Ecocriticism and Environmental Humanities Forum at MLA

vancouver MLA

MLA 2015 will be held in Vancouver, BC, Canada

The Executive Council of the Modern Language Association (MLA) has approved the creation of a new forum for Ecocriticism and the Environmental Humanities. The first official sessions of the forum will take place at the 2016 MLA convention in Austin, Texas. The forum proposal was drafted and submitted by Sharon O¹Dair (University of Alabama) who is a member of the Founding Executive Committee that includes professor Stacy Alaimo (University of Texas at Arlington), professor Stephanie LeMenager (University of Oregon) and professor Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (George Washington University).

At the 2015 meeting in Vancouver, they are organizing an informal get-together:  The Ecocriticism and Environmental Humanities Forum Executive Committee invites everyone to join the newly formed MLA Ecocriticism and Environmental Humanities Forum for our inaugural event: a happy hour with cash bar that that is also an informal brainstorming session and a chance to enjoy some good company. We will rendezvous Friday January 9, 2015, at 5 PM at Shebeen (210 Carrall St. in Vancouver’s Gastown, not far from the conference hotels). Shebeen is a private bar in a heritage building that serves all kinds of whiskeys as well as anything else you might want to imbibe. The happy hour is open to anyone who would like to attend. The Ecocriticism and Environmental Humanities Forum welcomes all who are interested in ecological issues, no matter time period or field. Please come!

ASLE is also hosting a late night social event, a cash bar with dessert nibbles, on Thursday, January 8, 2015, from 8:45–10:00 p.m., at 213 Vancouver Convention Center West.  Please join us and meet others interested in the field of environmental humanities.  And don’t miss the two panels that ASLE is participating in: “Memory, Palimpsests, and Indigenous Literatures,” co-sponsored with ASAIL; and “After Loss, After Despair: Environmental Literature, Memorialization, and Futurity.”