Conference Program
Conference Schedule (UTC-7) PDT
Wednesday, April 23
Location: Anatol Conference Room, AS-119
Session 1. 9:30-10:45 am
Cinema Obscura : Peeking at the World through a Lens Darkly
Moderator: Dr. Pravina Cooper ()
Liana Lecaro (): Tensions between Ecological Harmony and the Rhetoric of Efficiency: Environmental Stewardship in The Wild Robot (2024)
Chad Dupre (): Christopher McCandless: A Desperate Search for Connection Through a Rejection of Capitalism In Sean Penn’s Into The Wild
Dr. Enrico Vettore (): Desertification and Anthropocene in Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger and Zabriskie Point: An Ecopsychological Approach
Dr. Anila Bhagavatula (): Persuasion for the Planet: Using Pop Culture to Foster Environmental Attitude Change
Session 2. 11:00 am-12:15 pm
Eco-language Strategies and Romance-language Sustainability: Pedagogies for Plurilingual Students at
Moderator: Dr. Clorinda Donato ()
Dr. Clorinda Donato (): The Spontaneous-Pedagogical Translanguaging Trajectory: Putting Heritage Spanish Speakers at the Center of Romance-Language Teaching
Joann Tatro (): The Multilingual Toolbox: Integrating Intercomprehension, Translanguaging, and Translation Strategies in the Italian for Spanish Speakers Classroom
Jassica Halim and Gabriela Mayoral (): Leveraging the Linguistic Repertoire: Multilingual Approaches in the French for Spanish Speakers' Classroom
Session 3. 12:30-1:45 pm
Visions of Nature, Revelation, and Gender in the Ancient World
Moderator: Jessica Brooks ()
Gillian Duane (): Trans Saints and the Desert in Early Monasticism
Eliana Eisen (): Artemis in Landscapes: EcoCriticism and Cultural Narratives
Jessica Brooks (): Ancient People and the Environment: A Not-So-Hidden Warning in Some of the World's Earliest Texts
Session 4. 2:00-3:15 pm
Democratic Pluralism, Ecological Crisis and Material Cultures: Or Are We Equal?
Moderator: Dr. Viola Lasmana ()
Randy Reynaga (): “When You Feel it That Deep, You Should Listen”: Uncovering an Ecological Sense of Brown in Helena María Viramontes’s Under the Feet of Jesus
Jessica King (): The Eco-Crip Theory of Politics, Disease, and Neurodivergence in Sam Miller’s Blackfish City
Sherry Kolber (): Got #Nature: Queering and Decolonizing in Tommy Pico’s Nature Poem
Session 5. 3:30-4:45 pm
Resistance, Culture and Nature in Modern Arabic Literature
Moderator: Levon Parseghian ()
Dr. Nahla Khalil (University of Massachusetts Amherst): Migration Narratives and Transnational Identities in Modern Arabic Literature
Dr. Mohamed Hassan (Amherst College): An Ecological Approach to the Language of a Religious Minority and its Representations in Arabic Language
Dr. Jehan Farouk Fouad (Ain Shams University, Egypt): "An Ambiguous Love of Life and the Entire Existence”: Recalling Feminine Bonds with Nature in Salwa Bakr’s “Ispahan Rose”
Dr. Nancy El Gendy (James Madison University): Unbearable Weight, Crippled Bodies, and Shame Culture: Global Ecofeminist Themes in Three Contemporary Arab Women’s Novels
Session 6. 5:30-8:30 pm
Location: MM 100
Special Screening of Kaniehtiio Horn's Film Seeds
Thursday, April 24
Session 7. 9:30-10:45 am
Panel 1
Location: Anatol Center, AS 119
Christa Wolf, Ecofeminism, and the Laboratory Sciences
Moderator: Chiara Aleman ()
Dr. Robert Blankenship (): Towards an Ecology of Readers: Collaboration and Subjectivity in the Christa Wolf Lab
Emery Pham (): The Unnatural Nature of War: The Social-Environmental Consequences of the Trojan War in Christa Wolf’s Kassandra
Lani Chavez (): Synthetic Gender?: Christa Wolf’s “Selbstversuch” and the "Pursuit of Personhood”
Stephan Dada (): Nonhuman Animals, AI, and Christa Wolf: What a Certain Tomcat Can Teach Us About The Failure of Science
Panel 2
Location: AS 384
Animating Cultural Memory and Meaning through Hidden Geographies
Moderator: Dr. Christopher Shaw ()
Edgar Olague (): Hip-hop and Our Environment: A Catalyst for Change
Praniti Gulyani (UC Berkeley): An Analysis of Climate Change Through Modern Poetry: Through the Lens of Franny Choi and Ocean Vuong
Lucero Pinedo (): Memory, a Form of Accountability: Degradation of Nature and the Personal in Yoko Ogawa's Memory Police
Dr. Rick Mitchell (CSUN): Anne Washburn's Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play: Exploring the Looming, Ecological Apocalypse through a Play-within-a-Play based on a Simpsons Episode
Session 8. 11:00 am-12:15 pm
Location: Anatol Center, AS 119
Gaming the Earth, Redeeming the World: Pop Culture as Aspiration and Degradation
Moderator: Jeffrey Lawler ()
Jacob Wilson (): Dice and Dirt: Navigating Ecological Ethics in Fantasy Roleplaying Games
Kehan Liu (): Hope in a Distressed World: Humanness and the “Nonhuman” in Disco Elysium: The Final Cut
Jake Perea (): Replaying American History in the Mojave Wasteland of Fallout: New Vegas
Emma Chastain (): The Last of Us: Nature’s Reclamation of a Devolving Society
Session 9. 12:30-1:45 pm
Panel 1
Location: Anatol Center, AS 119
Big Budget Apocalypse
Moderator: Dr. Kathryn Chew ()
José Rodriguez (): Ecological Destruction and Human Survival as Sites of Ethical Cognizance in Superhero Narratives: Identity, Intentionality, and Agency in Deadpool and Wolverine
Joseantonio Garcia (): Eco-Colonialism in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: An Analysis of Spice as an allegory
Erin Hart (): The Day After Tomorrow (2004): The Death of Our Planet is Humanity’s Expiration Date
Jim Gately (): What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Global Warming: Finding Humor in Ecological Thought
Panel 2
Location: AS 384
Ecofeminism: Consumption and Control in Feminist Futures?
Moderator: Dr. Christopher Shaw ()
Rhyan Blade (): Cultural Superficiality: An Eco-Critical Reading of Kij Johnson’s “Ponies”
Ruby Akile (): Ecofeminism and Rebellion in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale
Katie Snyder (): Sam Levinson’s Euphoria (2019): Ecofeminism and Pandemic Fast Fashion
Session 10. 2:00-3:15 pm
Location: Anatol Center, AS 119
Seed Keeping as Language Growing: Land, Language, and Indigenous Representation in Pop Culture
Moderator: Amy DeSuza-Riehm ()
Keynote: Kaniehtiio Horn
Session 11. 3:30-4:45 pm
Integrative Ecology and Traditional Knowledge and the Spiritual Axis
Moderator: Dr. George Hart ()
Alyssa Agudelo (): Indigeneity as Aesthetic: Spiritual Appropriation and the Romanticization of Animism in James Cameron’s Avatar
Mary Vande Hei (): Healing the Earth with Animals: How Agriculture has Shaped our Ecosystems in Diana Rodgers’ Sacred Cow
Johanna Dong (University of Chicago): Shapeshifters and Local Mythologies: The Supernatural and Environmental Uncanny in Literature on the Sundarbans
Kaitlyn Langford (): Life and Death on the Prairie: The Ambivalence of Nature in O.E. Rölvaag’s Giants in the Earth
Friday, April 25
Location: Zoom
Session 12. 9:30-10:45 am
Consummate Consumption: Fandom at the Intersection of Sustainability and Consumerism
Moderator: Dr. Kathryn Chew ()
Aditi Basu (independent researcher): Singing Environmental Consciousness in the Global South: An Analysis of Indian Participatory Music as a Mitigatory Tool towards Climate Crisis
Dr. Mel Swan (University College London): Categorical Humanities: Ecocriticism, Popular Culture, and AI Crypto Futures
Dr. Susan D. Driver (York University): Beautiful Justice: How Young Activists are Imagining Alternative Fashion Futures
Shakiba Barghi (University of Melbourne): Fandom, Consumer Culture, and the Environmental Impact of Pop Culture Merchandise
Session 13. 11:00 am-12:15 pm
Panel 1
Earth, Wind, and Ice: Braving the Elements in Search of the Future
Moderator: Dr. George Hart ()
Irene Bordignon (IUSS Pavia, Italy, and Umeå University, Sweden): The Colours of Vanishing Ice. Mapping the Arctic in Contemporary Art and Literature
Dr. Dominique Faria (University of the Azores / CHAM-Açores, Portugal): Islands and Environmental Concerns in 21st-Century French Literature
Dr. Tatiana Konrad (University of Vienna, Austria): Materiality, Toxicity, and Air in White Noise
Dr. Jason Wallin (University of Alberta): Untitled
Panel 2
Architects of Identity: Story Structure in the Kurdish landscape?
Moderator: Dr. Amir Sharifi ()
Dr. Amir Sharifi () and Ali Ashuri (SDSU): Natural and Cultural Worlds in Aesthetics
Dr. Dilşa Deniz: Shâmaran: From Neolithic Myth to Kurdish Identity—A Mytholinguistic Exploration
Session 14. 12:30-1:45 pm
The Next Generation, From Permaculture to the Posthuman
Moderator: Dr. Susan Carlile ()
Sameera Chawla (University of Cambridge): Found and Lost: Interspecies Love and Shared Agency in Hannah Gold’s The Last Bear
Dr. Inna Häkkinen (University of Helsinki): Social Permaculture in Fictionalizing a Nuclear Tierratrauma for Children and Young Adults
Philipp Brandl (Goethe Univeristy Frankfurt): Melting the Ice: Tabaluga and the Evolution Towards Ecopedagogy in Popular German Children’s Media
Dr. Debadrita Chakrabordy (GITAM School of Humanities and Social Sciences): Comics in the Anthropocene: Exploring Ecological Futures in Long-form Narratives
Session 15. 2:00-3:15 pm
Putting the Post in Colonial and Human...
Moderator: Dr. Viola Lasmana ()
Ragesree Roy (University of Warwick): Slow Violence and Postcolonial Environments: Reading Water in Graphic Novels from South Asia
Rose Padilla (University of Texas at Austin): Mapping Economies of Thirst in Duffy and Jennings’ Parable of the Sower
Julie Xinzhu Chen (Columbia University): Mushroom as Metaphor in Sinophone Fictive Space:
Queering the Eco-apocalypse and Post-humanist Desire
Vivienne Tailor (Claremont Graduate University): Black Bodies Consumed as White Confections:
From Olaudah Equiano’s Memoirs (1789) to Kara Walker’s Sugar Baby Statues (2014)
Session 16. 3:30-4:45 pm
Fact or Fiction? Filling the Gutters and Finding Balance in Environmental Comics
Moderator: Amy DeSuza-Riehm ()
Sam Jullian (Octopolis): Comics as a Medium for Empathy
Corinna Bechko (The Space Between): Comics in space
Chris Lowe (): Beach Days Comic talk
