ALECC
Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada.
Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada.
December 1, 2009
Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada - August 19 to 21, 2010
The Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada, in conjunction with Cape Breton University, invites submissions for its inaugural conference to be held in August 2010, on the theme of "The Ecological Community." Proposals may take the form of individual papers, pre-formed panels, workshops, literary readings, or roundtables. We welcome interdisciplinary approaches, graduate student work, scholarly research outside the academic humanities, and proposals from writers, artists, and activists working beyond the university system.
ALECC is a growing organization of writers, academics of all stripes, and individuals passionate about the environmental arts and humanities (see http://www.alecc.ca). Our three-day conference will also include field trips to sites of ecological and cultural interest in the area around Cape Breton University, such as the Sydney Tar Ponds reclamation site, Cape Breton Highlands National Park, the Glace Bay Miner's Museum, and the Cabot Trail, along with opportunities for birding and botanizing.
Our theme invites participants to investigate the current state of communities and to meditate on things as they might be - how might humans live sustainably in an ecological community?
While we are open to proposals that touch on any aspect of the conference theme, we particularly solicit proposals for papers and literary readings related to the following topics:
*The relationship between biodiversity and cultural diversity
*Human and more-than-human communities: mammals, fish, birds, plants . . .
*Rural and urban senses of community: farms/ranches, reservations, villages, towns, cities
*Sense of place / the senses in place
*Bodies, genders, desires and community
*The fate of community in sites of economic restructuring and environmental conflict
*Environmental reclamation and sense of place
*Relationships among scientific and artistic communities
*The wild, the feral, and the tame
*Languages, dialects, accents, and rhetorics of community
*Community-based activism
*Local knowledge in a global world
*Digital solipsism vs. digital communities
*Community healing in the face of disease, toxicity and disaster
Proposals for individual papers or literary readings should be 500 words in length; pre-formed panel proposals should be 300 words in length (with individual 500-word proposals for each paper); and proposals for roundtables or workshops should be 750 words in length, including a tentative list of speakers where possible. Send your proposal to: Dr. Richard Pickard, Dept. of English, University of Victoria, PO Box 3070 STN CSC, Victoria BC V8W 3W1; but preferably to rpickard@uvic.ca in PDF format.
Please Note Extended Deadline: All proposals must be received by midnight PST February 20, 2010.
Call for Papers - ASLE 9th Biennial Conference, Bloomington, Indiana, USA - June 21-26,2011
Aug 12, 2010
To view more about the conference and the CFP go to the ASLE 2011 Conference website.
ASLE will once again offer a number of pre-conference workshops and seminars led by prominent environmental writers and critics: 1) Graduate Student Workshop - Tom J. Hillard 2) Early Modern Literature & Ecocriticism Seminar - Simon Estok 3) Ecological Media & Ecocriticism Seminar - Sid Dobrin and Salma Monani 4) Place-Based Pedagogy Workshop - Jennifer Kobylecky, Aldo Leopold Foundation 5) Human Natures: Approaches to Teaching EcoLiterature & Human Groups (seminar) - Kimberly Ruffin 6) Global Indigeneity, Environmental Justice, and Ecocriticism Seminar - Joni Adamson and John Gamber
Each workshop and seminar will last for three hours on the afternoon of June 21 and will be limited to 15 participants. Advanced registration is required and will begin October 15 and close March 15 (or when full, whichever is earlier). Some pre-conference preparation will be required for seminars, including short position papers. Because titles of position papers will be listed in the conference program, we encourage (but will not require) seminar participants to consider attending the seminar in lieu of presenting at the conference itself (rather than doing both).For further information or to pre-register for a pre-conference workshops and seminars, please contact Greta Gaard: greta.gaard[at]uwrf.edu
Feb 10, 2010
Call for Papers - For IAEP's Fourteenth Annual Meeting, Montreal, Quebec - November 6-8, 2010
IAEP's 14th Annual Meeting will follow after the 49th Annual Meeting of The Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) held in Montreal, Quebec
Paper and panel proposals are due by March 15. 2010.
For further information, please contact IAEP Secretary Steven Vogel: vogel@denison.edu
Feb 10, 2010
Call for Papers Tamkang University, Taipei County, Taiwan - December 16-18, 2010
Deadline for submission of abstracts: March 9, 2010 & Response to submissions: April 15, 2010.
Contributions are invited for Tamkang University's Fifth International Conference on Ecological Discourse. We invite papers that address Asian interests and contexts in terms of diversely contested approaches to modernity and nature. Papers that are cross-disciplinary in purpose and scope are especially welcome. Such papers would intersect with a broad range of Asian environmental issues and concerns not limited only to texts treated by scholars working in the arts and humanities, but also ecocritical projects and initiatives that intersect with biology, chemistry, economics, government policy, industry and technology, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. The conference aims to be representative of the many arguments emerging in ecocritical discourse, including debates within specialized fields of study as well as larger issues engendered by the crisis of human-caused climate change affecting various places in Asia. In addressing issues of modernity and nature in Asia, what can we gain by reassessing the conceptual tools in the arts, literature and philosophy that have been abandoned during centuries of colonialism and modernization? Are there places and communities in Asia that provide new models for development that could release the earth from the expanding hegemony of global capital?
We welcome proposals which reconsider modernity and nature in ecocriticism from an Asian-centered perspective. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) the following:
-ecocritical readings of Asian art, literature and film literature, philosophy and religion and Asian ecologies
-ecofeminism in Asia
-ecology (Asian ecosystems, invasive species/native species, toxicity, etc)
-the impact of global warming in Asia
-economic and demographic studies addressing climate change, food, and species loss in Asia
-animal trafficking and animal rights in Asia
-bio/ecocentric public policy and political action in Asia
-ecocomposition and writing ecologies
-environmental justice/social justice/ecomarxism in Asia
-space, place, and globalisation
-biosemiotics
-ecotourism and ecopornography in Asia
-posthumanist readings of Asian art, literature and film including the applications of cyborg theory.
Proposals for individual papers and proposals for panels are both invited. Presenters are asked to prepare 20-minute (3,000-word) papers. Please submit your abstract in English or Mandarin (approx. 200 words). Send submissions in Mandarin or English to the organizing committee: miracle@mail.tku.edu.tw. Proposals in languages other than English will be considered if we can group these together in one or more panels.
Accomodation: The historical town of Danshui is one of the Taiwan's most famous tourist destinations, known for its winding brick roads and sunsets at the mouth of the Danshui River. Accommodations will be reserved for guests at Tamkang University's Hwei-wen Hall guesthouse, a one-minute walk from dozens of coffee shops, restaurants and grocery stores, and local markets selling fresh produce, and a fifteen-minute walk to the Danshui MRT to downtown Taipei. The campus is just forty minutes by taxi from the international airport.
Costs of registration and accommodation: these will be announced in April 2010. (Funding is currently being sought for bursaries to provide for some of these costs.) Excursions: two optional, one-day excursions.
The conference is organized by the English Department at Tamkang University with the support of the Chemistry Department and the recently formed Association of the Study of Literature and Environment of Taiwan (ASLE-Taiwan).
November 8, 2009
Under Western Skies This interdisciplinary and cross-cultural gathering welcomes presentations on the environmental challenges now faced by diverse populations, human and nonhuman, in the Western lands of Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Academics and other stakeholders from the wider community are invited to participate in this urgent and compelling dialogue. The conference invites academics from the humanities, social and natural sciences, as well as activists, businesses, artists, and others to speak across the boundaries that conventionally divide them. Since both the geographical and critical terrains at issue are considerable, a wide array of topics and time periods is welcome. The shared concern will be the interaction between humans and the natural environment in the context of Western history, geography, climate change, and commercial/sustainable development of lands and resources.
A selection of papers will be put forward for a book publication or special journal issue. Proposals should run no more than 250 words in length and be attached to an email as a .doc or .docx file. Direct these to Dr. Robert Boschman at rboschman@mtroyal.ca or to Dr. Mario Trono at mtrono@mtroyal.ca
Please Note Extended Closing Date: March 1, 2010.
December 1, 2009
Environmental Change - Cultural Change - A conference on "Environmental Change - Cultural Change" will be held at the University of Bath, 1-4 September, 2010. The conference is supported by ASLE-UK (the UK branch of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment) and EASLCE (European Association for the Study of Literature, Culture and Environment).
The aim of the conference will be to draw together examples of, compare and theorise the reciprocal relationship between environmental change and cultural change. On the one hand, there are many historical examples of environmental change bringing about cultural change. And the necessity to adapt to climate change today is reflected in literature and the arts. Looking to the future, it is also a function of education, literature and the arts to facilitate this adaptation. A key aim of the conference will be to examine the cultural contribution to adapting to environmental change. On the other hand, there are countless instances of cultural activities producing environmental change - historically, on a local scale, and more recently globally. Literary critics, philosophers, historians, cultural geographers, educational theorists, sociologists and those working on environmental issues in other disciplines are called on to analyse the relationship between environmental change and cultural change critically, and to examine representations of and reflections on it, including imagined alternatives.
Enquiries at this stage please contact Professor Axel Goodbody, Department of European Studies and Modern Languages, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY. Email: mlsahg@bath.ac.uk.
Deadline Extended: February 01, 2010