ASLE 2019 Roundtable: From Monstrosities to Wonders: Ecohorror and Transcorporeality

deadline for submissions: 
December 15, 2018
full name / name of organization: 
ASLE: Association for the Study of Literature and Environment
contact email: 

CFP: From Monstrosities to Wonders: Ecohorror and Transcorporeality Roundtable 

Association for the Study of Literature and Environment at the University of California, Davis June 26-30, 2019.

 

All proposals must be submitted via the conference website: https://asle.submittable.com/submit

 

This roundtable (5-6 presenters) seeks to explore the body as a productive site for interfacing with the nonhuman in the context of ASLE’s conference theme, Paradise on Fire. In what ways has the body itself been cast as a “paradise on fire” in the face of Anthropocene-era degradations? Conversely, is it possible to conceive of an ethic of care toward the more-than-human world if the bounded body is viewed as a “paradise” unto itself in the first place? We are interested in tracing irruptions and permeations of the strange, both monstrous and wondrous, into fantasies of neatly bounded bodily subjects. Subgenres like weird fiction, ecohorror, and ecogothic have seen authors explore such intra-actions. Taking our cues from Christy Tidwell's work on ecohorror and from Stacy Alaimo’s assertion in Exposed that we might begin to conceive of a posthuman subjectivity “opening out unto the larger material world and being penetrated by all sorts of substances and material agencies that may or may not be captured,” this panel will seek to explore narratives of bodily intra-actions and entanglements between the human and more-than-human world. Discussions will ideally aim to investigate the role of weird fiction and ecohorror in confronting the fears and subversive pleasures of the nonhuman. 

Panelists are invited to present on topics including but not limited to: weird fiction, horror fiction, body horror, ecohorror, transcorporeality, new materialism, ecomaterialism, ecogothic, ecosickness, dark ecology, posthumanism, monstrous natures/bodies, gothic nature, literary ecology, animal horror, horror film, vegan ecocriticism, etc.

If you have any questions please contact Christine Peffer (pefferch@msu.edu), Michigan State University, and Nadhia Grewal (n.grewal@gold.ac.uk), Goldsmiths, University of London.

If you would like to propose a paper for the panel, please submit a 300-word abstract and brief bio by December 15 via this link https://asle.submittable.com/submit.