For more conference information, please visit
UPDATE
Dear ALECC 2024 Presenters,
We write with a major update that covers registration fees, accommodation details, and a draft program (see link below this paragraph). The conference website and registration portal are still in the works, but we wanted to send something out before we got these sorted. More details will be forthcoming in another week or two. Thanks for your patience in the meantime, and we are excited to see you in Kitchener-Waterloo in June.
Registration fees will be in three categories: full-time/regular employment; graduate/precariously or underemployed; and supporter. NB: All prices quoted in this email are in CAD.
Full-Time/Regular Employment: $160
Graduate/Precariously or Underemployed: $90
Supporter: $300*
*the supporter category is intended for those who may have internal/external funding that they would like to contribute to the conference. ALECC received less funding this year than for previous gatherings. Any excess funds from registration will be used to support graduate student travel bursaries, with details for this to come.
There will be a banquet (+$45) and field trip to St Jacobs Farmers Market after the conference (+$15) as optional additions.The Market is a lively weekend destination in the area. https://www.stjacobsmarket.com/
Accommodations related to the conference are the Delta Waterloo and WLU residence housing, both of which are a short walk from campus.
Delta Waterloo (https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/ykfdw-delta-hotels-waterloo/overview/). Conference participants have a discounted rate. If interested, please contact conference organizers for the discount code.
WLU apartment-style accommodations: Units of 5 individual private rooms each with a private bathroom, as well as a shared living/kitchen space. Rooms in these units are $69+tax/night, which is by far the most affordable option. This does not include breakfast (participants will be able to purchase breakfast nearby or prepare their own breakfast foods). To book, please contact Susan MacKenzie, Conference Coordinator, conferences@wlu.ca, with the following information: what nights you need and naming those you’d like to be clustered with, recognizing that others may be sharing the space if you’re clustering with fewer than four others. If you require accessible accommodation, please mention this at the time of booking and this can be arranged. Parking will be pay and display of approx. $12/day.
Both of these options are a 10-15 minute (max) walk from the area of campus where most of the conference will be held, aside from the welcome event at the Kitchener Public Library.
Accommodations further away and unrelated to the conference/Wilfrid Laurier University, but seemingly a slight bit more affordable include the Kitchener Crowne Plaza (https://www.ihg.com/crowneplaza/hotels/us/en/kitchener/ykfcp/hoteldetail) and The Walper Hotel (https://www.hyatt.com/en-US/hotel/canada/the-walper-hotel/yyzjd). The ION LRT line or #7 Bus are relatively frequent public transit options to campus, although it is a cheap cab ride away. And if you have a car rental/are driving, there are more affordable options a bit further out in places like St Jacobs, too.
Ground transport:
For those flying into the Region of Waterloo International Airport, here is a link to various ground transport options: https://www.waterlooairport.ca/en/passengers/ground-transportation.aspx
For those coming from Toronto Pearson International Airport, there are several options:
FlixBus service (https://www.flixbus.ca/bus/toronto-on) (approx. $12.00) goes to Kitchener Central Station, and from there you can take the GRT to your accommodation ($3.75). Flix Bus also runs from Toronto’s Union Station Bus Terminal to Kitchener.
There are also GO Transit busses and a train from several different stations in Toronto (including Union) to either the Kitchener Rail Station or WLU (approx. $15) https://www.gotransit.com/en. We recommend you check both Flix and GO to see which one is more direct to/from your arrival point.
Airways Transit is another shuttle option: it is more customizable, but also pricier ($150 one way): https://www.airwaystransit.com/
NB: The Union-Pearson Express is a convenient and fast way to get from YYZ to Union Station to make your connections ($12.35 one-way): https://www.upexpress.com/en
For those arriving by train/bus to Kitchener Rail Station, it is a short walk (5 minutes) down Victoria Street towards King Street (the one with the tall buildings on it) to reach Kitchener Central Station, with connections to the ION LRT and GRT busses ($3.75): the #7 bus will most likely be the most convenient for you if you stay in the WLU residences or at the Delta hotel. The ION has no number – there is only the one train. Plan your trip here: https://www.grt.ca/en/index.aspx
Attached is a draft, minimally designed program in PDF format. If you spot any issues or timing doesn’t work for you for various reasons, please notify us as soon as you can.
For those feeling extra collegial, there are several panels with “Chair: TBD”: if you’d like to volunteer to chair one of these sessions, please let us know also.
To come: website with more details about Kitchener-Waterloo, including things to do while here and cafes, etc., near campus, and conference registration portal as well as a fully finalized program.
More soon,
ALECC 2024 Conference Organizing Committee
CONFERENCE
Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada
2024 Biennial Conference: Migrations
19-22 June, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario
The 2024 Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada (ALECC) biennial conference takes migrations as its theme as it seeks new ways of comprehending and responding to the complexity of migration in the past, present, and future. Migrations, in its plural register, is understood expansively, recognizing its many forms and the modes of unevenly distributed power that shape migrant experiences, whether human or otherwise. We understand migration not only as a consistent theme in planetary human and more-than-human history, but also as a phenomenon that is historically interconnected and shaped.
Our host site, Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, is located on the shared traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishnaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples, which is part of the Dish with One Spoon Treaty between the Haudenosaunee and Anishnaabe peoples. This Treaty symbolizes the agreement to share and protect our resources, and not to engage in conflict.
The 2024 ALECC conference invites thoughtful responses to interactions between literal and figurative more-than-human and human migrations. Submissions are welcome on the proposed theme and other related areas of interest from artists, creative writers, and scholars in the environmental arts and humanities, and migration studies, broadly defined.
We welcome those working in the following areas: Indigenous thought and practices, interdisciplinary praxis, pedagogy and climate change migrations, environmental feminisms, critical refugee studies, border studies, ecopoetics and literary studies, animal studies, plant humanities, materialisms, blue humanities, petrocultures and energy humanities, visual art, film, ecomedia studies, environmental histories, mobility studies, health studies, cultural geography, environmental philosophy, cultural studies, and related areas of environmental studies.
Migrations will be an in-person conference.
Submission Information
Original deadline of 15 December 2023 extended! Deadline for preformed panels is now 10 January 2024 and the deadline for paper proposals is 15 January 2024. Proposals must be submitted to conference@alecc.ca<mailto:conference@alecc.ca>.
To propose an individual paper, creative or other work, including a reading (20 minutes), please submit an anonymous (no name included) proposal that includes a title and a 250- to 300-word abstract, noting whether it is a creative or an academic paper. In a separate document (but the same email submission), please send name, proposal title, your preference for a scholarly, creative, or mixed session, any requests for audio-visual equipment, current contact information, and a one-page curriculum vitae (used for funding applications).
To propose a pre-formed scholarly panel or creative session (three to four presenters for a 90-minute session), please submit an anonymous proposal that includes a session title; a 200-word session abstract, including whether it is a creative, academic, or mixed panel; and a 250- to 300-word anonymous abstract for each paper/presentation. In a separate file, please send the session title, any requests for audio-visual equipment, and the names, contact information, and a one-page curriculum vitae for each presenter and the session organizer. Note the deadline for pre-formed panels or creative sessions is 01 December 2023 10 January 2024.
To propose some other kind of format or presentation (e.g., workshops, roundtables, exhibits, performances, lightning talks), please contact the organizing committee in advance of the deadline to discuss proposal submission requirements.
Submissions in English, French, or Indigenous languages will be accepted. Proposals should indicate clearly the nature of the session and all requests for audio-visual equipment and any other specific needs (e.g., space, moveable chairs, outdoor location, etc.). We ask that panel organizers attempt to include a diversity of participants.
Email submissions should include in the subject line the word SUBMISSION, the abstract type (panel, paper, other), and your (or the panel proposer’s) name: SUBMISSION paper Julia Devi, for example, or SUBMISSION panel Bo Kwon. We will acknowledge all submissions.
For more information about the Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada / Association pour la litt?rature, l’environnement et la culture au Canada, please visit our website at <https://alecc.ca/. All presenters must be paid members of the organization or an affiliate by the date of the conference.
Acknowledging the ongoing, evolving conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, ALECC will follow municipal, provincial, and federal regulations (if any) and supports voluntary mitigation practices like masking.
General queries for the organizing committee may be sent to conference@alecc.ca<mailto:conference@alecc.ca>.
ALECC 2024 Organizing Committee:
Jenny Kerber Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON
Jordan Kinder Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON
Lisa Szabo-Jones John Abbott College, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, QC
Conrad Scott University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB
Ariel Kroon Independent scholar, Kitchener, ON
Questions?
- For more information about ALECC, please visit our website at https://alecc.ca/.
- General queries for the organizing committee may be sent to conference@alecc.ca.
Past Conferences
Currents + Flows: Ecologies, Creativities, and Materials
ALECC Biennial Conference, 15-19 June 2022 at the University of Saskatchewan
Click here for the conference website.
Watershed, lit., fig.
ALECC Biennial Conference, 8-22 July 2021 at the University of Saskatchewan (online)
Click here for the conference website.
Wrack Zone
ALECC Biennial Conference, 20-23 June 2018 at the University of Victoria, on the traditional lands of the Songhees and Esquimalt peoples
Click here for the conference website.
Making Common Causes: Crises, Conflict, Creation, Conversation
ALECC Biennial Conference — Call for Papers, Panels, and Other Presentations
June 15-18, 2016, Queen’s University, Kingston ON
- What makes an environmental crisis common or uncommon?
- How do our understandings of environments depend on causes—both as ideas of causality and ideas of action?
- What ways of imagining, re-imagining and making our environments are held in common, or perhaps just as valuably, are uncommon?
- What can our common and uncommon cultures contribute in addressing environmental crisis?
- How might we understand culturing as an experiment, and thus as a means of creation and conversation? What might we seek to culture?
- What kinds of environmental commons and means of conversation do we already have, or should we create?
Global climate change, soil depletion, the enclosure of the commons, the acidification of the oceans, ground water contamination, mass extinctions: in a context in which the environmental crises of the day seem to us so intractable, at such large scales and dominated by such powerful interests, the
making of common causes seems especially urgent. But imagining how to do so, across multitudinous and diverse lives and situations, is a challenge. Even if our environmental crises seem commonplace, and even if the problems we face sometimes seem to have a common cause (as in Naomi Klein’s recent subtitle, “Capitalism Versus the Climate”), the responses, alternatives, and critiques are often contentious. We might ask, then, to what extent are ecological investments common? How do conflicting interests and varying positions of power and privilege shape how we view the projects of environmental cultural work? How do ideas of crisis itself differ depending on embodied experience and global location? What might a turn to the historical archives offer in attempting to ground future orientations of environmental crisis? How have writers, artists, and critics played a role in representing existing crises and conflicts, and in imagining alternatives to them? To what extent has this cultural production found common cause in activist work in and outside of the academy?
Putting emphasis on the active work of “making,” the 2016 ALECC conference invites reflection on the diverse ways in which common causes—including the commons as cause—might be crafted. Contributions are, however, not limited to these concerns. Recognizing the many ways in which environmental work is enacted, we are first and foremost deeply invested in the process of conversation—and in the creative potential that perspectives from all areas of environmental studies can offer. In the interest of fostering such conversation, we welcome both traditional panels and alternative formats, such as performances and collaborations; roundtables; readings of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, or memoir; and film and other media. We also welcome a range of participants, including ecocritics and ecocultural studies practitioners; environmental humanists, social scientists, and scientists; artists, activists, and interested members of the larger community.
Participants may wish to address (but are not limited to addressing) some of the following questions:
- How have the commons been lived, experienced, and represented in different cultural traditions and global locations? Must the commons end in tragedy, as Garrett Hardin famously suggested, or is there potential for an abundant commons? A reinvigorated commons? Can the commons provide a counterforce to capitalism?
- How might Indigenous views of the environment and of creation, as the relationships between people, other living beings, and spirits that share the land, support or challenge western notions of the commons, common causes, conflict, and crisis?
- How might environmental artists and scholars challenge inequities arising from sexism, heteronormativity, racism, colonialism, ableism, and speciesism? What conceptual tools might assist in accounting for the diversity of experiences in the pursuit of common goals?
- With whom can common causes be made? What must be “in common”? Must all constituencies be human? To what extent might Stacy Alaimo’s, Donna Haraway’s, Karen Barad’s or Bruno Latour’s various understandings of material agency allow us to think the ‘in common’ without a volitional subject?
- How might the digital environmental humanities allow us to think “the commons” in a new way? Can the digital commons contribute to preservation or revitalization of the terrestrial, oceanic, or atmospheric commons? And, in the spirit of the new materialisms, to what extent must the material underpinnings of the digital—from mining, to manufacturing, to server farms, to e-waste—be a consideration of any digital environmental humanities project?
- What is the relationship between aesthetics and responsibility? To what ends might ecocritical work focus on the aesthetic form or experience of literature or other arts? How might an ecocritical consideration of “form” trouble aesthetic categories, or the way we conceive of the political?
- To what extent is environmental thinking necessarily futural? How might thinking environmental histories (and/or literary histories) complicate our thinking? To what extent is environmental temporality “common” (as in the landmark text, Our Common Future, the source of so much contemporary thinking on sustainable development)? How might we think difference within the common space-time of the Anthropocene?
- Taking the word “creation” in more spiritual directions, how have contemporary articulations of enchantment, religiosity, or secularity (or “post-secularity”) contributed to our thinking of environmental crisis? How might these concerns help to navigate the gaps between the power of what Mark Lynas calls “the God species” and the seeming incalculability of the consequences of our actions?
- Mindful that environmental crises are ideological, institutional, historical, and deeply material, how might environmental scholars be better attentive to the material conditions and consequences of their labour, and to all unevenly shared properties, in the food systems that sustain us or in the energy systems that power our laptops or the waste streams that issue from our institutions?
- As scholarly pursuits related to the “environment” diversify and multiply, to what extent are different disciplines engaged in “common” work? How should we take stock of and negotiate fractures between various kinds of environmental humanities, both internally and in relation to natural sciences and creative work? How do we tell the stories of fields such as ecocriticism, ecofeminism, or environmental philosophy? Which voices gather in these commons, and who remains outside? How does this disciplinary border work shape our understanding of environmental crises?
To propose an individual paper, creative or other work, including a reading (20 minutes), please submit a blind (no name included) proposal that includes a title; a 500-word (maximum) abstract; your preference for a scholarly, creative or mixed session; and any requests for audio-visual equipment. In a separate document, please send name, proposal title, current contact information, and a one-page curriculum vitae (used for funding applications).
To propose a pre-formed scholarly panel or creative session (three presenters, 90 minutes session total), please submit as a complete package the following:
- session title
- 200-word session abstract
- one page curriculum vitae and contact information for the session organizer and each presenter
- blind 500-word abstracts for each paper/presentation (as possible).
To propose some other kind of format or presentation (e.g., workshops, roundtables, exhibits, performances), please contact the organizing committee in advance of the September 1 deadline to discuss proposal submission requirements.
Proposals should indicate clearly the nature of the session and all requests for audio-visual equipment and any other specific needs (e.g., space, moveable chairs, outdoors, etc.). We ask that panel organizers attempt to include a diversity of participants (e.g., not all from the same institution).
Proposals must be submitted by September 1, 2015 to alecc2016@gmail.com
Official submissions should include the word SUBMISSION, the abstract type (panel, paper, other), and your (or the panel proposer’s) name in the subject line. Example: SUBMISSION paper Gayatri Spivak. We will acknowledge all submissions within 3 days of receipt.
Any general questions or queries for the organizing committee should include the word QUERY in the subject line. Example: QUERY regarding accommodations.
Culture, Justice, and Environment
ALECC Biennial Conference 7-10 August 2014 at Lakehead University, Thunder Bay campus
Thunder Bay, Ontario
Proposals must be submitted by October 10, 2013 to alecc2014@lakeheadu.ca.
“I want to propose a more radical notion of displacement, one that,instead of referring solely to the movement of people from their placesof belonging, refers rather to the loss of the land and resources beneath them.”
– Rob Nixon, Slow Violence