ASLE Diversity Caucus

The American Comparative Literature Association’s annual conference is a place of great linguistic diversity. I have attended for the last three years and have grown to appreciate everything from the multiple languages I hear to the more global nature of the panels and seminars. After all, comparatists by trade want to compare A with B and not get too nation-centric. This, along with the multiple-panel seminar format, is exactly why I love going to this conference. Not only are the panels excellent, but because seminar presenters must attend all the panels in their seminar, the conversation that begins during one panel continues on to the panel on the following day and since presenters usually dine or have coffee together the whole experience is much more engaging than any other conference format I have ever experienced. However, at the first ACLA conference I attended, I noticed that there were only a couple of ecology-related seminars and they were at the same time so I had to make a choice and could only attend one. The following year, the pickings were again slim in this important area and so, with Tanja Stampfl, I decided to organize a seminar titled “Waterscapes: Postcolonial Perspectives on the Environment and Place in Crisis” for this year’s 2012 conference.

I attended not only my own two-panel seminar, but also the plenary roundtable entitled, “Africa in the Aftermath of the Arab Spring,” the plenary panel “Thinking Disaster,” as well as a 3-panel seminar entitled “Ecology/Energy/Economy.” This last seminar was by far the most intellectually engaging for me and on the very first day, I started asking people if they had heard of ASLE and if they had, were they a member, and if they weren’t, would they like a brochure? I tend to be shy so I didn’t actually do this with everyone in the room but only with those who seemed open to conversation before and after the talks. However, I did leave brochures at the registration table as well as in the reception area right outside the book exhibit.

The talks were stimulating. On the first day, Jennifer Wenzel, the seminar organizer helped us understand how what we have done in the past creates particular futures for us. Frederick Buell provided a history of U.S. risk culture from post-war suburbia and the car culture that made it possible to the apocalyptic oil-dependent 1970s to the hyper-growth of the 1980s to the post-apocalypse of the 2000s and the films like Hunger Games and Wall-E that we are so fascinated with today. Anthony Carrigan told us that there are so many more disasters in the last 50 or 60 years, that the number of people affected by disasters is seven times the number affected by war. I was still trying to get my head around this when Ashley Dawson was discussing a novel by Margaret Atwood and what speculative fiction tells us about our future.

On the second day, Justin Neuman gave a talk about the representation of oil in nineteenth century American comics. Danny Braun wondered whether Benjamin should have read Fanon and Robert Emmett discussed our images of the Bayou in Louisiana. The third day wrapped up the seminar with Peter Hitchcock stating that dams produce the conditions they are expected to remedy, namely, drought and floods. Amanda Waldo discussed the ethical consumption movement and Elizabeth DeLoughrey talked about the U.S.’s toxic waste dumping in the Caribbean in return for debt reduction and financial aid for Caribbean countries. The seminar ended with Dana Phillips sharing his research on “Excremental Ecocriticism and the Global Sanitary Crisis.” Apparently, 2.6 billion people in the world didn’t have sanitation in 2006. The result is open defecation in places like India as well as defecating into plastic bags which happens in various slums in Africa. Unfortunately, neither pig shit nor human shit makes good manure. The problem is planetary and far too often overlooked by the squeamish, like myself.

With my head full of wonderful talks, one day while having some coffee and pastries at a table, I recognized some people from my hotel. I asked if they wanted my brochures and they happily told me that they had all picked them up from the registration desk and that they were excited to get the information about ASLE. In fact, one took brochures from me to distribute at the college where she teaches and the University where she studies. She was especially keen to share them with the other students in her environmental literature class. And so it comes full circle. The brochures are all gone but hopefully they are circulating elsewhere and bringing more diversity to ASLE next year.