Call for Papers: "Environment and Life"

ASLE 2011 / 22-26 June 2010 / Indiana University, Bloomington, IN

Organizers: Hsuan Hsu, University of California, Davis / Heather Houser, Williams College

According to Denise Gigante, for the Romantic poets, "life was a version of power, and power was life." This sentiment is familiar from more recent accounts of biopolitics which, following Foucault, inquire into "power's hold over life." Papers in this panel will examine the philosophy and politics of life expressed within environmental literature, media, and criticism of the 20th and 21st centuries. We will examine conceptions of life as they emerge from contemporary environmental thought and writing. What are the organic and cultural forms of life that recur in recent fiction? How do emerging technologies and media shape accounts of life? Are environmentalism and ecocriticism predicated on the valorization and/or management of life? Is there a place for death in environmental discourse?

Papers might engage

· questions of health, disease, and vitality

· biopolitics and the environment

· the distinctions between animal and human life

· bioethics and technology

· environmental threats and risk perception

but we welcome other topics, and a variety of approaches and objects of analysis as well.

Please send proposals of approximately 300 words and a very brief bio to Heather Houser at hmh1@williams.edu. Deadline extended to 29 October 2010. (Final paper proposals will be due to ASLE by 5 November 2010)