cfp.english.upenn.edu

Geography/Topos/Literature

Panel Proposal | Ninth ASLE Biennial Conference
Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment

In The Future of Environmental Criticism, Lawrence Buell observes that “the concept of place gestures in at least three directions at once—toward environmental materiality, toward social perception or construction, and toward individual affect or bond,” all of which makes it, a “rich and tangled arena for environmental criticism” (63).

This proposed panel seeks abstracts for papers that engage with the concept of place, landscape, wilderness, or nature as nexus.
Ideas: How is place a site of contestation or exchange? How are identities formed in dialogue with landscape? What implications might such a dialogue have for the study of environment?

Areas of interest include:

the relationship between race and emplacement
indigenous place aesthetics
place and border knowledges / border gnosis
place-based values / the development of a “place consciousness”
phenomenological situations and humanly modified places
constructions of wilderness in literature
stories that yield insight into environment and extend new understandings
feminist or post-representational geographies

Please send an abstract of 300 words and contact information by October 15, 2010 to Judith Madera: irwinmj@wfu.edu

Judith I. Madera, Wake Forest University

The 2011 ASLE conference takes place June 21-26, 2011 in Bloomington, Indiana. Information is available at http://www.indiana.edu/~asle2011/index.shtml.