Conference Reflection: ASLE Biennial Conference: "Notes from the Underground"

In June, the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE) held its Eleventh Biennial Conference, “Notes from the Underground: The Depths of Environmental Arts, Culture and Justice” in Moscow, ID. I had the opportunity to attend this conference as a presenter in a Saturday morning “jam session” on deep naturalism with five other presenters, including faculty and graduate students. As should be expected from a conference about the environmental humanities, it was a thoroughly interdisciplinary event:  art historians and artists presented alongside each other in collaborative panels, creative writers led several of the conference plenaries, and many presenters participated in fieldtrips to Moscow’s surrounding Palouse country:

  

A view of Palouse country from the University of Idaho arboretum

Highlights from my trip included:

• Stephanie LeMenager’s opening plenary, “Still Being Human, or Notes for an Everyday Anthropocene,” which discussed issues of pedagogy and genre while teaching in the Anthropocene
• “Unruly Cabinets of Wonders: Multispecies Catalogues & Edible Creatures,” a panel on food and environmentally-conscious art, chaired by Allison Carruth (UCLA) and accompanied by EcoArtTech (Leila Nadir and Cary Peppermint) and Heather Houser (UT-Austin)
• Being introduced to “cli-fi” (climate change fiction) and listening to ways other graduate students and faculty are incorporating climate change into their curricula
• And last, but not least, Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing’s collaborative show-stopper, “Tunneling in the Chthulucene: Stories for Resurgence on a Damaged Planet” which can now be watched here, courtesy of ASLE 

A shot of Tsing & Haraway's stunning Powerpoint

Until next time, ASLE!