We are extremely pleased to announce the winners of our new ASLE grants in several categories. Translation Grants were established in order to support work in ecocriticism from international scholars and to expand exchanges across cultures and continents. Book/Article/Media Project Subvention Grants were created to support innovative projects in ecocriticism and the environmental humanities. The Community Grants seek to support projects that will help build connections between the environmental humanities and place-based environmental organizations working outside the academy.

Our grant committees worked very hard to complete their evaluations and deliberations and were extremely impressed by the fine quality of all the proposals received in this pilot year. We look forward to a rich array of submissions in the future.

by Heather I. Sullivan, Trinity University, Chair of Translation Grants Committee

Our first year with the ASLE translation grant was a great success: we received very impressive applications and made three awards of $1,000 each. These include:

Patricia Liu's translation of Xu Gang's book, Wake up, Loggers! This is a collection of reports published 1988-1996. It is considered the first reportage on environmental issues, and the first piece of nature writing, in modern China. The five chapters report the deteriorating situations in China caused by forestry, water and land pollution. She is translating the second edition, one of the eleven "Green Classics" compiled by Jilin People's Publishing House in 1997.

Patricia Liu is a poet, writer, college English teacher at the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE), Beijing. She writes in both English and Chinese.

Michael Berman's translation of Yuki Masami's book, Around the Hearth of Modernity: Ecocritical Approaches to the Literary Foodscapes of Contemporary Japanese Women Writers, previously published in Tokyo by Suiseisha, 2012. Masami describes the book in terms of how food binds us to each other and the environment, though each place and situation alters the "foodscape." In this book, Masami explores the logic and systems of value surrounding food in the works of four popular Japanese female authors: Ishimure Michiko, Taguchi Randy, Morisaki Kazue, and Nashiki Kaho.  The translation will be published by Palgrave Macmillan (in the book series Literatures, Cultures, and the Environment).

Michael Berman is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego.

Jeffrey Bussolini's and Matthew Chrulew's translation of Dominique Lestel's book, Les Origines animales de la culture (The Animal Origins of Culture). The book was originally published in Paris by Flammarion, 2001, and became part of their "Champs Essais" or "Field Essays/Tests" series, in which books by Alice Miller, Jurgen Habermas, Bertrand Russel, Bernard Stiegler, Julia Kristeva, and R�ne Girard, among others, are published. Bussolini and Chrulew describe the book's premise  as an assertion "that culture is not antithetical to nature, but rather intrinsic to the living, at even the most basic levels, and that it constitutes a particular niche of the living." They note that Lestel states "that the book is situated at the crossroads between a marginal current of phenomenology, not frequently taught in academic coverage of the topic, and the results of the 'ethological revolution' of the last thirty years."

Jeffrey Bussolini is Associate Professor of Sociology, The College of Staten Island of the City University of New York. Matthew Chrulew is on the Faculty of Humanities, Curtin University, Australia.
 
Christopher Cokinos, Eric Magrane (Co-Editors) and Paul Mirocha (Artist) won a grant to assist with the cost of illustrations for A Literary Field Guide to the Sonoran Desert ($2000), under contract with the University of Arizona Press. Paul Mirocha has done artwork for books by writers Gary Paul Nabhan and Barbara Kingsolver, and for periodicals such as Smithsonian Magazine. These illustrations will be integral to the field-guide portion of the anthology.  A Literary Field Guide to the Sonoran Desert gathers creative responses--poetry and prose--to some of the iconic and more obscure plants and animals of this region. Not simply an  anthology, his volume is also a field guide, with information on  the habitats, appearances and life histories of plants, invertebrates, birds, mammals, and reptiles and amphibians. Science and emotion combine to create a multi-species poetic ecology.
Christopher Cokinos is Director of Creative Writing and Associate Professor of English at University of Arizona. Eric Magrane, MFA, is a Ph.D. student in the School of Geography and Development at University of Arizona.  Paul Mirocha is an artist and book illustrator. 

David Taylor (Lead Editor) has been granted $1000 to offset the printing costs for a color insert of a photomosaic in the volume Sushi in Cortez: Interdisciplinary Essays on Mesa Verde. The manuscript will be published in May, 2015 by the University of Utah Press. This tri-fold will be printed in color on both sides and contains two photographic mosaic panoramas created by Steve Bardolph as part of this interdisciplinary project.  Sushi in Cortez is a collection of interconnected essays about the Mesa  Verde Region put together by an interdisciplinary group of academics, artists and cultural observers. From ethnopoetics and poetry, to documentary film, to environmental philosophy, nature photography, native Pueblo perspectives, and archaeology, the essays represent stories of the discomfort and rewards of traveling to archaeological sites together. The book will  offer a thorough introduction to Mesa Verde with maps of the area as well as an introduction to the history of its archaeology and tourism. This volume will not only touch on Mesa Verde but on the changing nature of universities, research, teaching and interdisciplinary work.

David Taylor is Visiting Professor of Sustainability at Stony Brook University.

Rayson K. Alex and S. Susan Deborah have been awarded $1000 to support the 2015 tiNai Eco-film Festival (TEFF). Birla Institute of Technology and Science-Pilani (BITS-Pilani) in Goa, India, will present its second edition of tiNai Ecofilm Festival at Goa. TEFF 2015, with a theme of "Landscapes," will present 30+ ecological and environmental documentaries with pressing  ecological issues to students, ecoenthusiasts, activists, journalists and filmmakers over two days in October 2015. The ASLE grant funds will be used toward creation of an interactive video-space at the festival website, documenting the festival extensively (through talks, lectures, panel discussion, screenings, responses and papers), and publication of a critical book on the documentaries screened.

Rayson K. Alex is Assistant Professor of English and S. Susan Deborah is an independent researcher, both at Birla Institute of Technology and Science-Pilani (BITS-Pilani), K.K. Birla Goa Campus, India.



The University of Idaho's Department of English and local nonprofit organization Backyard Harvest, Inc. have received a $5,000 community grant.  In preparation for the June 2015 ASLE conference in Moscow, they will work together to articulate explicit, compelling connections between local food systems, food security, and environmental justice and sustainability.
    
Backyard Harvest (BYH) is a Moscow-based nonprofit organization serving communities across the region which works to outgrow hunger on the Palouse (Northeastern Washington and Northern Idaho) by connecting local growers with low-income children, families, and seniors to increase access to healthy food choices across the region, through a variety of locally-based growing, gathering, and gleaning activities.   

The grant will assist BYH in enhancing its communication effectiveness and outreach to the local community. BYH would like to encourage more members of the community to become involved and also to draw out the environmental and food justice aspects of their work. In particular, BYH would like to demonstrate how they address the critical intersection between food security, local food systems, and environmental sustainability. Highlighting the environmental aspects of this work will allow BYH to reach an entirely new audience of potential supporters, funders, and volunteers.

The funding will be used to hire a fellow, a graduate student enrolled in the University of Idaho's English department, who will work with Backyard Harvest to develop creative, compelling materials, including a brochure, an annotated photographic exhibit, and a short visual or film that can be used in public presentations.  The grant will also support graphic design and printing/materials production, advertising, and outreach costs.  The brochure, exhibition, and public presentation materials produced from this project will help to articulate clearly the inextricable links between human culture and the environment on the Palouse.

Grant Committee Members:
Jessica Bearman, Chair, Board of Directors, Backyard Harvest
Carol Spurling, Secretary, Board of Directors, Backyard Harvest
Anna Banks, Associate Professor, University of Idaho
Erin James, Assistant Professor, University of Idaho
Jennifer Ladino, Associate Professor, University of Idaho
Scott Slovic, Professor, University of Idaho 

      

 

The Executive Council has made several changes to the ASLE bylaws this year. Most of them are minor updates to the language, either to reflect organizational structure or process that has changed over time, or to more accurately reflect the current mission and direction of the association. Two are more substantive changes worth noting:

• As announced in the Spring 2014 newsletter, the election process has been changed so that both a VP and President will be elected for two year terms on a staggered cycle, and the VP will be a separate office and no longer automatically become president.
• The Graduate Student Liaison position, since it carries voting privileges in its second year, has been changed to an elected position starting with the 2015 nomination and election cycle.

Please see the following sections of the bylaws for these changes, posted in full on the website here: http://www.asle.org/site/about/policies/

Modified sections:  2.1, 2.1.1, 3.1, 3.3, 4.3, 4.5, 5.1-5.4, 6.2, 6.4, 8.1, 9.2, 9.5, 10.2

 

This past June, Sterling College offered a "Writing in Place" workshop (June 9-20) that was co-sponsored by ASLE. Located in the tiny Vermont town of Craftsbury Common, Sterling is known for its Wildbranch Workshop. This summer, though, it tried out a different model. Instead of working with one visiting writer for a week, the seven of us who signed up for the workshop encountered four different writers over the course of two weeks--Clare Walker Leslie, John Elder, Rowan Jacobsen, and Ginger Strand. Each visiting writer took a turn facilitating group discussions as well as meeting with us individually to offer feedback on our writing. Our group activities included plenty of writing prompts, shared readings of our writing, and wide-ranging discussions in response to assigned readings. With the exception of two evening readings (Clare Walker Leslie with John Elder, Rowan Jacobsen with Ginger Strand), there was no overlap between the visiting authors. Pavel Cenkl, Dean of the College and Faculty, organized and facilitated the writing workshop, meeting with us at the beginning, setting us up to share our work on Google Drive, and concluding with a session that included a reading of our pieces.  

 

 

 

The pattern for the workshop included two to three days with each visiting writer. The contrasts between them enhanced the workshop experience. Although Clare Walker Leslie commented that she "isn't a writer," after sharing her illustrated journals with us, she got our eyes (and drawing pencils) attuned to what was around us in that particular season. Personally, I enjoyed starting out this way, although some of us were more challenged than others by drawing (or thinking that they had to draw well). John Elder came next, with a segment focused on memoir. We couldn't have asked for a better mentor to kick off the more writing-focused part of the workshop. He encouraged us to see the workshop as a chance for everyone to develop, and modeled that for us. He also hosted us one afternoon at his cabin on a nearby lake, a cozy place on that chilly day for our lively discussions of our assigned readings. Our last session with him was in the pavilion/gazebo on the commons, assisted by some local microbrews (or in my case, Vermont hard cider, gluten-free). He took great care to give us useful personal feedback and a thought-provoking collective experience.

 

Next, Rowan Jacobsen brought us his expertise on writing about food and place, and shared his experience with successfully placing his nature-related essays in a broad range of publications. He invited us to think about movement in our writing, including communicating the adventure of discovering a local place and bringing in its broader context. He was happy to give in to our requests for a small field trip to a local farm that produces cheese, and turned it into one of our writing prompts. Our concluding session was outside in a small garden pavilion, accompanied, in the spirit of local food and place, by Vermont hard cider, including some of his own making (we thought it beat out the best commercial contender in the local store). Last--but certainly not least--in the lineup, Ginger Strand offered us her experience with writing fiction and nonfiction, including spunky stories about her background research for Inventing Niagara and Killer on the Road. Like all of the visiting writers, she pushed us beyond superficial responses to readings that we didn't immediately connect with, encouraging us to find the careful art and technique practiced by each author so that we could make more informed choices about our own writing. We also had a helpful discussion of background research sources. Our last session with her included individual writing conferences on the front porch of one of the white wooden campus buildings. Besides that, in the two evening readings, each of the visiting writers offered us their own carefully crafted words and informal comments about their writing.

 

This summary doesn't do justice to the details and the intensity of the two week experience, but it gives some idea of how we spent our time. You might ask, when were we writing, in the midst of all of this? We were writing every day, responding to many writing prompts, and often at night, putting work into a longer piece. Having four visiting writers to work with was exciting, but coordinating all of the different activities was a challenge. Fortunately, while all four visiting writers came "loaded for bear" with readings, prompts, and ideas about how best to structure our time, they were very open to our needs. They balanced their desire not to shortchange us in any way with our need for time on our own or individual conferences. Their flexibility helped us make the best use of the workshop experience.

 

Sterling College hosted us well, from the student who came and picked me up from my very late flight into Burlington and drove me the hour and half to Craftsbury Common, to all of the staff at the college. The food, much of it locally grown, all of it carefully labelled, practically got up and danced with us, it was so inviting. The hours were tough on night owls, though--breakfast at 7:30, workshop starting at 8:30. It was fun to explore miniscule Craftsbury Common, especially with the help of one of our workshop participants, Michelle, originally from Canada, who had almost earned the status of a local, and could tell us the difference between the "regular" general store down the road and the fancy one for "flatlanders."

 

As for me, I took advantage of the beginning of a sabbatical to do something I've long meant to do: take part in a writers' workshop, instead of always writing alone. The seven of us were a perfect number for interacting and sharing writing. I liked the diversity in age, occupation, ambitions, where we hailed from, and reasons for wanting to develop our writing. I came away glad for the experience, and enjoying writing about lilacs.    

 

 

At the 2014 Thoreau Society Annual Gathering the ASLE-sponsored panel addressed questions of materiality and the nonhuman in Thoreau's writings. Considering the relation between the so-called "material turn" and Thoreau studies, participants on the roundtable examined ways in which Thoreau's writings anticipate the new materialism, the materiality inherent to his processes of writing and observation, his critique of nineteenth-century science, how his writings about animals engage materiality, and the materiality of the objects he left behind. Each participant posted a position paper to a "Thoreau and the Material Turn" blog and audience members were encouraged to read the papers in advance and comment on the blog. Revised versions of the papers will be published in The Concord Saunterer: A Journal of Thoreau Studies and The Thoreau Society Bulletin, the two publications of the Thoreau Society.