President’s Update
While most of ASLE was making its way to the biennial gathering in Kansas, a few members were making plans beyond the conference that had yet to begin. Guided by the 2009 ASLE Strategic Plan, we charged committees led by Heather Sullivan, Anthony Lioi, and Byron Caminero-Santangelo to develop the grant applications included in this issue of ASLE News .
ASLE Welcomes Newly Elected Officers
Each year at this time, ASLE has the privilege of welcoming a new Vice President and two new Executive Council members to its leadership; every third year, we also welcome a new Diversity Officer.
New International Membership Grant Program Completes first Successful Year
In 2013 ASLE initiated a program that provides International Membership Grants for up to 50 ASLE-US memberships for literature and environment scholars outside the US and Canada.
New ASLE Book, Article, and Media Projects Subvention Grants
The ASLE Subvention Committee is soliciting proposals for innovative projects in ecocriticism and the environmental humanities. We are especially interested in projects of a scholarly and/or creative nature that engage with new media, aim at fostering intercultural or interdisciplinary exchange, or seek to bring insights from the environmental humanities to a non-academic public.
New ASLE Grants to Translate Ecocritical Books into English
In order to support work in ecocriticism from international scholars and to expand exchanges across cultures and continents, the ASLE Committee for Translations seeks proposals for books to be translated into English. Proposed books should be ecocriticism or fiction/non-fiction with a clear relationship to environmental issues, and must already have been published in a language other than English. For accepted projects, we provide funding to support the translation of these books.
Seeking Proposals for ASLE Community Grant
The ASLE Outreach Committee is soliciting proposals for projects that will help build connections between the environmental humanities and place-based environmental organizations working outside the academy. Projects will foreground the intersection between local efforts to address issues of environmental degradation and injustice and the role of representation and rhetoric. We are especially interested in projects enabling ASLE to connect with the environmental struggles of biennial conference localities.
Ecocriticism Panels at PAMLA 2013
The Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) held its 111th annual conference at the Bahia Resort Hotel in San Diego, California, in early November, 2013. In my role as ASLE's liaison to PAMLA, I had the pleasure of organizing two ASLE-sponsored Ecocriticism panels.
ASLE Panel at SAMLA Convention
The South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA) convened in Atlanta, Georgia from November 8-10, where the ASLE-sponsored session met to discuss "Southern Wilds and Unnatural Disasters." The ASLE panel convened to investigate how the literary representation of disaster exposes the eco-cultural history of environmental catastrophe.
ASLE at WLA
The Western Literature Association (WLA) hosted two well-attended and well- received ASLE-sponsored panels at their 48th annual conference in Berkeley, CA, in October. In keeping with the spirit of the conference theme, "Califia: The West Calling the World," each panel focused either on subjects related to California agriculture, agriculture and globalization, or both.