ASLE News

As a small nonprofit organization, ASLE relies on the participation of our members in the governing and operations of our association. Serving on our leadership team gives you an opportunity to give back to the organization, and to help shape our future direction and mission.

ASLE will be holding elections this fall for President, two open Executive Council seats (one designated for the Contingent/Independent Advocacy representative), Diversity Officer, and Graduate Student Liaison (junior). Online voting will be conducted during the month of November.

If you ...

ASLE seeks proposals to organize and “host” a virtual conference in 2020, similar to our first Nearly Carbon Neutral off-Year Symposium in 2018, entitled A Clockwork Green: Ecomedia in the Anthropocene.  We are open to any thematic ideas that will encompass current trends in the environmental humanities.

We realize that an online-only symposium is a different animal than planning a traditional conference. Last year’s event was a collaboration between ASLE, which provided funding for keynote speakers, publicity, and processed registrations, and UC Santa Barbara, ...

by Stephen Siperstein, Choate Rosemary Hall

The fourth annual Environmental Literature Institute at Philips Exeter Academy (NH) prepared secondary and higher education teachers to incorporate the environmental humanities into their classes, programs, and institutions. Twenty educators from twelve states and British Columbia and from a range of institutions and educational contexts attended this year’s institute. During a week of workshops, presentations, field-trips, and community-building events, participants explored, among other topics: climate change education, environmental justice, place-based learning, and the confluence of environmental poetry and ...

During the 2019 ASLE Biennial Conference in June, ASLE recognized four leading scholars in the environmental humanities by awarding them with honorary membership status in our association. Recipients were chosen for this honor because of their contributions to ASLE and/or literature and environmental studies. They have significantly enriched those familiar with their work, and their lifetime memberships are a small but sincere token of ASLE’s gratitude to them. The recipients are Michael Branch, Camille Dungy, Ursula Heise and Mark Long.

Ursula Heise, ...

ASLE is pleased to announce that #ClimateUprising has been awarded a 2019 Community Grant of $5000, to fund the editing and completion of a film about activism that came out of the 2018 Camp Fire. Projects foreground the intersection between the role of representation and rhetoric and local efforts to address issues of environmental degradation and injustice, as well as engage with at least one of the following objectives: community-based research, civic participation, social/environmental justice, and educational or ...

By Elizabeth Dodd, ASLE Mentoring Co-Coordinator, University Distinguished Professor, Kansas State University, and Sara Kearns, Academic Services Librarian, Kansas State University

Although the field of environmental humanities is flourishing intellectually, academic publishing faces increasing financial threats. Many of us in US colleges and universities have watched our libraries cancel periodical subscriptions as cost-cutting efforts. While certain scholarly journals, owned by private, for-profit companies, charge exorbitant subscription costs, lower-cost journals in the humanities often are included in both targeted and across-the-board cuts, despite the modest ...

For over twenty-five years ASLE has supported the intellectual work of its members around the world. The formation of ASLE-Japan in 1994 signaled an international orientation that continues in our many active affiliates in countries around the world today. These sister organizations represent a wide range of institutions, fields and interests and connect with ASLE and one another to organize lectures, readings and conference panels and to collaborate on projects and initiatives.

ASLE values all these relationships and the dedication of those who nurture ...

Story Updated July 24, 2019

Judges have announced the winners for the 2019 ASLE Book Awards and Graduate Student Paper Awards. These awards in the areas of ecocriticism and environmental creative writing were established in 2007 and are given biennially to recognize excellence in the field.

The official presentation was held on June 27, 2019, at the Authors’ Reception during the 2019 ASLE Biennial Conference at the University of California, Davis. We received more than 70 creative submissions and 50 ecocritical submissions this year, by ...

Judges have announced the finalists for the 2019 ASLE Book Awards. These book awards in the areas of ecocriticism and environmental creative writing were established in 2007 and are given biennially to recognize excellence in the field.

Winners will be announced in early June, and the official presentation will be at the Authors’ Reception held during the 2019 ASLE Biennial Conference at the University of California, Davis, on June 27, 2019. Eligible submissions are books published by ASLE and international affiliate members since the ...

The ASLE Translation Grants committee is delighted to report that we received a record number of submissions this year. Of the large array of excellent proposals to translate ecocritically relevant texts from all over the world, we selected five exceptional translation projects to fund. These include the following:

Chitra Sankaran

Chi P. Pham

Chi P. Pham and Chitra Sankaran, translating ten selected short Vietnamese stories from various authors. As the translators note: “For our project, which we have provisionally entitled Eco-Narratives from ...