As most any military conflict has shown, humanity's wars are rarely of benefit to the natural world. Our bullets maim and kill countless animals; our bombs denude and decimate entire communities of plant life. Animals are even increasingly conscripted into the military itself, in the form of fighting dogs, bomb-detecting dolphins, and spying insects. But all of this is not necessarily new: weaponized animals go back as far as the medieval and even classical worlds, and of course animals have been combatants and casualties of war since time out of mind. Yet, war is not always bad for nature. For example, some people have pointed out that places like the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea has become a flourishing habitat for plants and animals in the absence of a human presence in that area.

This panel, entitled "The Nature of/in War," will present at the upcoming 2015 biennial conference of ASLE (Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment), and will examine the intersections of war and nature as depicted in a variety of texts: literature, film, nonfiction/memoir, photography, war propaganda, etc. The panel seeks presenters to address the impact of war on the natural world in texts from any time period and from any nationality.

For more information on the next ASLE conference taking place June 23-27th,, 2015, in Moscow, Idaho at the University of Idaho, please see the conference website:

http://www.aslebiennialconference.com/

If interested in being a part of this "The Nature of/in War" panel, please send a short abstract of around 200 words to the panel organizer, Dr. Jeremy Withers (Dept. of English, Iowa State University), no later than later than November 30th and at the following email address: withers@iastate.edu.