Gardens and their contexts were continually reassessed throughout the nineteenth century in form, content and significance as ownership, technologies and affective aesthetics shifted throughout the period. Essays of 6000-8000 words – with an emphasis in material ecocriticism and ecogothic – are invited for a collection to be published by Manchester University Press. Full details HERE

The intent of this interdisciplinary symposium and exhibition is to reflect on the research process, of being in research, and the documents which facilitate and inform it. The term ‘document’ is open ended, it may refer to text or image; audio or visual; object, artefact or specimen. A document can look forward and back; it can be ‘reached in to’ as a source of ideas and it can be ‘reaching’ in its speculations. From notebook to soil sample, post-it note to statistical data, the document may be the marker of a thought or a way to manage the restless plurality of thinking. Whatever they be, what is of interest is how documents operate as research and the possibilities they enshrine. Full details HERE

The latest issue of the journal L’Esprit Créateur (57.1) edited by Daniel A. Finch-Race and Julien Weber, focuses on French Ecocriticism. It illustrates the richness of a growing field by exploring French and francophone materials that have received little previous attention in ecocritical terms. Link HERE.

New from Peter Lang – French Ecocriticism: From the Early Modern Period to the Twenty-First Century, edited by Daniel Finch-Race and Stephanie Posthumus. This book considers environmental issues in a range of French texts. Scholars from Britain, Canada, France and the US examine the work of writers and thinkers including Montaigne, Hugo, Zola, Yourcenar and Houellebecq. Further details HERE.  

The University of Gloucestershire and the International Ecolinguistics Association are pleased to announce the launch of a new open online course: The Stories We Live by: a free online course in ecolinguistics, which has been created for public benefit. More information HERE

Nature, much like the feminine, has been fetishized, exoticized, and romanticized as a signifier emptied out. Gendered Ecologies and Nineteenth-Century Women Writers invites article-length typescripts (e.g., abstracts and/or 15-20 page drafts) that consider the spaces and places women writers have occupied as part of gendering the term ecology—whether masculine, feminine, or androgynous. The edition will feature three guiding principles: transhistorical, transatlantic, and transcorporeality (Alaimo, Bodily Natures, 2010). Full details HERE

We are delighted to announce the winner of the 2017 ASLE/Inspire public lecture competition is Rachel Dowse for her illustrated talk entitled, ‘Starling Song: Murmurations of Meaning’.

The annual Institute for Sustainable Practice, Innovation and Resource Effectiveness (INSPIRE) Lecture is organised by the University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD) and the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, UK & Ireland (ASLE-UK). This year’s lecture takes place at the Hay Festival on Friday 2 June, at 7pm.

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The February 2017 issue of Plumwood Mountain is now live with poetry guest edited by leading UK poet, teacher and researcher in ecopoetics, Harriet Tarlo.

Edited collection just out: Victorian Writers and the Environment, edited by Laurence W. Mazzeno and Ronald D. Morrison. More HERE

A Global History of Literature and the Environment, edited by John Parham and Louise Westling, is now out from Cambridge University Press. In this book, an international group of scholars illustrate the immense riches of environmental writing from the earliest literary periods down to the present, ranging geographically from Trinidad to New Zealand, Estonia to Brazil. Full details HERE