Deadline: December 1, 2024
Contact: Ryan Hediger, Kent State University
Email: rhediger@kent.edu

Panel proposed for ASLE 2025: Collective Atmospheres
University of Maryland, College Park, MD
July 8-11, 2025

Pedagogies often function like atmospheres, lingering in the background of learning scenarios and frequently remaining unacknowledged. Pedagogies commonly are thus inherited and under-scrutinized formations. However, like Earth’s physical atmosphere, pedagogical atmospheres are absolutely essential to what happens in the classroom and in learning situations more generally. They are the oxygen—or the lack thereof—of learning environments. The core question investigated by this panel is, How should our pedagogies change in light of atmospheric and environmental crisis? What should or must we do differently to respond to this period of ongoing climate emergency?

Possible questions include but are not limited to:
• How can we reconceive the classroom and learning scenarios to better accord with big-picture environmental values such as anti-objectification/anti-commodification, anti-environmental racism, anti-colonialism, pro-kinship across lines of species and beyond, and so on? In other words, what are some pedagogical implications of current environmental concerns?
• What pedagogical steps, techniques, and values can be used to help learners understand challenges and problems connected to the actual atmosphere, such as growing greenhouse gases, other forms of pollution, and so on?
• What should we be doing in the classroom? How should we conduct class sessions to promote genuine engagement and learning regarding environmental concerns?
• What kinds of assignments should we use in class and why?
• What texts, genres, authors, and forms should we use in the classroom and why? What are some uses for film, social media, music, and other forms often outside the purview of English or environmental studies departments?
• In what ways can we resist or reform received institutional structures such as English departments? What practical steps can we take to reshape such inherited forms and norms?
• What steps can we take (or nourish) institutionally to improve pedagogy?

Please indicate your preferred panel format(s), possibly even in ranked order.

Deadline: December 1, 2024
Contact: Ryan Hediger, Kent State University
Email: rhediger@kent.edu

Posted on September 24, 2024