ASLE Welcomes Two New International Affiliates

ASLE is very excited to announce the formation of two new international affiliates, ASLE-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and ASLE-Brazil.

ASLE-ASEAN Statement of Purpose

ASLE-ASEAN, comprised of nations with varying degrees of ecological awareness and in different stages of development, is proud of its diverse cultures and ecologies. However, it is also aware of the vulnerability of the region, having survived the Tsunami and consequent El Niño typhoons—to name only a few disasters precipitated by climate change and global warming in the past decades. The people of ASEAN, therefore, feel the urgent need to come together to examine various ecological issues in a systematic way from a scholarly perspective.

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https://aseanasle.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/dawn-190055_1280.jpg?w=1280&h=853&crop=1

ASLE-ASEAN provides a useful platform to facilitate dialogue between academics, scholars from ecological humanities, and ecocritics from different nations within ASEAN. Members will give voice to the multiple perspectives necessary to calibrate the ongoing interactions between humans and non-humans. Accordingly, the group focuses on areas such as climate change, biodiversity-depletion, ecojustice, and related themes through the critical analysis of literature, art, film, music, and popular culture, both local and global.

ASLE-ASEAN will hold its first Ecocritical Workshop, titled “Global in the Local: Ecocriticism in South-east Asia,” August 1-2, 2016, at the National University of Singapore. ISLE Editor Scott Slovic will be a featured speaker. For more information about ASLE-ASEAN and about the upcoming Workshop, visit https://aseanasle.wordpress.com/.

ASLE-Brazil Statement of Purpose

The relationship between literature and the environment is one of the recurring themes in Brazilian literature; however, the word ecocriticism introduces a critical approach and tool to reinterpret canonical works that have ecocentric perspectives. The ecocritic perspective is one of the most democratic ways to educate, advocate, and create an art in favor of the environment and non-human beings around the world. In August 2012, a small group of professors in Brazil decided to bring together students, researchers, poets, high school teachers, philosophers, and professors interested in nature preservation and in being part of a long term struggle for a sustainable education. The meeting, held in Joao Pessoa, PB, in the northeast of Brazil, was called the First International Congress of Literature and Ecocriticism.

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http://www.ecocritica.com.br/images/ecocritica2016/jp.png

Following this first meeting, the idea was born to create an association that had an Iberian scope and could bring together individuals working in Brazil, Spain, and Portugal. In 2014, colleagues from each of these countries worked together to organize the Second International Congress of Literature and Ecocriticism in Valladolid, Spain. Based on the success of these early gatherings, scholars in Brazil formed ASLE-Brazil.

The group will hold the Third International Congress of Literature and Ecocriticism (and 1st Biennial Conference of ASLE-Brazil), with support from the Federal University of Paraíba and the State University of Rio de Janeiro, August 29-31, 2016. Scott Slovic will be a featured speaker. For more information about ASLE-Brazil, visit http://www.ecocritica.com.br/index.php/en/.

For more information about our international affiliates, including information about forming a new affiliate, visit ASLE Around the World.