Cfp: "Species, Space, and the Imagination of the Global," Ninth Biennial Conference, Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), Indiana University, Bloomington, June 21-26, 2011.

The conference theme seeks to engage with questions of humans' relation to nonhuman species, both plant and animal, and to explore intersections between work on nonhuman species in disciplines such as biology, anthropology, philosophy, neuroscience, literature, and art. Our goal is to do so in a transnational framework that will allow us to reflect on how different historical, geographical and cultural contexts shape our encounters with the natural world and with environmental crises.

The following topics are of particular relevance to the conference theme; we also encourage submissions on other, related issues:

• Visions and theories of globalization in their relationship to the environment, including the resistance to globalization
• Cultural geography in its contributions to environmentalist thought
• Postcolonial ecocriticism and the geopolitical relationships that have shaped different human populations' uses of natural environments in the past and the present
• Environmental justice
• Environmental literature as world literature, including comparative literature, cross-cultural approaches, borderlands writing, and travel writing
• Environmental disasters and their repercussions, including their representations and cultural reactions to them (including both natural and human-caused disasters), in their local, regional and global ramifications
• Environmental diseases,their local, regional and global spread, prevention and countermeasures
• New media for envisioning local and global processes, including GIS, maps, graphs, visualization, databases, and other digital and nondigital media
• Studies of migration, both human and nonhuman
• Wildlife conservation, including the policies and practices of parks, refuges, and assisted migration
• Ethnozoology and ethnobotany
• Critical animal studies, including the question of a "posthuman" turn
• Biotechnology and its transformations of biodiversity
• The politics, cultures and pedagogies of climate change

Visit the conference website here: http://www.indiana.edu/~asle2011/index.shtml.

Asma, Stephen T. "Green Guilt." CHRONICLE REVIEW January 10, 2010.

Recently while I was brushing my teeth, my 6-year-old son scolded me for running the water too long. He severely reprimanded me, and at the end of his censure asked me, with real outrage, "Don't you love the earth?" And lately he has taken up the energy cause, scampering virtuously around the house turning off lights, even while I'm using them. He seems as stressed and anxious about the sins of environmentalism as I was about masturbation in the days of my Roman Catholic childhood. Not too long ago, at a party, a friend confessed in a group conversation that he didn't really recycle. It was as if his casual comment had sucked the air out of the room—I think the CD player even skipped. He suddenly became a pariah. A heretic had been detected among the orthodox flock. During the indignant tongue-lashing that followed, people's faces twisted with moral outrage. Many people who feel passionate about saving the planet justify their intense feelings by pointing to the seriousness of the problem and the high stakes involved. No doubt they are right about the seriousness. There are indeed environmental challenges, and steps must be taken to ameliorate them. But there is another way to understand the unique passion surrounding our need to go green. Friedrich Nietzsche was the first to notice that religious emotions, like guilt and indignation, are still with us, even if we're not religious. He claimed that we were living in a post-Christian world—the church no longer dominates political and economic life—but we, as a culture, are still dominated by Judeo-Christian values. And those values are not obvious—they are not the Ten Commandments or any particular doctrine, but a general moral outlook. . . . Read the rest here: http://chronicle.com/article/Green-Guilt/63447/.

Ruse, Michael. "Gaia in the Light of Modern Science." CHRONICLE July 20, 2009.

Lovelock, James. Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. Oxford: OUP, 1979. Jim Lovelock (as they call him) is someone with a deservedly high reputation as a scientist. Although trained as a chemist, for many years (thanks primarily to the demands of the Second World War and its aftermath) he worked on biological and medical questions, investigating such matters as the spread of the common cold, a problem which involves the physics and chemistry of small particles as much as anything strictly organic in itself. By the early 1970s, that research had earned him a Fellowship in the Royal Society of London. Around that time, however, Lovelock broke from conventional science, having become convinced that the earth is a living organism. To this hypothesis, drawing on a suggestion by his neighbor—the late Nobel Prize-winning novelist William Golding—Lovelock gave the name Gaia, referring to the Greek goddess of the earth. . . . Lovelock is out of tune with modern science. Picking up the story at the end of the Middle Ages, in the time span from Copernicus, at the beginning of the 16th century, to Newton, at the end of the 17th century, something major happened in what was then known as natural philosophy. The idea (the metaphor, if you like) of the world as an organism was increasingly rejected in favor of the idea or metaphor of the world as a machine. To cite the title of one of the greatest histories written about the period, by the Dutch historian E.J. Dijksterhuis in 1950, minds turned to The Mechanization of the World Picture. Why did the new perspective triumph? Why did people want to drop all of that organiclike, end-directed thinking and focus instead on blind law, working with undeviating regularity? There is no great mystery here. It was not some violent repudiation of God. Copernicus was a minor cleric who died in good standing, and Newton, for all that he may privately have doubted the divinity of Christ, was an ardent—one might say obsessive—believer in a deity. The machine metaphor triumphed because it led to a science that more readily exhibited the values that scientists hold dear—Newtonian physics was more predictively fertile, more consistent, more unifying, more everything than Aristotelian physics. With the new physics you could explain and do things simply impossible with the old. A weapon maker could calculate the trajectory of a cannonball; a lens maker could work out the best kind of optical apparatus; a chemist could start to understand why certain combinations of elements work and others do not, saving valuable time and materials when making alloys. The machine metaphor may have been regarded by the Aristotelians as akin to an Egyptian plague—there are those today who think likewise, especially the so-called "ecofeminists" who argue that we abuse and rape our dwelling place—but the current of thought did not sweep through overnight. At the end of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant notoriously declared that there would never be a Newton of a blade of grass, meaning that a machine-based picture could never fully capture the organic world. But in the 19th century, Darwin, thanks to his mechanism of natural selection, showed how organisms are subject to unbroken, unbending laws. Richard Dawkins, who has a gift for these sorts of phrases, spoke of organisms as "survival machines." And then, as the 20th century drew to an end, many believed that cognitive scientists had finally extended the machine metaphor to the human brain and its thinking abilities. We were invited to think of brains as the hard drives behind our thoughts—computers made of meat, said the computer scientist Marvin L. Minsky. There have long been attempts to resuscitate the claim that the world is an organism. The most ardent were those by the German Romantics at the beginning of the 19th century—known as the Nature Philosophers, or Naturphilosophen—who included the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the anatomist Lorenz Oken, and the greatest advocate of all, the philosopher F.W.J. von Schelling. But generally, although those people often did good science, however you judge it, such attempts came to naught. The organic metaphor did not work as well as the machine metaphor. Indeed, the enthusiasm of the Naturphilosophen, and more particularly of their modern-day successors, does show why it was as well that, before Lovelock took up the organic metaphor, his fellowship at the Royal Society was already in hand. . . . Read the rest here: http://chronicle.com/article/Gaia-in-the-Light-of-Modern/47102/.

Cfp: "Decodings," 23rd Annual Conference, Society for Literature, Science and the Arts, Atlanta, November 5-8, 2009.

The conference theme is "decodings," with all its possible referents, including: Do we decode nature, or are natural processes already full of encoding/decoding mechanisms along the lines of DNA? Is a digital representation a decoding of analog nature, or must we decode the digital to understand what is lost in quantizing natural continua? We invite panels, individual papers and artistic presentations on these or related topics, but will give full consideration to any panel or proposal within SLSA's scope. For further information, visit the society's conference page: http://www.litsci.org/slsa09/.

Cfp: "Humanities and Sustainability: Ecology in the Information Age," Florida Gulf Coast University, May 8-9, 2009.

Hosted by the Center for Environmental and Sustainability Education, and the Departments of Language & Literature and Communication & Philosophy. Our goal is to encourage interdisciplinary conversations about the role of the humanities in both "the ecological era" and "the information age." The meaning of "Humanities and Sustainability" for this conference is twofold. First, it refers to the potential for humanities disciplines to address ecological issues, raise awareness and deepen knowledge about these issues, and take action in an age of environmental crisis--in short, to participate deeply in the ecological era. As the religion and ecology scholars Mary Evelyn Tucker and John A. Grim have noted, "The reality of the ecological crisis assaults us from many directions." We see this reality in rapid population growth and land development, in shifting climate patterns and species extinction, and in lifestyles of consumption resulting in a general "nature deficit," as Richard Louv deems it. Given the varied nature of this assault, environmental crisis and issues of sustainability can and must be discussed across the boundaries of fields traditionally associated with the ecological; and indeed, as a group of disciplines that examines language, philosophy, history, religion, and more, the humanities possesses some of the most important critical tools for the ecological era. Second, the conference title refers to the sustainability of humanities disciplines themselves in the information age, as they have largely been eclipsed by science, technology, economics, and business-related fields. Since the end of World War II, cultural theorists have decried the same forces propelling the development boom and the culture of consumption for causing the deterioration of our cultural environment. Now the Western world faces the extremity of this deterioration. Western culture has largely been given over to what Jean Baudrillard calls the hyperreal. Communications technologies have become the medium and measure of reality. The televisual image has all but erased our relation to real events. Fort Myers, for example, owes its current popularity as a destination city to its total hyperrealization. Strip malls, superstores, super-malls, chain restaurants, chain stores, gated communities--there is nothing that is not simulacral, that is not a copy of a copy. While Western thought has long granted the human a central position in the chain of being and the right to shape the world in its image, the centrality of the human in the information age is no longer a given. In fact, the works of theorists like Donna Haraway open the possibility that we who still call ourselves human are no longer such. Our technologies have advanced far beyond the rational animal and its dominant logics. So while the information age comes with its own forms of domination, it also comes with new possibilities for defining and shaping our relation to the world in a more ethical manner. The humanities is the natural domain for explorations into these possibilities. FGCU's Humanities and Sustainability conference will feature speakers who address either of these motivating issues, and who also find interesting ways to connect them.

For more information, contact:

• Kim Jackson kjackson@fgcu.edu
• Eric Otto eotto@fgcu.edu
• Kevin Aho kaho@fgcu.edu

Visit the conference webpage here: http://www.fgcu.edu/CAS/HandSCon/.

Cfp: "The Politics of Space and Place," Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics, University of Brighton, September 16-18, 2009.

In a world where inequality and poverty are growing remorselessly, where you are, and where you happen to have been born, continue to determine, how, and in indeed whether, you live. From the urbanization of the human species and the burgeoning of slums to the rise of the modern gated community; from 'Fortress Europe' and the Israeli 'security wall' to land reform in South Africa; questions of space and place are central to some of today¹s most bitterly contested political issues.

• What might an analysis of politics which focuses on the operation of power through space and place, and on the spatial structuring of inequality, tell us about the world we make for ourselves and others?
• How is power structured and brought to bear on people through spaceand place?
• How does power operate locally, nationally and globally and in both its soft and hard forms
• How does it operate through urban planning, architecture, housing policy, immigration policy and national borders?
• How does it work to discipline and exclude some, while insulating others from the excesses of inequality and degradation?
• How are space and place utilised as a means of dividing people into 'us' and 'them'?·
• How and in whose interests do these divisions function as they pit against each other not only people who live in different parts of the world but also those who live just a few metres apart?
• What might an analysis of politics through questions of space and place indicate about how power, injustice and inequality could be better understood and more effectively contested?

We anticipate that these and related issues will be of interest to people working in, among others, philosophy, ethics, political theory, politics, sociology, social policy, globalisation, international relations, cultural studies, history, architecture, photography, geography, planning, refugee studies, migration studies, urban studies and area studies. Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be emailed to Nicola Clewer: nicolaclewer.hughes@ukonline.co.uk.

CFP: "Greenscapes: Sense and Meaning: Fields of Dreams (Landscapes of Myth and Imagination)," Brock University, October 1-3, 2009.

Our landscapes have long been the unconscious repository of cultural hopes, fears and desires. From the Garden of Eden to aboriginal Dreamtime, societies have perceived their surrounding natural environment to express cultural values reflected in their myths, legends, sacred texts and belief systems. The occupation, transition, or representation of landscape constitutes an imaginative exercise for both subject and object. Yet imagination is not a consciously controllable process, and dreams can be unsettling portents as well as expressions of wish-fulfillment. We welcome papers that explore landscapes of myth and imagination in real and virtual sites, literary texts, images, and installations and invite proposals on the following topics: • Landscapes of allusion (texts, myths, folktales, legends) • Sacred and Secular Utopias • Profane imagination: ruin, decay and social transgression • Gardens of the ‘first time’: origin myths and social legends • Dream landscapes: fear, desire, and exploring the unconscious. Please send abstracts (up to 250 words) and a brief biography to greenscapes@brocku.ca by January 5, 2009. . . .

"Recreate, Replace, Restore: Exploring the Intersections between Meanings and Environments," Ohio Northern University, April 17-19, 2009.

The natural world has been “humanized”—even areas thought to be wilderness bear the marks of human impact. Given the long reach of human influence, environmental thought in the humanities and the sciences have sought to understand how we can limit, change, or reverse the more disastrous effects that humans have had on the environment. Preservation is not the sole or primary strategy; restoration, sustainable design, and other creative responses to place have become part of the debate. Further, both the sciences and the humanities have increasingly realized the interconnection between human accounts of meaning and the more-than-human world. Thus, reflections on the proper approaches to natural and built environments increasingly include investigations into contested religious, philosophical, and ethical meanings of the environments that surround us. The aim of this conference is to further the ongoing dialogue on religion, ethics, and the environment by exploring three interrelated concepts: to recreate, to replace, and to restore. The interdisciplinary dialogue hosted by the conference is meant to illuminate certain unique dimensions at the crossroads between finding value and reflecting on one’s place in the world. Each of these terms has diverse religious, ethical, and scientific connotations. Each converges on the ways in which humans both think about and act upon their surroundings. And each radically questions the damaging conceptual divisions between nature and culture, human and environment, and scientific explanation and religious/ethical understanding. Papers, discussions and keynotes will reflect on how one or more of these terms illuminates the intersection between questions of meaning and the environments in which we find ourselves. Recreate “Re-creation” is multivalent and complex. At the heart of this word is a term with important theological meanings—“creation.” In turn, creation leads to a host of other associations: the concept of a divine creator, the power of creativity, homo faber, and the cosmic creation myths. In an ecological context, to recreate can suggest innovative, novel approaches to scientific phenomena, both in theoretical and applied ecology. These, in turn, allow us to better understand the diversity of ecological processes and the role humans play within. But recreation in these cases also quickly leads to religious narratives of destruction and annihilation. A creator must “wipe the slate clean” in order to recreate. Scientists must challenge and question existing technologies, models and paradigms to innovate. Replace Regarding the term "replace", this might refer to adding new knowledge into our pedagogies and practices. In the sciences, the more we understand, the more important it is for biologists to incorporate this knowledge into practice. But the term also highlights the spatial dimensions of nature as seen by its etymological rootedness in “place.” The OED tells us that “to replace” returns us to an earlier place, or take the place of something else. For philosophical and religious thought on nature, this might mean to return to earlier settings and places, or to overcome the ways in which we dwell in place. Further, to replace evokes issues of sustainability and consumption in light of current economic debates and practices. Restore At the intersection of the humanities and the sciences, the concept of “restoration” holds a diversity of meanings. For example, for ecology and policy studies, “to restore” evokes our need to implement scientific knowledge in restoring areas to self-sustainable, diverse landscapes, communities, and ecosystems. To restore a place or landscape includes a desire to minimize our "footprint" upon the Earth. But restoration also means that we must understand the history and temporality of nature, for it conjures up thoughts of returning to a primeval or primitive state. Paralleling such philosophical and scientific questions, some of the connotations of restoration highlight cosmic meaning and anthropology. The ideal of many religions is to restore nature and the human to some ideal state, such as a union with God, an original perfection, or a pre-existent cosmic order. Conference website: http://www.onu.edu/org/wgren/conference-index.html.

"Giving Voice to Other Beings," Vanderbilt University, May 2-4, 2008.

Few would contest the claim that formal democratic institutions are failing us politically. Inconvenient voices are often marginalized, and representation is all too easily gamed or corrupted. But there is an alternative to despair: to resuscitate and develop the grassroots conversations and connections through which we can come to respond to the needs of all our neighbors. In the case of the non-human stakeholders on the planet, we never had the illusion of democratic participation, but the possibilities of informal listening, noticing, engagement, conversation and even representation are no less compelling. We may not be able to establish a parliament of all beings, or an ecological democracy, but do not other species, tribes of a quite different ilk, make claims on us for systematic respect and consideration? As the rate of species extinction accelerates, and the web of life begins to come apart, what once looked like an ethical option is starting to look like a condition for our own survival. This interdisciplinary conference will look at questions of representation (religious, legal, literary, philosophical), along with the whole range of our communication and engagement with non-humans, and with the ethical and 'spiritual' dimensions of these questions. For further information, please visit: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/csrc/giving-voice/.

CFP: "Space, Interaction, Discourse," Aalborg University, Denmark, November 12-14, 2008.

The aim of this international conference is to bring together researchers who investigate space, mediated discourse and embodied interaction from different perspectives.The conference will highlight interdisciplinary research that explores how embodied and virtual social actors communicate, interact and coordinate their activities in complex multimodal environments, with a special focus on place, mobility and the body. Thus, this conference welcomes contributions by scholars and doctoral students in a range of disciplines and fields of inquiry, including discourse studies, conversation analysis, discursive psychology, critical discourse analysis, interaction analysis, architecture, design, geography, sociology, anthropology, environmental psychology, mobility studies, ubiquitous computing, computer-supported cooperative work and computer-supported cooperative learning. Please see the online call for papers for more details. The conference will take place at Aalborg University, and it will consist of invited keynote lectures, parallel paper sessions and a workshop. Submissions are solicited for paper presentations (30 minutes including question time). Plenary Speakers:

• John A. Dixon, Lancaster University, UK
• Ole B. Jensen, Aalborg University, Denmark
• Elizabeth Keating, University of Texas at Austin, USA
• Lorenza Mondada, Université Lumière Lyon2, France
• Ron Scollon, Alaska, USA

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE: February 1, 2008

Please submit an abstract and register on the website. All submissions will be reviewed by the scientific committee. Notification of acceptance by 15th March 2008.

The registration fee is 1500 DKK (approx. 200 euro), which includes participation in the conference, a conference folder, the reception, three lunches and two coffee/tea breaks each day over the three days. The conference is international and open to researchers, doctoral and graduate students. Further details are available here: http://www.placeme.hum.aau.dk/conf2008/.