Deadline: December 13th, 2026
Contact: Thomas A Bryant, Penn State University
Email: thomasabryant4@gmail.com
Phone: 6126156182

Panel Call for ASLE 2027, 22–24 June 2027 at the University of Maryland, College Park

Contact: Thomas Bryant, Penn State (Thomasabryant4@gmail.com)

Insects often figure the bounds of meaningful life. Technologies of control such as pesticides and xenophobic rhetoric are shaped around the extermination and exclusion of insects. Simultaneously, authors have rendered insects as highly sympathetic or as models for collective life (whether they are deployed as forms of matriarchy, mutual aid, pests, contagion, or war). Scholarship has effectively bridged literary studies and Critical Animal Studies in order to conceptualize how narrative shapes interspecies life and our understanding of nonhuman agency. Still, the extreme alterity of insect life makes them a poor fit for many of the narratological models used for charismatic mammals. Particularly, the short lives of insects, their frequently antagonistic function in human life, and the idea of the “hivemind” challenge some basic premises that undergird scholarly hopes for interspecies entanglement. Based on the critical roles that insect life and death play in society, this panel will explore the strategies and effects of authors’ attempts to capture insect life.

Possible Questions Include:
What narratological forms and techniques have authors used to capture insectile life?
How have literature and film responded to entomological science?
In what ways and to what effect have authors drawn or resisted analogies between human and insect life?
How do insects challenge interspecies companionship models?
What historical and technological factors have shaped literary engagement with insects?
A central commitment of Critical Animal Studies is demetaphorizing literary animals. What challenges and opportunities do insects pose to this commitment?

This panel is open to submissions across different periods, mediums, and regions in order to nuance our conceptualization of insects.

Please submit proposals of 250 words and short bio by December 13th to Thomas Bryant (Thomasabryant4@gmail.com).

Posted on September 9, 2026