Scholar of the Month

ASLE’s Scholar of the Month for June 2021 is April Anson. 

Dr. April Anson is an Assistant Professor of Public Humanities at San Diego State University, where she writes and teaches at the intersection of the environmental humanities and American studies, paying particular attention to Indigenous studies and political theory. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in boundary 2, Resilience, Environmental History, Western American Literature, and others.

How did you become interested in studying ecocriticism and/or the environmental humanities?

After teaching high school English and running what ...

ASLE’s Scholar of the Month for May 2021 is Fernando Varela. 

Fernando Varela is currently finishing his doctoral degree in Spanish and Portuguese at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. He defended his dissertation with honors on April 1. His professional interests include hemispheric studies, critical race studies, ecocriticism, and environmental humanities. Starting August 2021, Fernando will be an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Texas Lutheran University (Seguin, TX).

How did you become interested in studying ecocriticism and/or the environmental humanities?

In a way, my personal background ...

ASLE’s Scholar of the Month for April 2021 is Addie Hopes.

Addie Hopes (she/her) is a PhD candidate in the English department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She’s an editorial assistant with Contemporary Literature and Managing Editor of Edge Effects.

How did you become interested in studying ecocriticism and/or the environmental humanities?

I grew up in rural Ohio playing in the woods with my cousins, hanging out in the barn with the feral cats and horses, and climbing trees to read books where only the ...

ASLE’s Scholar of the Month for March 2021 is Fazila Derya Agis. 

Fazila Derya Agis is an adjunct online instructor at the University of the People who also enjoys her online volunteer job as she teaches refugees and many others who cannot afford high tuition fees around the globe. She has been working on ecolinguistics, environmental cultural anthropology, and environmental politics and history and is writing a monograph on animal and plant metaphors and beliefs in various cultures from an ecolinguistic perspective.

How did you ...

ASLE’s Scholar of the Month for February 2021 is Killian Quigley. 

Killian Quigley is a newly appointed research fellow at the Australian Catholic University’s Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, in Melbourne. He is also an honorary postdoctoral fellow with the Sydney Environment Institute, University of Sydney, and an associate of Oceanic Humanities for the Global South. He lives on Wurundjeri land.

How did you become interested in studying ecocriticism and/or the environmental humanities?

My interests in these fields were encouraged, first of all, by great ...

ASLE’s Scholar of the Month for January 2021 is Nicholas Tyler Reich. 

Nicholas Tyler Reich (he/they) is a doctoral student at Vanderbilt University’s Department of English, where he studies queer and trans ecologies, literatures of the US Deep South and Appalachia, energy ontologies, film, and digital media. Their work has been published or is forthcoming in The Edgar Allan Poe Review, ISLE, the upcoming edited collection The Anthropocene: Approaches and Contexts for Literature and the Humanities, and elsewhere.

How did you become interested in studying ...

ASLE’s Scholar of the Month for December 2020 is Rebecca Oh. 

Rebecca Oh is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the University of Illinois. Her research interrogates the intersections between postcolonial literature, environmental justice, politics, and the environmental humanities. Her scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Modern Fiction Studies, ISLE and elsewhere.

How did you become interested in studying ecocriticism and/or the environmental humanities?

As a graduate student, I heard Ian Baucom give a talk on the Anthropocene. ...

ASLE’s Scholar of the Month for November 2020 is Jason Hogue. 

Jason Hogue is a Lecturer at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he recently received his PhD in English literature. He has contributed entries to The Map of Early Modern London and has done transcription work for the Early Modern Recipes Online Collection. Most recently, he completed an essay titled “‘The Fare of Sanguinary Devils’: Feast and Storytelling in The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta,” in Food and Feast in Modern Outlaw Tales (Routledge, 2019).

How did you ...

ASLE’s Scholar of the Month for October 2020 is Alok Amatya. 

Alok Amatya is a Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research develops the intersections of environmental humanities, global literature, and indigenous studies, with a focus on narratives of conflict over natural resources. His work has appeared in Environmental Humanities and Modern Fiction Studies.

How did you become interested in studying ecocriticism and/or the environmental humanities?

My work in the environmental humanities ...

ASLE’S Scholar of the Month for September 2020 is Rina Garcia Chua. 

Rina Garcia Chua is currently a PhD Candidate in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. She is the editor of Sustaining the Archipelago: An Anthology of Philippine Ecopoetry (2018) and is working on an edited collection, Empire and Environment: Confronting Ecological Ruination in the Transpacific, with Heidi Hong, Jeffrey Santa Ana, and Xiaojing Zhou, forthcoming with the University of Michigan Press in 2021; Rina is also the Diversity Co-Officer for the ...