"Agri-Literature." This panel will address the way recent American literature responds to the disappearance of the family farm. The rise of agribusiness has produced a number of literary conditions: a crisis of the pastoral imagination, a Depression-born masternarrative of reproletarianization, a renewal of interest in regional fiction, and a development and redevelopment of ecopoetics. Papers will explore this range of conditions, focusing on the way the issue of agribusiness turns literary figures into activists and vice versa. Topics could include Depression-era depictions of the rise of agribusiness, Gary Snyder's ecopoetics, Ruth Ozeki's crusade against agribusiness, and James Howard Kunstler's recent foray into fiction, via a sci-fi novel about a post-apocalyptic agrarian community. Send 500-word proposals by June 1, 2009, to Jason Arthur: jarthur@centralmethodist.edu.