ASLE at MMLA 2015

By Lisa Ottum, ASLE/MMLA Liaison, Xavier University

The 57th Midwest Modern Language Association Annual Conference was held on November 12th-15th in Columbus.  Following the conference theme—“Arts and Sciences”—the ASLE-affiliated panel explored ecocriticism as a vibrant nexus of the arts and sciences.

In his paper, “Narcissus in the Wild: Into the Wild and Psychoanalytic Ecologies,” Alexander Menrisky (University of Kentucky) considered the way in which queer ecocriticism and psychoanalytic theory—specifically psychoanalytic theories of primary narcissism—can elucidate literary conceptions of the “wild” and wilderness “escape.”  Focusing on Jon Krakauer’s bestselling Into the Wild, Menrisky discussed the discourse of ego-dissolution in environmental literature, calling for further efforts to integrate literary studies into ecopsychology.

Also taking an interdisciplinary approach, Max Woods (University of Wisconsin) examined the “natured techno-poetics” of avant-garde Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro (1893-1948).  Huidobro’s work, Woods argues, “nature-izes” technology; by refusing to differentiate nature and natural processes from machinery, the poet resists the mechanization of nature.  Huidobro also bridges the arts and sciences by poeticizing the machine, inviting us to rethink the ecocritical possibilities surrounding this category.

Finally, Lisa Ottum (Xavier University) explored tensions between the arts and sciences in contemporary environmental education.  Ottum argued that in addition to an environmental tradition, we have also inherited from Romanticism a suspicion of reading and its powerful emotional effects; hence, we remain uncertain about how reading (or aesthetic response of any kind) fits into green education.  Together, these papers made for a productive post-presentation discussion of current trends in ecocriticism, including developments in queer ecocriticism and efforts to bridge cognitive literary studies and ecocriticism.

MMLA is currently seeking papers for the 2016 conference in St. Louis November 10th-13th on the theme “Border States”; for more information, visit http://www.luc.edu/mmla/.