WLA Conference invites proposals engaging themes of Literature, Social Justice, and Environment in Western texts; panels or papers on any of our featured authors; or presentations on any aspect of Western literatures and cultures. The 2012 conference also welcomes proposals for inclusion in interdisciplinary panels that approach such topics across disciplines (for example, a panel may examine images of the Western prairies in the novels of Willa Cather, Western films like High Plains Drifter, traditional Western folk songs, and contemporary Western art). Other topics may include:
• Animals and animal studies in the West
• Native literatures of the High Plains
• Art and artists/music and musicians of Texas and the West
• Texas Tall Tales and Western humor
• Spanish exploration and colonization in Texas and the West
• Mexico-Texans: Mexican American literatures in Texas
• Western films and television
• Western Sci Fi
• The West in graphic novels
SUBMISSIONS must include a 250-word abstract, your full name, affiliation, contact information, and A/V requests (we will not provide computers). Proposals for panels (four presenters) and roundtables must include an abstract and all above information for all presenters. No more than one presentation per conference please. If you are proposing an interdisciplinary panel, or are willing to present on one, please note this in your abstract. DEADLINE: June 22, 2012. Submit abstracts to Sara Spurgeon at sara.spurgeon@ttu.edu.
For more information, see http://www.usu.edu/westlit/wla-conference-2012/
Conferences of Interest
February 9-10, 2012. UGC- Sponsored National Seminar on Ecocriticism: Its Relevance in Present Day Context. Department of English, Diphu Govt, College, Diphu, Karbi Anglong, Assam, India.
Contact E-mail- ecocriticism.dgc@gmail.com
Ecocriticism is an emergent movement in the wake of the gradual growth of global environmental crisis. In 1970s, WLA (Western Literary Association) of USA popularized it as a literary concept through series of publications all titled “What is Ecocriticism?”. However, William Rueckert’s essay ‘Literature and Ecology: an experiment in ecocriticism’(1978) is said to be beginning of ecocriticism. In late 1980s, the major cosmopolitan cities of Euro- USA came to be flooded with terms such as ‘ecolit’, ‘ecocrit’, ‘ecopoetics’, ‘ecofeminism’ etc. This buzzing ecocentric movement had been carried forward to a great extent by the publication of ‘Ecocriticism Reader: Landmark in Literary Ecology.’(1996) by Cherill Glotfelty & Harold Fromm. Presently, it is not only a curiously pursued academic discipline with interdisciplinary prospect but also a vibrant literary concept and environmental movement.
Interested participants are requested to send their abstracts (300 words) along with short profile by 30th of December, 2011, to ecocriticism.dgc@gmail.com.
B) The full papers in (Latest MLA Style, 2500—3500 words, presentable within 10 minutes) may be submitted by 25th of January2012, at ecocriticism.dgc@gmail.com along with registration fee. The papers submitted without registration fee shall not be considered for selection.
C) The outstation participants may be given accommodation with extra charges for which they have to contact at least 10 days ahead of the seminar.(accommodation cost may vary from Rs. 500 to Rs. 1000 per night.)
D) The participants have to register by a Cross Demand Draft in favor of Principal, Diphu Govt. College. Diphu. Account No- 2183746421, Payable at Central Bank of India, Diphu Branch.
E) Registration fee Rs. 500 (for paper presentation) and Rs. 300 (for participation).
F) The selected papers shall be published in form of a journal.
For more information, contact Machurina Hussain machurinahussain@gmail.com, or Kabeen Teronpi kabeen_teronpi@rediffmail.com
March 10, 2012. Art and Exchange: Tufts University Art History Graduate Student Research Conference, 9:30am-4pm, Crane Room, Paige Hall, Tufts University, Medford MA. Breakfast and lunch will be served.
Keynote Address:
Dennis Carr, Assistant Curator, Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Art of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Graduate Presenters:
Erika Nelson, Brooklyn College, MA graduate,
“Mickey in Mexico: The Infiltration of the Dynasty in the Codex Espangliensis”
Elizabeth Frasco, Institute of Fine Arts, PhD candidate,
“Mermaids and Roses: Artistic Agency in the Murals of Iglesia San Jose”
Victoria Addona, University of British Columbia, MA candidate,
“Reality and its (Dis) contents: Bambocciate and the Collection of the Quotidian”
Alyssa Greenberg, University of Illinois, PhD candidate,
“The Mail Art and Artist Stamps of Michael Hernandez de Luna: Mail Art, Collaboration and Institutional Critique”
Lindsay O’Conner, Tulane University, MA candidate,
“The Picture of Civility: The Interplay between the Construction of Whiteness and Visual Culture in Kara Walker’s A Warm Summer Evening in 1863”
Marian Smith, Harvard University, MA candidate,
“The Evolving Pictorial and Literary Language of Late Timurid Heart: A Case Study Using a 15th Century Illustrated Manuscript of the Mantiq al-tayr”
This event is generously sponsored by the Tufts University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Art and Art History
For more information, including directions and parking, visit our website:
http://ase.tufts.edu/art/newsevents.asp#mar10
Or contact Andrea Rosen at Andrea.Rosen@tufts.edu or Meredith Ferguson at Meredith.Ferguson@tufts.edu.