ASLE Elects and Appoints New Officers

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 Languages and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Novel Translations: The European Novel and the German Book, 1680-1730. 

Bridgitte Barclay

Heidi Scott

 

Bridgitte Barclay (At-Large Seat) and Heidi Scott (Contingent/Independent Advocacy Seat) were elected to the Executive Council for three year terms. Bridgitte helped organize the 2018 ASLE virtual symposium A Clockwork Green, and is co-organizer of the Ecomedia Studies SIG. She is Associate Professor of English at Aurora University and co-editor of Gender and Environment in Science Fiction. Heidi is currently Assistant Clinical Professor in University Honors at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of Fuel: An Ecocritical History, and co-led the workshop “Fire in the Belly (of the Beast): Doing Ecocriticism in Petrocultures” at the 2019 ASLE Conference in Davis, CA.

Rina Garcia Chua

Heidi Hong

 

Rina Garcia Chua, and Heidi Hong were elected to serve as Diversity Co-Officers for three years beginning January 1, 2020. Rina is a PhD Candidate at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, and the author of Sustaining the Archipelago: An Anthology of Philippine Ecopoetry (2018). Heidi is a PhD candidate in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, and one of the recipients of the ASLE Graduate Student Writing Award at the 2019 ASLE Conference in Davis, CA.

Jenna Gersie

Jenna Gersie has been elected to serve as our new junior Graduate Student Liaison for two years, with voting privileges in year two. She is a PhD student in English at University of Colorado Boulder, Managing Editor at The Hopper magazine, and a copyeditor for The Goose, the official journal of our Canadian sister organization ALECC.

ASLE also made two recent appointments in key leadership positions. Mary Tischler is now serving as Treasurer for the association. She is Chief Financial Officer at Ginosko Development Company in Rochester, MI, and has served on the boards of several nonprofits in the past. Her eclectic interests and background have led her being a CPA with a MFA! Mary was a key member of the host organizing committee for our 2017 Biennial Conference in Detroit. Christy Tidwell has been appointed to the position of Digital Strategies Coordinator and also brings a wealth of talents to this role. She is Associate Professor of English and Humanities at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology. In partnership with our new EC member Bridgitte Barclay, Christy helped organize the 2018 ASLE virtual symposium A Clockwork Green, co-organizes the Ecomedia Studies SIG, and co-edited Gender and Environment in Science Fiction.

Mary Tischler

Christy Tidwell

 

We are also very grateful to the many excellent candidates who ran for office or applied for appointments: Sylvan Goldberg, Matthew Henry, Steven Swarbrick, Stephen Siperstein, Daniel Lanza Rivers, John Bruni, Christopher K. Tong, Tori Bush, Nicholas Reich, Ruby Rose Niemann, Brady Krein, Derya Fazila Agis, and Nikoleta Zampaki. Their dedication to ASLE is an inspiration, and ASLE would not be able to function without the hard work of our talented membership.