ASLE-Sponsored Off-Year Symposia in 2016

*This article was updated on February 24, 2016.

In addition to our biennial conference, ASLE sponsors smaller regional symposia in our non-conference years. We are delighted to support three events in 2016, symposia in New Mexico and New York state, and our first ever graduate student symposium in Ann Arbor, MI.  Full descriptions and calls for papers can also be found at the Affiliated Symposia page.

 

Toxic Borders and Bondages: Intersecting Ecology with Capitalism, Racism, Heteropatriarchy and (Dis)possession (Graduate Symposium)

October 21 – 22, 2016
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Call for Papers (PDF), deadline April 25, 2016

We invite you to join us for the first Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE) graduate student symposium. Leading up to ASLE’s 2017 biennial in Detroit, the symposium “Toxic Borders and Bondages: Intersecting Ecology with Capitalism, Racism, Heteropatriarchy and (Dis)possession” will offer graduate students the opportunity to explore the following questions.

How does the discourse and lived reality of “toxicity” redefine the borders of mind, body, and community? And indeed, what becomes coded as “toxic” and what does not? Through a provocation to erect borders and a simultaneous admonition that they will fail, the notion of toxicity urges critical inquiry into how barriers of aversion are both configured and undermined. At this symposium, we aim to collaborate across discourses and develop a space for dialogue about how toxicity broadly writ has become discursively bonded to certain natural, human, and national bodies in order to uphold systems of colonization and imperialism, racism and white supremacy, capitalist accumulation and dispossession, patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality, and other regimes of hierarchical oppression.

Keynote addresses will be given by environmental justice scholars Julie Sze from the University of California, Davis and John Gamber from Columbia University. In order to participate, please send a paper abstract of up to 300 words to aslegrad2016@gmail.com by April 25th, 2016. Please see the full Call for Papers or visit https://aslegrad2016.wordpress.com for more information.

 

The Heart of the Gila: Wilderness and Water in the West

June 8-11, 2016
Western New Mexico University, Silver City, NM
Call for Papers (PDF), Deadline Extended: March 15, 2016

Letting our location be our guide in focusing the theme, the Gila Wilderness was established as the nation’s first wilderness area 91 years ago and continues to define our regional identity. The Gila River remains the last free-flowing river in the Southwest, but there is a current proposal in the state legislature to dam the river; local activists have been organizing to fight the proposal. Drought, compounded by climate change, has greatly affected our area, with the largest fire in New Mexico state history occurring in the Gila during 2012.  The Gila was the northernmost region of the Mogollon People a millennium ago, and our region remains very culturally diverse with its close proximity to the Mexican-U.S. border.

Western New Mexico University is a diverse, public, regional university with about 3,500 students. Silver City is located in southwestern New Mexico at 6,000 feet elevation. It is the gateway to the Gila National Wilderness Area, the United States’ first wilderness area, as well as Gila Cliff Dwelling National Monument. It is known for its vibrant art community, locavore food scene, and all-around funky downtown. It has been recently named one of the top 20 small towns to visit by Smithsonian Magazine.

 

Sharp Eyes IX : Local, Regional, Global: The Many Faces of Nature Writing

June 7-9, 2016
State University of New York (SUNY) College at Oneonta

This conference will be the ninth in the John Burroughs Nature Writing Conference & Seminar series. The theme of this year’s conference centers on the astonishing variety of places and themes written about by literary environmentalists, from genius loci to axis mundi.

Call for Papers (PDF)
http://www.oneonta.edu/academics/english/conferences/johnburroughs.html