Deadline: December 1, 2026
Contact: Eric Gary Anderson, gw353@cornell.edu, Hello, the system doesn't allow me to enter two emails, so I put them in "Phone" and "Position." Could you please enter both persons' contact information when you post it? Thank you!
Email: eandersd@gmu.edu
Phone: Phoenix Wang

This is a guaranteed session supported by the ASLE “Ecogothic and Ecohorror” Interest Group.

Representations of pests, predators, and parasites are often sources of terror in the ecogothic, ecohorror, and other related speculative literature/visual media, but they can also move beyond the functional terror to negotiate multispecies relationality, transformation, symbiosis, and uneasy coexistence in today’s changing world.

This roundtable (5-7 panelists for 8-10 minutes each) invites submissions addressing the imaginaries of pests, predators, and parasites in contemporary speculative literature/visual media (broadly defined), especially those in ecogothic and ecohorror modes.

Topics might include but are not limited to:
– nonhuman beings: fungi, pathogens, microbes, insects, parasitic gothic creatures, invasive species, uncharismatic species
– relations: cannibalism, survival, interdependence, symbiosis, asymmetrical coexistence
– mutation, bodily/ecological transformation, transcorporeality
– ecological, posthuman, or nonhuman ethics
– nonhuman agency, autonomy, subjectivity, intelligence
– multispecies relations and cross-species encounters in and beyond the Anthropocene
– spaces: pests, predators, and parasites on land, in the ocean/ air, or in other spaces

Participants of all backgrounds are welcome to submit. Please submit an abstract of around 250 words to Eric Gary Anderson (eandersd@gmu.edu) and Phoenix Wang (gw353@cornell.edu) by December 1, 2026.

Posted on September 21, 2026