Ecomedia at the ASLE off-year symposium, Environment Culture and Place in a Rapidly Changing North
(A disclaimer: These summaries are very much my interpretations of what I saw and remember. If further interested, do contact the authors mentioned, and if I misinterpreted, do let me know.)
The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment off-year symposium organized by Sarah Jaquette Ray and Kevin Maier at the University of Alaska-Southeast was exceptionally well attended (~twice the number of attendees than originally expected), there were panels and field trips, and the organizers made a point to include film in their plenary line-up, with a screening of Eating Alaska followed by a Q&A with filmmaker, Ellen Frankstein.
For those of you who have seen the film, Ellen’s description of it as a “drive by†might ring bells, as she covers topics as diverse as hunting, fishing, veganism, kids and home education, native subsistence, and other particulars of trying to eat wisely in the far north, all in the span of about an hour. The film is self-deprecating and wry, and approaching Ellen not only during the Q&A but at the conference (during meals or before other panels) highlights an important point it seeks to make–there are no straight-forward answers to how we fit into our food systems. The film is humble, prodding one with questions, not advocating obvious answers.
I personally was delighted to see the film and Q&A slotted into the plenary line-up as it attests to how ASLE continues to legitimize ecocinema as an integral part of its critical purview. The panels too showcased some attention to ecocinema, and to ecomedia more generally.
I attended an interesting session on Thursday titled, “Voices from the Margins.â€Â Robin Walz’s paper, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Borg? The Collective Imperative in the Age of Cybernetic Organisms†presented a critique of Star Trek’s representations of the Borg Queen using Donna Haraway’s feminist and technological studies framework. It made a good argument for the series’ glimpsed but lost potential in subverting some of its normative ideologies (e.g., of masculinity and capitalism) through the Borg Queen. Robert Boschman’s “The Arctic Vampire as Bioterrorist in 30 Days of Night†considered vampires as posthumanist commentary in the graphic novels (and adapted films) of Steve Niles. His discussion of the resurgence of vampire lore post 9/11 might be of interest to eco-horror critics.
On Friday, I was lucky to present my paper “Mother Earth in Crisis: Visions and Voices at the 2011 Native Film + Video Festival†which was well attended. On Saturday, in a panel titled “Colonial Legacies and Environmental Justice,†Jennifer Barager Sibara presented a fascinating examination of Maquilapolis through the lens of disability studies, arguing that the film makes all too visible the invisibility of environmental violence in the Global South.
I was sorry to miss the panel “Imagining the North: Various Lenses,†which included Susan Kollin’s “Alaskans in Unusual Places: Hollywood Film and the Far North†and Erin Scheffer’s “Weinweig’s North: Imagining Canadian Identity and Northerness in 1940s CBC Radio Programming.â€Â However, I did attend a concurrent panel, titled “Responding to Climate Change†that featured Janet Fiskio’s “Mourning, Witness, and Hospitality: A Poetics of Climate Change.†Her readings of an art installation in Iceland and the practice of second line in New Orleans provide compelling case studies for what she suggests is a radically altered eco-philosophy that recognizes the potential of the humanities in climate change as more than just the “PR†or translation of the science of climate change. Her delving into new social movements theories, environmental justice, and performance studies were definitely thought-provoking in presenting the potential of affect in climate change narratives. Finally, on Sunday, Bronwyn Preece, held a workshop on performative art, which I was sorry to have to miss.
While there were at most three panels occurring concurrently, the high-quality of papers and the additional conference activities (field trips to Mendenhall glacier, whale watching with a marine biologist, Alaska Native Juneau tour, and the Toxic tour, as well as the convenient inclusion of breakfast and lunch into the conference schedule, and the dorm living experience) provided a jam-packed four days with much to think about, and unfortunately, some panels to miss.
Overall, though, I’m happy to report that ecocinema and ecomedia are definitely here to stay as part of ASLE’s critical focus.
Ecocinemas of transnational China – Interactions: Studies in Communications and Cultures
Ecocinemas of transnational China – special issue
Interactions: Studies in Communications and Cultures, 2:2, 2012
Edited by Pietari Kääpä and Tommy Gustafsson
Following the work of Sheldon Lu and Jiayan Mi, the authors of the collection Chinese Ecocinema in the Age of Environmental Challenge, Intellect Publishing’s Interactions journal has devoted a special issue to exploring ecocritical analyses of Chinese cinema that complicate the simplistic binary of the local and the global.
To operate at the intersections of ecology and the media is to delve into interdisciplinary considerations that merge the sciences and the humanities. Another form of interactivity emerges at the transnational nexus where planetary ecosystemic concerns meet the cultural and political specifics of transnational China – the focus of this special issue. But neither of these terms – transnational and China – can be taken at face value. The articles in this volume seek to address the implications of these two concepts for ecocinema: Why transnational? Why China?
China, in all its complexities, forms the basis for the rhetorical invigoration of this special issue concerning the existent paradigms of ecocinema and transnational cinema. The focus here is on the complexity of borders that exist, first, between the three Chinas (Mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong), and second, between China and the world, and the elements that flow between them. By focusing on the mediating and restricting role of borders, we address the ways the political cartography of the Chinese ecoscape both prohibits and enables ecological thinking and activity. Concerns that are central here relate to national projects that have an impact on the ecosystem (the Three Gorges Dam is addressed in many of the articles), but this also concerns the ways cultural flows and economic considerations become ecological on a global scale.
Organization of the volume
This volume explores a range of transnational connections, from those between the three Chinas and their diasporas, to those interrogating China’s role on a global stage – and the presence of the deterritorialized global in the Chinese context. The point increasingly seems to be that it is not only deterritorialized modes of industrial-economic organization and cultural flows that invade China. This is now multidirectional and increasingly multilateral as Chinese media products now not only compete for attention in the domestic marketplace, but have also started to venture into other markets with success.
As the industrial and economic circumstances of China become global, both the producers of ecocinema and its analysts must meet the demands of planetary interconnectedness . In exploring the manifestations of ecological concerns in Chinese cinemas, the four articles in this collection explore the use value of the transnational angle, while they use tools specific to the field to expand the study of ecocinema. The articles are as follows:
“Ecocinemas of transnational China: introduction”
Authors: Pietari Kääpä and Tommy Gustafsson
“China has a natural environment, too!: Consumerist and ideological eco-imaginaries in the cinema of Feng Xiaogang”
Authors: Corrado Neri
“Colourful screens: Water imaginaries in documentaries from China and Taiwan”
Authors: Tam Yee Lok
“From My Fancy High Heels to Useless clothing: ‘Interconnectedness’ and eco-critical issues in transnational documentaries”
Authors: Kiu-Wai Chu
“The politics of viewing ecocinema in China: Reflections on audience studies and transnational ecocinema”
Authors: Pietari Kääpä
REVIEW: “Chinese Ecocinema in the Age of Environmental Challenge (Lu, S. and Mi, J. ed.)”
Authors: Pietari Kääpä
Find information on the publication here:
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-issue,id=2237/
The Executive Council of ASLE announces a design contest for a new organizational logo. The winner of the contest will receive an award of 500 USD and public recognition on the organization’s website.  After receiving all designs by the designated deadline (August 24, 2012), ASLE’s Executive Council will choose three finalists.
The current ASLE logo of a reader sitting under a shade tree reflects the organization’s origins in the study of American nature writing, origins we deeply honor, but that may not capture all the diversity of our international membership or the wide variety of ways human/natural/textual intersections occur.
The new logo should respect the organization’s origins while representing our increasingly complex interests in other traditions, nations, theories, genres, media, and historical periods.  The ASLE EC expects that this contest will offer members a unique opportunity to create a design that might express where they think the organization and the field are right now and, playfully and pleasurably, imagine where we are going.
Visually, the logo should be designed to reproduce clearly in a variety of sizes and formats, including use on digital devices, letterhead, documents, publications, websites, and merchandise. Entrants should submit their designs in both jpg and pdf  files.
Submissions are due by August 24, 2012. The ASLE Executive Council will choose the top three designs and post them on ASLE’s website by Monday, September 1, 2012, at which time, a period of comment will begin and run until September 30, 2012. After reviewing all comments and feedback, the Executive Council will determine a winner.
The new logo will be announced and unveiled at ASLE’s Twentieth Birthday Celebration, to be held at the Western Literature Association conference in Lubbuck, Texas, November 7-10, 2012.
Submissions should be sent to Joni Adamson, President, ASLE, (Joni.Adamson@asu.edu) and Amy McIntyre, Managing Director, ASLE, (info@asle.org)
For inquiries or more information on the contest, please write to Joni.Adamson@asu.edu and info@asle.org
The University of Oregon Office of Sustainability produced this three-minute animated video that summarizes recent efforts to conserve energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I learned that 42% of the university’s greenhouse gas emissions are produced by airline travel alone – for conferences, sporting events, and other activities. Makes you think twice before flying to your next conference. And although I will miss the mental and physical interaction with white printer paper and black ink, after cleaning out my confidential student recycling and filling a paper box with two terms worth of exams and research papers I’ve decided it’s time to go from 50 to 90% wireless in my grading by this time next term. If your university is doing anything similar to advocate sustainable practices please let us know or post it here.
4th ASLEC-ANZ Biennial Conference
August 31-Sept 2 2012
Professor Ursula Heise (UC Stanford) and Professor Timothy Morton (UC Davis)
Acoustic Ecology’ (Launceston, 2010), the 2012 ASLEC-ANZ conference, co-hosted by
RMIT and Monash Universities, continues our ecological exploration of the senses with a
focus on vision. Papers are invited that consider the ecological implications of different
ways of perceiving, imagining, valuing and representing Earth, whether understood as
planet, place or collective, comprising a multiplicity of more-than-human entities,
agencies and processes. The Association for the Study of Literature, Environment and
Culture (Australia-New Zealand) is a multi-disciplinary organisation, and we welcome
contributions from a wide range of research fields, including ecophilosophy,
environmental history, cultural geography, religion and ecology, science studies and art
history, as well as ecocritical literary and cultural studies.
Culture and Climate Change’ on Friday evening, 31st August, at which Ursula Heise and
Tim Morton will also be speaking.
• Art, environment and ecological aesthetics
• Ecopoetics, biosemiotics and ontopoetics
• Environmental ethics and transpecies justice
• Prophetic witness and apocalyptic imagining
• New materialisms and speculative realism
• Mapping, modelling and inventorying
• Reading the past, envisioning the future
• Wayfaring, walking, and witnessing
• Indigenous knowledges, the colonial gaze, and postcolonial perspectives
• Ecohumanities and green pedagogies
• The earth looking back: nonhuman agency and lively worlds
• Observing human-animal entanglements
The deadline for submission of abstracts (c. 200 words) is June 15, 2012.
Food of the Gods: The Mythic Poetics of Food, Drink, and Eating in Film and Television
An area of multiple panels for the biennial Film and History Conference on “Film and Mythâ€
26-30 September 2012
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
www.filmandhistory.org
First Round Deadline: 1 June 2012
This area of panels seeks papers that address the rich and textured presence—in other words, the special mythic import—of food and eating in film and television along two related trajectories. In one trajectory, papers will look at how myths on film use food in order to depict the epic subject matter that runs the film’s narrative. How do these plots use foods and scenes of eating to energize or organize a myth’s plot? Are there special filmic techniques to show how food and eating work in a mythic tale? Second, films and television shows that center around food suggest the ways in which the foods themselves contain special mythic importance, as they enliven, circumscribe, or confound characters’ lives. In both, foods take up important and powerful places as filmmakers interrogate various notions of ethics, political economy, cultural value, and identity. How do foods locate characters within networks of meaning? How does food help or hinder a character’s development? How does, in a deeply mythic sense, food matter?
Papers are welcomed on film and television from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and national film traditions. Suggested topics and ideas for presentations would include the following and more:
•      Representation and import of the Hero’s Feast (Thor, Conan, Beowulf, Xena, Sparatcus)
•      Interrogations of reverence for food (Big Night, No Reservations/Mostly Martha)
•      Ritualizations of food (Babette’s Feast, Secret of the Grain, Last Holiday)
•      Food and complexity in rites of passage (American Pie, Scent of Green Papaya)
•      Spectacle, modernity, and food menace (Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Modern Times)
•      Food or eating as cure, poison, or pharmakon (The Road to Wellville, Super Size Me)
•      The powerful organizing force of food and consumerism (Mad Men, Extract)
•      Food and eating as social space (My Dinner with Andre, Sideways)
•      Questions of family and food (Eat Drink Man Woman, Soul Food)
•      Eating foods of unspeakable origin (Soylent Green, Silence of the Lambs)
Proposals for complete panels (three related presentations) are also welcome, but they must include an abstract and contact information, including e-mail addresses, for each presenter. Please e-mail your 200-word proposal by 1 June 2012 to the “Food and Film†area chair, Tom Hertweck, at thertweck@unr.edu. Attachments or simply copied-and-pasted into an e-mail OK.
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'The Great Acceleration' - still from the internet video 'Welcome to the Anthropocene' (2012)
“Imagine how our discourse and actions would be different if people daily detailed for us the lives—the individuality, the small and large joys and fears and sorrows—of those whom this culture enslaves or kills… Imagine, too, if our discourse included accounts of those nonhumans whose lives in this culture makes unspeakably miserable: the billions of creatures bred for torture in feedlot, factor farm, or laboratory…” Derrick Jensen, Endgame, 2006                                                                                                                  Â
My still-forming ideas for the first part, and the context in which my thesis (“the ecocidal eye: beyond the anthropocentric gaze to a relational gaze in cinema”) rests, are to present and characterise the ecocidal tendencies of the human-centered (anthropocentric) gaze, to examine whether culturally we perpetuate such actions in cultural works we produce, such as cinema. In this article I decided to examine anthropocentrism by considering a new term—’the Anthropocene’ as a means to think about ecocide over the centuries.
Over the last few months, when I was reviewing recent data on the state of the earth to form the background of my enquiry, I kept coming across so many different, but as I see it now, related facets of planetary system collapse or change of which the exponential rate and scale of destruction is simply terrifying. The results of globalised ecocide* are evident: in our atmosphere (climate change), in our oceans and waterways (ocean acidification, extirpation of marine species and actual and imminent marine ecosystem collapse), ecosystem degradation leading to gross biodiversity loss (we are now in the largest mass extinction period of the last 65 million years), non-renewable resource and mineral depletion (peak oil, peak nitrogen, peak phosphorus, peak uranium, peak everything etc). I began to see that one couldn’t focus on one particular aspect if one was to understand the systemic nature of ecocide. That one species—and our own at that—is altering so quickly the many life supports of the earth is pretty inconceivable and is leading a growing number of people to call this unprecedented period as the Age of the Anthropocene (the age of man). While there is understandably much attention being paid to climate change (this has been a focus for some in the small area of contemporary art that has begun to look at art & ecology in recent years) I sought out others who were looking at the totality of earth’s biospheric (global sum of all ecosystems) change.
In fact, I found that an interesting new educational online animation has been recently created that attempts to collate and present all the earth changes. It appears on the new 2012 Internet resource site, Anthropocene.info, which is compiled by a consortium of science and development groups. It commissioned this short internet video to graphically present these ideas to the wider public but also to other scientists and policymakers over the last couple of months.
The new 3 minute video Welcome to the Anthropocene (2012), central to the Anthropocene.info site has achieved online viral status already (see on youtube), despite its data-heavy content, with approximately 100,000 viewers in just two months. read more…
The Norman Lear Center at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication has recently released the results of a comprehensive survey of viewers of the 2009 film, Food, Inc., which was produced by Participant Media (which funded the study). I feel lucky to have stumbled upon this for use in my chapter on ecocinema for the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Lit & Environment.
The results of the study demonstrate the continuing importance of ecomedia theory and practice. According to researchers, “This study of the 2010 Oscar nominee Food, Inc. found that very similar viewers, with an equal likelihood to see the film, had significantly different eating habits and food shopping habits based on exposure to the film.”