Environment and Class (12/1/02; ASLE, 6/3/03-6/7/03)
CFP: Environment and Class (12/1/02; ASLE 6/3-6/7/3)
We invite proposals for a panel on "Environment and Class" at the 2003
Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE)
conference at Boston University, Boston, MA, June 3-7, 2003.
Understandings of environment have often been constructed in class terms,
frequently without awareness of the social roots or implications of such
constructions. Although the environmental justice movement has recently
brought attention to these issues of class in social policy decisions, in
relation to the allocation of resources and distribution of environmental
costs and pollution, the role of class in historical and literary
constructions of environment still remains largely overlooked in relation to
other significant social categories such as race and gender.
This panel hopes to deepen awareness of class issues in constructions of
environment, building on the work of critics like Raymond Williams and John
Barrell by asking questions such as: How have idea of "nature" or
environment included voiced or unvoiced constructions of class? How and why
do literary texts represent different classes in different ways when writing
about the environment? How do the values espoused by environmentally
focused texts and ecological ways of thinking relate to the values and
assumptions of various classes? Do different classes construct their
identities differently in relation to the environment or appeal to the
environment in different ways as a source of value and validation for their
social positions? How do different classes have different access to or
relationship with wilderness and other features of the environment? How
have the politics of writing intersected with the politics of class in
literary texts?
We hope to organize multiple panels, depending on the number of responses.
We invite proposals from all literatures and periods, but especially in
relation to eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain and America, including
proposals that take a transatlantic perspective.
Mail or email brief proposals by December 1, 2002 to:
Scott Hess <hesssc@earlham.edu>
English Department
Earlham College
Richmond, IN 47374
or
Lance Newman <lnewman@csusm.edu>
Literature and Writing Studies
California State University, San Marcos
333 South Twin Oaks Valley Road
San Marcos, CA 92096-0001
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>From the conference website:
Confirmed speakers at ASLE 2003 include E. O. Wilson and Laura Walls (for a
dialogue on interdisciplinary work between the sciences and humanities);
Lawrence Buell and Leo Marx (for a debate on ecocriticism); Barbara Neely
(author of Blanche Cleans Up, a novel touching on environmental justice
issues, set in Boston); urban environmental historian Sam Bass Warner
(author of Streetcar Suburbs and The Urban Wilderness); Cynthia Huntington
(author of The Salt House, about Cape Cod); John Hanson Mitchell (author of
Living at the End of Time and Ceremonial Time, among other works); native
American storyteller, essayist, and poet Joseph Bruchac; ecologist Sandra
Steingraber (author of Living Downstream and Having Faith); and fiction
writer and environmental activist Grace Paley.
The conference slogan is taken from Henry David Thoreau's "Ktaadn": "the
solid earth! the actual world!" The conference themes
("Sea--City--Pond--Garden") seek to emphasize the attractions of the
conference location, so presentations are especially encouraged on coastal
literature, urban and suburban nature, environmental justice, the
Thoreauvian and Emersonian influences on nature writing, and landscapes with
human figures. The conference will begin on Tuesday 3 June with small
workshops in the afternoon and an opening plenary session in the evening.
Concurrent sessions will run 4-7 June. The afternoon of Thursday 5 June will
feature field sessions at such places as the Arnold Arboretum, the Olmsted
National Historic Site, the Emerald Necklace of urban parks, and Boston
Harbor. Field trips on Saturday 7 June will take participants to Plum Island
Nature Reserve, Provincetown (on the Cape, via ferry), and Concord (and
Walden Pond and the Thoreau Institute).
For more info: http://www.asle.umn.edu
