ASLE News

As of this moment, more than 179,000 people have died worldwide from COVID-19, and in the United States, more than 42,000 people have died. As a community of scholars, creative writers, artists, and activists focused on the environment, literature, and culture, we bring a particular set of insights and resources to the pandemic. We wish to draw specific attention to the environmental injustice at the heart of COVID-19 risk and response, to warn against unintentionally affirming the ecofascist rhetoric present in public discourse, ...

In the week since we wrote the following report on the ASLE leadership retreat in Portland, Oregon, Covid19 has continued its rapid spread and, on March 11th, was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. In a vacuum of effective leadership globally, or, in the United States, nationally, state and local leaders have been responding to instate measures to slow the virus’s spread and to support public health facilities and workers. With many school and university closures, ASLE members find their lives ...

ASLE is seeking both co-hosts and interview participants for a new podcast, please see the calls below:

The Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE) is currently accepting applications for a co-host on the in-development podcast series, EcoCast. The podcast will be a place for scholars, educators, and creators doing work related to ecocriticism, environmental and social justice, service learning, and any other topic that falls under the purview of ASLE’s vision.

The role of the co-host will be to help the ...

Poetic fieldwork at the Exeter River with Alison Hawthorne Deming, 2019

The Environmental Literature Institute (ELI), was to have been held June 21-June 26, 2020 at Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter NH.

ELI aims to cultivate a community of educators interested in environmentally-focused teaching and learning. The workshops, speakers, and events of this week-long institute will offer ideas and materials to help participants enrich their teaching as ...

At the 2019 officers meeting, the leadership discussed changes to our grants programs.  As submissions to the Community Grants have been sparse, and the submissions to the Conference Travel Awards have grown immensely, it indicates a need to support our contingent, student, and international members more robustly through travel funding. Therefore, the EC voted to amend these programs in the following ways:

In conference years, ASLE will increase our allocation from $5,000 to $10,000 for conference travel; in off-conference years, ASLE will accept both ...

It is with great pleasure that ASLE welcomes the following people to our leadership:

Laura Barbas-Rhoden

Bethany Wiggin

Laura Barbas-Rhoden and Bethany Wiggin have been elected to serve as Co-Presidents starting January 1, 2020. Laura has been serving as ASLE’s Diversity Co-Officer for the past three years, and is Professor of Spanish at Wofford College. She’s the author of Ecological Imaginations in Latin American Fiction. Bethany is the Founding Director of the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities and Associate Professor of German ...

By Amy Hamilton, Northern Michigan University

Dr. Annette Kolodny, a leading voice in Early American literary studies and a founding ecofeminist scholar, died on September 11, 2019 at her home in Tucson, Arizona. Dr. Kolodny’s work has inspired countless ASLE members, and she was also a friend, teacher, and mentor to many of us in the field. Her loss will be deeply felt.

She received her BA from Brooklyn College, CUNY in 1962, and her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1969. In ...