Regionalism and Ecohorror

Deadline: 12/02/2022
Contact: Carter Soles, SUNY Brockport English Department
Email: csoles@brockport.edu
Phone: (585)615-0913

Panel proposed at the 2023 ASLE + AESS Conference: “Reclaiming the Commons”

July 9-12, 2023 in Portland, Oregon

On the topic of regional literature, authors Sherrie A. Inness and Diana Royer write, “[W]e find our subjectivities profoundly influenced by our locatedness” (6) – that our personal relationships with land and place are inherently connected to the discourses of socio-cultural conflicts and tensions which emerge from these defined regional spaces. Through the lens of ecohorror, we aim to examine literary and visual representations of regional identity-making as they intersect with (and are informed by) the uncertainties and fears specific to their locality.

What new offshoots in comparative regionalism can we explore with the filter of ecohorror as a mode of interrogation? When and how does horror manifest and diverge across contradistinctive regionalities? How do we understand representations of regionalism as decentralizing to the “dominant culture,” and where does (eco-)horror find its roots in playing out anxieties associated with regionalized landscape and environment?

The proposed roundtable will draw upon a range of various regional representations in literature, visual media, cultural artifacts, and/or geographies to think about the ways in which regionalist interpretations of landscape, boundary, and space contribute to the development and evolution of geographically distinct anxieties and horrors in global culture. Our panel seeks to respond to the question: What role do fear and (eco-)horror play in connecting isolated geographical and cultural spheres in order to bring them together and create an archipelago of knowledge helpful to us in (re-)constructing the commons in the global Anthropocene?

We invite 200-word proposals for 10-minute presentations in roundtable format.

Posted on October 17, 2022