ASLE News

2015 ASLE Conference Seminars & Workshops

McIntyre Amy

At our upcoming 2015 Biennial Conference in Idaho, ASLE will hold eight workshops and seminars on important and emerging topics that reflect the diversity of our approaches and our membership.  Six pre-conference seminars and workshops will be held on Tuesday, June 23 and two mid-conference workshops offered on Friday, June 26, at the same time as the field trips. The cost is $15, payable during online registration. Each will be limited to 15 participants.  Due to limited spaces, you must pre-register for these ...

ASLE Announces New Honorary Members

McIntyre Amy

ASLE extended honorary memberships to three amazing women in 2014. Recipients were chosen for this honor, which includes lifetime membership in ASLE and all its benefits, because of their contributions to ASLE and/or literature and environmental studies. They have significantly enriched those familiar with their work, and their exemplary careers as artists, advocates, and environmental role models has inspired us all.  The new inductees will be honored at the opening reception of our 2015 biennial conference at the University of Idaho in Moscow, ...

ASLE Welcomes Newly Elected Vice President and Executive Council Members

McIntyre Amy

Sarah Jaquette Ray

We are pleased to announce the winners of our recent officer elections. Sarah Jaquette Ray (Humboldt State University) will serve as the 2015-16 Vice President. Sarah’s many contributions to ASLE include serving as an ASLE Graduate Student Liaison from 2009-2011 and as host of the 2012 ASLE off-year symposium “Environment, Culture and Place in a Rapidly Changing North” at the University of Southeast Alaska in Juneau, Alaska. In addition, Sarah has for the past two years served on the ...

A New ASLE Mission and Strategic Plan

McIntyre Amy

Since the ASLE Strategic Plan was approved in 2009 our association has strengthened its organizational structure, enhanced the disciplinary and demographic diversity of our membership, and reaffirmed the core values of equity, inclusion, and accessibility. Following a review of the 2009 Plan at the officers retreat this past spring, and discussions over the summer and fall, the Executive Council of ASLE has approved the 2014 Strategic Plan.

The 2014 Plan includes a new mission statement for our association:

The mission of the Association for the ...

ASLE Joins AWP as Writers’ Conferences & Centers Member

McIntyre Amy

In November, ASLE became a member of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) through its Writers’ Conferences & Centers program.  AWP is a larger organization that provides community, opportunities, ideas, news, and advocacy for writers and teachers of writing. We are excited about this opportunity to affiliate with them, and hope to increase awareness of our organization within AWP, but more importantly we aspire to create more ways for ASLE to connect with and support creative writers.

Our WC&C Membership includes benefits ...

Land Ethic Research and Application Center Established by ASLE Member in Turkey

McIntyre Amy

ASLE member Ufuk Özdağ has recently established Land Ethic Research and Application Center at her home institution, Hacettepe University, Ankara (Turkey) and was appointed the Director of the Center on November 5, 2014. Ufuk had attended Aldo Leopold Foundation’s LEL program back in 2010, and had become a land ethic leader. Under Ufuk’s direction the Center will work internationally to enhance a culture that puts Leopold’s vision of a land ethic at the core of decision making. Ufuk is the author ...

Ecocriticism and Environmental Humanities Forum at MLA

McIntyre Amy

MLA 2015 will be held in Vancouver, BC, Canada

The Executive Council of the Modern Language Association (MLA) has approved the creation of a new forum for Ecocriticism and the Environmental Humanities. The first official sessions of the forum will take place at the 2016 MLA convention in Austin, Texas. The forum proposal was drafted and submitted by Sharon O¹Dair (University of Alabama) who is a member of the Founding Executive Committee that includes professor Stacy Alaimo (University of Texas at Arlington), ...

ASLE-Sponsored Conference in India a Success

McIntyre Amy

The international conference “Towards Ecocultural Ethics: Recent Trends and Future Directions” at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Goa, India, was held October 9-11, 2014, and organized by the BITS Department of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Department of Philosophy at Goa University. The event brought together research scholars and teachers from departments of English language and literature, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, business, communications, political science, philosophy, and religious studies.

Mark Long speaks at “Toward Ecocultural Ethics” conference

Three days of ...

Notes on “Notes from Underground”: ASLE Biennial Conference in Moscow, Idaho

McIntyre Amy

by Cate Sandilands, York University, ASLE Vice President and 2015 Conference Chair

In a bit less than eight months’ time, ASLE members will be assembling at the University of Idaho in Moscow for the start of our eleventh biennial conference, “Notes from Underground: The Depths of Environmental Arts, Culture and Justice” (June 23 – 27, 2015). The call for papers has circulated widely, and many interesting calls for “underground” themed panels have also been posted on the ASLE listserv, web site and elsewhere: from ...

President’s Update

McIntyre Amy

Sixty years ago, in June of 1955, the Wenner-Gren Foundation convened an international symposium in Princeton, New Jersey, in honor of George Perkins Marsh’s 1864 book Man and Nature. The Princeton symposium, co-chaired by the geographer Carl O. Sauer, the zoologist Marston Bates, and the literary and cultural historian Lewis Mumford, brought together seventy participants from a range of academic fields. As the symposium unfolded, Bates reports in the published proceedings, “less and less was said in defense or in support of a ...