Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment – UK and Ireland
The University of Plymouth is delighted to be hosting the 2019 Biennial Conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, UK and Ireland.
Co-emergence
Co-creation
Co-existence
Confirmed Plenary Speakers:
- Greg Garrard (University of British Columbia)
- David Higgins (University of Leeds)
- Adeline Johns-Putra (University of Surrey)
- Harriet Tarlo (Sheffield Hallam University)
It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories. (Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble)
The University of Plymouth is delighted to be hosting the 2019 Biennial Conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, UK and Ireland. The purpose of ASLE-UKI is to encourage scholarship, criticism, and appreciation of environmental literature and of the relationship between literature and environment, through activities and publications based in the UK and Ireland. ASLEUKI welcomes participation by anyone interested in environmental literature and culture – past, present, or future – from anywhere in the world, and whether as scholars, readers, or creative writers.
While proposals on all and any aspects and periods of environmental literature are welcome, this year’s theme is ‘Co-emergence, Co-creation, Co-existence’. The conference takes its impetus from the prefix ‘co-’ as a starting point for engaging with ideas, processes, practises and theorisations of mutuality, collaboration, co-production, collectivity and modes of being, thinking, and creating generated through
entanglement. How might we understand ‘ways of being [as] emergent effects of encounters’ (Anna Tsing)? What are the implications of understanding agency as an intermingling of human and nonhuman forces? And, to return to Haraway’s notion of thinking/telling/knotting/making ‘with,’ what happens if we begin from
the premise that ‘[w]e become-with each other or not at all’?
The conference hopes to explore how literature, culture and ecocriticism can engage with such ideas, and inquire into their implications for ethics, politics, subjectivity, collectivity and aesthetics as these relate to environmental questions. We welcome contributions from researchers working on any period of literature and culture, and we also hope to put perspectives from literary and cultural studies, theatre and
performance, film and the visual arts into conversation, as well as inviting engagement with a widening disciplinary gyre that has increasingly become a productive characteristic of ASLE events and networks.
We invite proposals for individual (20-minute) papers, or pre-formed panels (90 minutes) which may comprise traditional panels of 3 or 4 papers, roundtables or paper jams with 6 or more speakers, or other innovative formats. We welcome proposals for creative contributions or creative-critical dialogues.
Possible themes may include, but are not restricted to:
• Multi-species assemblages and ontologies
• Symbioses, mutualisms and commensalisms
• Entanglements between practice and theory
• Ecological interdisciplinarity
• Environmental justice and decoloniality
• Collective action and activism in times of environmental crisis
• Embodiment, proprioception, ‘eco-ception’
• Intra-actions with weather, atmosphere and land/sea/waterscapes
• Intersectional activisms
• Collaborative working
• Agency and power in posthuman ‘becomings-with’
More details HERE