Literary Environments: Place, Planet and Translation
2017 Australasian Association for Literature (AAL) Conference
Griffith University (Gold Coast campus)
17-19 July, 2017
This year’s conference organisers, Peter Denney and Stuart Cooke, have assembled a stellar line-up of keynotes for the conference:
- Ursula Heise (UCLA)
- Alan Bewell (University of Toronto)
- Stephen Muecke (UNSW)
- Jerome Rothenberg (UC San Diego)
Literary Environments is concerned with the different environments in which literature can occur, and our methods of translating between them. At this critical juncture in the Anthropocene, planetary responsibility and situated knowledges need to be entwined in propositions for social and environmental justice. Bodies, texts and artworks are converging in old and new forms of politics and earthly accountabilities. The task of translation between these increasingly interconnected modes of existence is a crucial one: life in all of its manifestations – from DNA to forests – has textual qualities. What does it mean to ‘read’ such a staggering variety of data?
We welcome proposals for individual papers and panels addressing any aspect of literature and the environment, including:
- Zoopoetics, animal art and critical animal studies
- Indigenous literatures from around the world and their transcultural relation
- Literature of the Anthropocene, including cli-fi and other responses to climate change
- Local, urban, and global ecological imaginaries
- Indigenous ecologies and knowledges
- Ecological ethics and law
- Environmental attitudes in pre-Romantic writing
- Romantic and anti-Romantic environmental sensibilities
- Literary translation
- Posthumanism, new materialism and dark ecologies
- Intersections of aesthetic, political and scientific treatments of environmental issues
While this conference is primarily concerned with literature, we envisage it as a multi-disciplinary event. We invite papers on any aspect of the environmental humanities, from environmental history to environmental philosophy. We also welcome papers addressing literary environments that are not ecological in orientation, such as studies of literary spaces, communities, and so on.
We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers and panels comprising 3 x papers. Please submit an abstract of 200 words (maximum) and a brief bio as PDF documents to the following email address by 15 March, 2017:
Accepted papers will be announced by 1 April 2017.
Selected papers from the conference will be published in a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal.
For inquiries about the conference, please email one of the conference convenors:
- Dr Stuart Cooke: stuart.cooke@griffith.edu.au
- Dr Peter Denney: p.denney@griffith.edu.au
