ecocriticism and environmental studies

Cli Fi and BeyondSeminar at the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Annual Meeting, March 7-10, 2019, at Georgetown University in Washington DC Contact the Seminar Organizers

Ecocriticism plays a significant role in shaping environmental consciousness. Representations of nature’s agency become central to many studies conducted in literature, culture studies, philosophy, history, sociology or political science. This conference aims to explore the relationship between the physical environment and text in its broader meaning as well as analyse the social concerns raised by environmental crisis.

Conference panels will be related, but not limited, to:

CALL FOR PAPERS: Edited Collection on the Ethical Legal and Social Implications of Emerging Technologies

Emerging technologies in robotics, genomic and reproductive medicine, and urban design are changing the ways humans relate to one another, our communities, future persons, and our environment. Ethics is fundamentally relational, and societies are structured through negotiating the multiplicity of relationships, shared customs, and laws that are intended to promote wellbeing. As such, shifts in those fundamental relationships arising from the introduction of new technologies, or novel application of existing technologies, have enormous ethical, legal and social implications.

CFP for the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment biannual conference in Davis, CA from June 26-29, 2019.

Panel title: "Current and Future Ecocriticisms of the Americas

In his Lettre sur les aveugles, Diderot shares the discovery that the cane of the blind is not a crutch, but a privileged organ of sensory perception, structuring the encounter with external reality and shaping its internal representation. Bernard Pivot may have had the same powers in mind when he compared the cigarette of Françoise Sagan to this cane: the writer can't see, and therefore can't write, without it. How has the mythical literary status of the cigarette fared in the decades since the first tobacco-control laws? How is smoking represented in an era of growing panic about addictions, as well as persistent unease about the role of government in promoting and enforcing good health?