Environment, Culture & Place in a Rapidly Changing North
ASLE Off-Year Symposium
June 14-17, 2012
University of Alaska Southeast
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We invite paper and panel proposals for the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment’s Off-Year Symposium, “Environment, Culture, and Place in a Rapidly Changing North,†to be held June 14-17 at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau. Proposals related to the field of literature and environment broadly, or to the symposium theme specifically, should include a 250-word abstract, paper title, your name, and affiliation. Proposals for pre-organized panels are also welcome. Submit proposals to Sarah Jaquette Ray (sjray@uas.alaska.edu) and Kevin Maier (kevin.maier@uas.alaska.edu) by November 5, 2011.
Theme:
The North American “North†of Alaska and Canada is an excellent geographical imaginary through which to understand the human-nature concerns of our time. Ecosystems transgress national boundaries, for instance, and Northern communities experience the symptoms of climate change disproportionately relative to their contribution to its acceleration. A symposium focusing on “the North†suggests a transnational perspective of this paradox, as well as a range of concerns, from peak oil and climate change to traditional ecological knowledges and tourism. While the North is often seen as an isolated place with a unique character, safe from the economic and environmental woes of “down south,†this imaginary belies the North’s place within transnational phenomena, such as colonialism, global climate change, and globalization.
The symposium’s keynote speaker will be Julie Cruikshank, Professor Emerita of Anthropology at University of British Columbia, and author of Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters and Social Imagination. One secured plenary speaker, Ellen Frankenstein, will screen her documentary film, Eating Alaska.
Topics:
We welcome proposals for papers, interdisciplinary research, or creative work on issues related to literature and the environment, and also work that explores the North American North, addressing (but not limited to) the following themes: the North in the environmental imagination; global indigenous environmental movements; subsistence/food security/food justice/food cultures; traditional/local ecological knowledges; climate change; transnational North; animals/animality/wildlife; boundaries/borders in the North; migrations.
The NYTimes’ A.O.Scott riffs on digital photography and remembers Susan Sontag’s 1977 On Photography as he does so. His article’s last paragraph begins:
One thing is certain: There is not, and will not be, an ecology of images. (Sontag acknowledged as much in her last book, “Regarding the Pain of Others,†published in 2002). Images make up our ecosystem, our native habitat, the only reality we recognize.
While the profusion of digital imagery and the ease with which one can capture personal moments on phone apps seems to suggest exactly this, I personally see the work of ecomedia critics reminding us of how “our native habitats” are embedded in and connected to those of others; and how our realities are anything but the “only” ones that exist.
Since debuting at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival last spring and earning a nomination for Best Documentary Short at this year’s Oscars, Jennifer Redfearn’s Sun Come Up (2010) has been finding audiences around the country at film festivals and campus screenings.  This month, for example, the film will play at the University of Oregon as part of the 16th annual Grassroots Environmental Justice Conference.
Sun Come Up focuses on the people who live on Papua New Guinea’s Carteret Islands, where the connection between land and sea is spiritual, cultural, and ecological. The Carteret Islands are one of a growing list of island nations that are falling victim to rising sea levels caused by climate change, and the islanders are all too aware of it. They will have no choice but to move to higher ground, and their options are grim as they search for a home in war-torn Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea. And when that happens, “we will not be the Carteret people anymore,” an islander sadly concludes.
Sun Come Up from Jennifer Redfearn on Vimeo.
Of Land and Water is a documentary film project currently in progress. The film explores changing land and water use patterns in Mongolia as the country undergoes rapid urbanization and economic growth. The films follows a series of individuals representing a range of Mongolian culture as they make their way through new socio-economic realities. Democracy and capitalism first began to liberate Mongolia in the early 1990s. Yet today the country faces a rapid increase in environmental pressures due to agriculture, mining, and herding. For more on the film and opportunities to offer support click the link on the title of the film above.
Combing Goats from Of Land and Water on Vimeo.
Check out this link to a story about Bolivia ready to pass a new law called “Law of Mother Earth.” One more way Evo Morales and the left Latin American people and governments are cutting edge. Sure, I’m skeptical, but I’m also keen to see these experiments play out alongside Morales’ and Chavez’s experiments in democracy…
Job opening for full-time instructor in film studies, with a preference for specialization in comparative world/postcolonial literature and film in the Department of English, beginning Fall 2011.
We are particularly interested in qualified candidates who have completed their Ph.D.s or who have scheduled dissertation defense dates. In Fall 2011, the instructor will be teaching four courses, including the following: ENG 130 (a introductory literature class), two sections of ENG 266 (Literature as Film: two sections will meet simultaneously in large-section format with guarantee of TA-support), and ENG 366.
By April 8, 2011, interested candidates should e-mail to Dr. Jeff Berglund (Coordinator of Literature) a brief letter of interest, a c.v. with updated contact information for three references, and other relevant information–e.g., a writing sample and evidence of effective teaching: Jeff.Berglund@nau.edu
Northern Arizona University is a lovely four-season campus located in the ski-resort, tourist mecca, and college town of Flagstaff. We’ve over 23,000 students on and off campus, and the English Department offers thriving undergraduate and graduate programs (bachelor’s degrees in English and English Education, a Ph.D. in Linguistics, and MA degrees in literature, creative writing, professional/technical writing, rhetoric-comp, English Education, and TESL).
The 2011 meeting of the Society of Cinema and Media Studies is currently underway at the Ritz-Carleton hotel in New Orleans. The theme of this year’s conference is “Media Citizenship”. As in recent years, there are a number of papers and panels focused on environmental and ecological themes.
The first panel I attended on Friday, “Playing the Apocalypse: Re-imagining Science Fiction through Video Games” featured a talk by Kara Anderson (Brooklyn College), titled :”Saving the World One Game at a Time: Environmental Disaster in Video Games”. Anderson focused on a 2006 Nintendo game called Park Patrol. The game’s primary character is a robot named Chibi-Robo who cleans up debris in parks and battles toxic villains using a boom box and spoon and wins the game when he defeats the villain with flowers and a tickle fight. Not only does the game pre-figure Pixar’s Wall-e, but “offers the possibility of habit-training” in children which promotes environmental consciousness. The games villains are shown to be directly influence by human pollution and other forms of environmental degradation.  Andersen argues that the video game, by focusing on the clean-up in the aftermath of environmental collapse, achieves what films like The Day After Tomorrow cannot – instilling in players a sense of the long term effects of human disruption of environments. Interestingly the game was exclusively marketed in the US by Wal-Mart as part of that companies efforts to minimize perceptions of its own environmental impacts. Other games mentioned as having environmental themes include, Spore, SimCity 2000, Pickmen 1 & 2, Oddworld, Endless Ocean, City Rain, and Rune Factory. Andersen calls Park Patrol an example of the “robot pastoral”, a term coined by Ursula Heise to describe a specifically Japanese conceptualization of the role of technology in environmentalism.
On Friday afternoon I chose the panel “Rewriting the Language of Cinema: 3D’s Return in the Digital Age.” While none of panelists directly addressed environmental concerns, several speakers focused on the particular relationship between 3D and the human body. Of particular note was Alison Whitney’s (Texas Tech) presentation, “The History and Legacy of IMAX 3D”. Whitney provided a very detailed history of the development of Imax 3D and included technical footage of the projection process, which is specifically designed to minimize viewers’ nausea, a common concern in early Imax 3D beginning in 1985. Imax viewers, Whitney explained, are essentially watching two film simultaneously, one with each eye. The science of perception has led to many technological advancements, leading James Cameron, for example, to invest in duel lens cameras for Avatar in order to reduce physical tension on viewers.  Whitney’s talk was complimented by her outstanding incorporation of visuals. I particularly enjoyed putting on my paper 3D glasses (the old blue/red design) to take in images from 1980s 3D films as she led us through the history of this important technology.
On Saturday morning I chaired a panel titled, “Post-American Film Genres”, which considered the tension in American movie-going that has arisen over the past decade as Hollywood films have become increasing global products while the American mediascape (particularly news media) has been moving in a nationalistic direction since 9/11. My paper “Ecorealism” argues that the depiction of contemporary socio-ecological concerns withing the affective space of blockbuster melodrama has been the most significant aesthetic development during this period. Patricia Oman delivered a paper on the ecological aspects of Spielberg’s 2005 remake of War of the Worlds, arguing that the film negates American identity in the face of alien conquest.
Saturday afternoon featured two panels of interest. “Media Citizenship” featured three papers that explored new ways of looking at environmental concerns. Alison Trope (USC) examined Warner Bros. corporate responsibility website and critiqued the positives and negatives of the studios efforts to recycle and install solar arrays in their sound studios. Trope interviewed an executive at Warner who was very “cagey” and concerned that Trope would be examining this issue. Makes you wonder how what’s really motivating the studio. Nicole Seymour (Louiville) analyzed the 2009 indie film Wendy and Lucy, arguing that David Ingram’s definition of environmentalist cinema needs updating to include films that are not overtly environmentalist. Instead, argued Seymour environmentalist films must call attention to the ways in which the camera is implicated in domination of the environment.  Claudia Springer (Framingham) argued that Avatar is a particularly troubling film for calling attention to environmental concerns while eliding its own environmental footprint.
The second Saturday panel was a bit troubling. The panel sounded very promising because it was titled, “When Good Pets Go Bad: Eco-horror’s third wave”. Of course, I hadn’t realized there was a first wave of eco-horror and was very excited to attend. However, only one of the panelists discussed pets and none of the panelists addressed the panel’s subtitle. When a questioner asked the chair during Q&A to explain the third wave, the chair admitted that she had chosen a sexy sounding title to draw people in and said, “I guess you didn’t get your money’s worth did you.” No we did not, but I guess it says a lot about the relevancy of our work that even media scholars are prone to greenwashing. This panel was particularly upsetting as I’d skipped a panel on “Natural Histories” featuring Akira Lippit in order to attend “eco horror”.
Saturday afternoon I did not make it to a very promising panel, “Urban Informatics, Geographic Data, and the Media of Mapping” because I felt compelled to attend “Navigating the Job Market.” Signs of the times.
Sunday morning I found my way to “Geek Media and its Tropes” because I wanted to ask why so few geek protagonists in recent films identify as environmentalist. The answer is that geek heroes typically desire to control women and their environments rather than defend them. Sensitivity and affect in the geek are seen as weakness, whereas “studs” use their power over women and space to enact dominance, which the geek seeks to emulate rather than displace.
The final panel I attended, “New Media Citizenship” was supposed to feature a very exciting paper I “Where Nomads Dare to Roam: Inuit Videography and the Turn to Ecological Sustainability, from Nunavut to the Internet and Beyond” by Nadia Bozak (U Toronto). Unfortunately Bozak was unable to attend but I hope to contact her and see if she is willing to share her paper on our site.
Sunday afternoon – Swamp Tour!!!
It’s that time of year again in the nation’s capital. The DC Environmental Film Fest welcomes spring with another eclectic set of films. This time there are 150 films at a host of venues. Documentaries prevail, but the fictional film that caught my eye was one I’ve been intrigued by since I saw a review in the Onion’s A.V. Club, Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives. Chris Palmer will also be discussing his “Shooting in the Wild: An Insider’s Account of Making Movies in the Animal Kingdom.”