Political Animals: Reclaiming the Politics Beyond Humans
Panel proposed at the 2023 ASLE + AESS Conference: “Reclaiming the Commons”
July 9-12, 2023 in Portland, Oregon
“Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal.” This statement of of Aristotle is often interpreted as nonhumans not being concerned with politics and that politics is a prerogative of humans only. Political associations in a human society are often restricted to humans. However, contemporary research in ethology suggests that nonhuman communities and their ...
Storying the Plantation(ocene) Otherwise
Panel proposed at the 2023 ASLE + AESS Conference: “Reclaiming the Commons”
July 9-12, 2023 in Portland, Oregon
Co-organised by Dr. Jill Didur (Concordia University, Montreal) and Priscilla Jolly (Concordia University, Montreal)
This panel examines how the ongoing legacy of plantation epistemologies and violence are made visible, critiqued, resisted, and imagined ‘otherwise’ through different modes of storytelling (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, visual culture, digital culture, popular media, and policy documents). Taking up Haraway’s call to ‘story otherwise’ for ‘Earthly survival’ (2016), we invite papers that explore ...
Regionalism and Ecohorror
Panel proposed at the 2023 ASLE + AESS Conference: “Reclaiming the Commons”
July 9-12, 2023 in Portland, Oregon
On the topic of regional literature, authors Sherrie A. Inness and Diana Royer write, “[W]e find our subjectivities profoundly influenced by our locatedness” (6) – that our personal relationships with land and place are inherently connected to the discourses of socio-cultural conflicts and tensions which emerge from these defined regional spaces. Through the lens of ecohorror, we aim to examine literary and visual representations of regional identity-making ...
Thinking the Commons Beyond Extraction and Extinction
Panel proposed at the 2023 ASLE + AESS Conference: “Reclaiming the Commons”
July 9-12, 2023 in Portland, Oregon
Co-organised by Dr Ida Marie Olsen (Ghent University) and Dr Reuben Martens (University of Waterloo)
If we are to reclaim the commons—setting aside the difficulties of defining commons and who they actually belong to, especially in any North American or postcolonial state—where do we begin? Many commons, whether they be terrestrial, aquatic, atmospheric or sociocultural, have been and are still in the process of being actively destroyed in ...
RMMLA-Sponsored ASLE Panel
Guaranteed panel at the 2023 ASLE + AESS Conference: “Reclaiming the Commons”
July 9-12, 2023 in Portland, Oregon
This guaranteed panel at the ASLE + AESS conference highlights the work of scholars affiliated with the Rocky Mountain MLA.
Proposals on any topic related to literature and the environment are welcome. Please send an abstract and brief bio to Jenna Gersie by December 21, 2022, at jenna.gersie@colorado.edu.
Priority will be given to current members of RMMLA; please indicate in your email if you are a current member.
Blue Spaces/Blue Bodies: Watery Commons, The Great Connect for All
Deadline extended to December 15
Panel proposed at the 2023 ASLE + AESS Conference: “Reclaiming the Commons”
July 9-12, 2023 in Portland, Oregon
“People who visit the coast at least twice weekly tend to experience better general and mental health.” –Dr. Lewis Elliott
“In Minnesota, the fatal drowning rate of American Indians is more than three times the rate for whites. Blacks and Asians in the state are nearly one-and-a-half times as likely to drown as whites, according to CDC statistics. The fatal drowning rate of African-American children ...
Public Environmental Humanities
Panel proposed at the 2023 ASLE + AESS Conference: “Reclaiming the Commons”
July 9-12, 2023 in Portland, Oregon
We seek presentations on current projects that utilize the arts and humanities to engage communities around environmental issues. We take inspiration from projects such as the Humanities for the Environment Observatories, the Freshwater Lab at the University of Illinois – Chicago, the Penn Program for the Environmental Humanities, and other publicly engaged collaborative projects that address questions of environmental justice, ecological sustainability, and civic education. We wish ...
Energy Justice and the Commons
Panel proposed at the 2023 ASLE + AESS Conference: “Reclaiming the Commons”
July 9-12, 2023 in Portland, Oregon
This roundtable examines the relations between energy, justice, and the commons as an approach to addressing climate emergency, envisioning alternative energy futures and modes of energy transition, and focusing on the conditions and needs of communities who are disproportionately impacted by environmental harms. While the idea of “energy justice” has been taken up most centrally in governmental frameworks and public policy initiatives, this roundtable considers how, and ...
Between Tragedy and Miracle: Reclaiming the Italian Commons
Panel proposed at the 2023 ASLE + AESS Conference: “Reclaiming the Commons”
July 9-12, 2023 in Portland, Oregon
In the Introduction to Italy and the Environmental Humanities, editors Serenella Iovino, Enrico Cesaretti, and Elena Past describe a peninsula in environmental crisis, a victim of what they call “the strange mechanism that transforms cultural richness into misery, and public good into a private supply for short-term speculations” (2). While that continues to be true in many sectors, there are abundant examples in the country’s arts, literatures, ...
Commons in Colonization
Call for Papers for AESS 2023: Reclaiming the Commons – a joint event with the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE).
This panel will explore how European colonization in the Americas as a whole transmitted Old World forms of commoning on diverse environments (land, water, woodlands, marshlands) to this continent during early modernity and how these commons as places and commoning as practices persisted or became extinct. The period under consideration will be the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries. The panel will ...