ASLE Welcomes Two New International Affiliates
ASLE is very excited to announce the formation of two new international affiliates, ASLE-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and ASLE-Brazil.
ASLE-ASEAN Statement of Purpose
ASLE-ASEAN, comprised of nations with varying degrees of ecological awareness and in different stages of development, is proud of its diverse cultures and ecologies. However, it is also aware of the vulnerability of the region, having survived the Tsunami and consequent El Niño typhoons—to name only a few disasters precipitated by climate change and global warming in the past decades. ...
Greetings from SES-J!
Greetings to the members of ASLE from Shoko ITOH, the chair of The Society for Ecocriticism Studies in Japan. SES-J is an academic community devoted to studying Ecocriticism and exploring cultural and literary connections to the environment. We have been active since 1995, when a renewed interest in nature writing and its criticism spread to Japan and the world. Our members study the Environment from various fields of inquiry including literature (American, Asian American, Australian, British, Canadian, Japanese, multicultural, comparative, and nuclear); education; ...
Application Period Now Open for 2016 ASLE Grants
In 2014 ASLE launched a three year pilot program to offer members of the association support through modest grants. Applications for the final year in our three year pilot for these grants are now being accepted, the deadline is July 1, 2016.
ASLE Subvention Grants support 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 ...
ASLE-Sponsored Off-Year Symposia in 2016
*This article was updated on February 24, 2016.
In addition to our biennial conference, ASLE sponsors smaller regional symposia in our non-conference years. We are delighted to support three events in 2016, symposia in New Mexico and New York state, and our first ever graduate student symposium in Ann Arbor, MI. Full descriptions and calls for papers can also be found at the Affiliated Symposia page.
Toxic Borders and Bondages: Intersecting Ecology with Capitalism, Racism, Heteropatriarchy and (Dis)possession (Graduate Symposium)
October 21 – 22, 2016 University of ...
ASLE Welcomes New Professional Affiliate SES-Japan
ASLE is very pleased to announce that we have established formal ties with a new Professional Affiliate organization. Since its foundation in 1995, the Society for the Study of Ecocriticism in Japan (SES-Japan) has assisted its members to acquire first-hand knowledge in the study of ecocriticism, which Cheryll Glotfelty described as “the relationship between literature and the physical environment.” SES-Japan holds annual meetings with presentations; workshops; symposia; as well as special lectures by writers and ecocritics from the United States or Canada, scholars ...
ASLE at MMLA 2015
By Lisa Ottum, ASLE/MMLA Liaison, Xavier University
The 57th Midwest Modern Language Association Annual Conference was held on November 12th-15th in Columbus. Following the conference theme—“Arts and Sciences”—the ASLE-affiliated panel explored ecocriticism as a vibrant nexus of the arts and sciences.
In his paper, “Narcissus in the Wild: Into the Wild and Psychoanalytic Ecologies,” Alexander Menrisky (University of Kentucky) considered the way in which queer ecocriticism and psychoanalytic theory—specifically psychoanalytic theories of primary narcissism—can elucidate literary conceptions of the “wild” and wilderness “escape.” Focusing on ...
ASLE at MLA 2016
By Clare Echterling, ASLE/MLA Liaison, University of Kansas
The 2016 MLA convention, held January 7-10 in Austin, Texas, was an exciting and energizing conference for those of us working in environmental literary criticism and the humanities. There were a number of ASLE members in attendance and quite a few excellent and diverse ecocritical panels, including those arranged by the newly inaugurated MLA forum for Ecocriticism and the Environmental Humanities, whose executive committee includes Sharon O’Dair (University of Alabama), Stacy Alaimo (University of Texas at ...
ASLE at PAMLA 2015
By Ted Geier, ASLE/PAMLA Liaison, Rice University
ASLE has established an important presence at the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) thanks to the work of my predecessor as ASLE-PAMLA Liaison, Kevin Hutchings, who established the “conference-within-a-conference” that stalwart PAMLA Director Craig Svonkin calls these sessions. Craig is no doubt also responding to the incredible surge in environmental topics across the conference in recent years. I counted no less than 20 other sessions that the average ASLE member might well attend, such as ...
ASLE at SAMLA 2015
By Rebecca Godwin, ASLE/SAMLA Liaison, Professor of English and Director of Barton Writing Center, Barton College.
As an affiliated group of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA), ASLE held two sessions at SAMLA 87 in Durham, North Carolina, in November 2015. Embracing the conference theme In Concert: Literature and the Other Arts, participants explored how the arts help to make us better stewards of the earth by drawing our attention to it. ASLE sessions began with a question echoing John Felstiner’s Can Poetry ...
ASLE Collaborates on Environmental Literature Institute for Secondary School Teachers
Keynote Speaker: Scott Russell Sanders, Author of Hunting for Hope and Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World, Indiana University
From Sunday, June 26 – Friday, July 1, 2016, Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire will host and debut the Exeter Environmental Literature Institute—the first institute of its kind dedicated solely to secondary school environmental humanities teachers. This week-long conference, in collaboration with the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE), is designed to establish a community ...