Literature and Conservation: Responsibilities
Sponsored by the M.Phil in Literatures of the Americas
Friday, 2 September
9:00-12:00 Optional activities for those arriving early (Sandymount Strand/Irishtown Nature Park, Pre-Registration Required)
**Meet at 9a.m. at the Front Gates of Trinity College –we’ll be holding signs!**
12:00-2:00: Lunch (We have reserved some places for lunch at Dunne and Crescenzi, 16 Frederick Street South, Dublin 2, but feel free to eat on your own).
1:30pm-5:30pm: Registration (Collect conference folders and name tags), Arts Block, English Department, 4th Floor, Room 4017
PANEL 1, 2:00-3:30pm
A) 2:00-3:30 pm, Arts Block (4050-A)
Title: Ecocritical Perspectives on American Literatures
Chair: Megan Kuster (Trinity College Dublin)
Patricia M. Feito (Barry University, Miami Shores, Florida): “‘Sit bit and watch the ecology develop’: Preserving Voice and Land in Josephine Johnson’s Now in November and The Inland Island”
Dolores McLoughlin (Trinity College Dublin): “Maeve Brennan: The Last Days of New York City”
Katherine R. Lynes (Union College, Schenectady, New York): “‘a responsibility to something besides people’: Black American Ecopoetics”
B) 2:00-3:30pm, Arts Block (4050-B)
Title: Environment and Identity
Chair: Dr. Melanie Otto (Trinity College Dublin)
Frank Izaguirre (Chatham University): “Naturalist Narratives: Towards a Synthesis of Costa Rican Nature Writing”
Ciara Gallagher (National University of Ireland, Maynooth): "Environmental Ethics, Ecological Perspectives: Arundhati Roy's Nonfiction and the Implications for Literary Activism"
Louise Liebherr (Mary Immaculate College, Limerick): “‘Every tree has its enemy, few have an advocate’: J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings as a post-colonial ecocritical critique of human perception and treatment of the natural world, and advocate for environmental conservation”
3:30-4:00pm: Coffee & Tea break, Arts Block 4017
PANEL 2, 4:00-5:30pm
A) 4:00-5:30pm, Arts Block (4050-A)
Title: Environmental Education
Chair: Alison Lacivita (Trinity College Dublin)
Diana Woodcock (Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar): “Why (and how) poetry may be the first line of defense in saving our planet”
Cortney E. Holles (Colorado School of Mines): “Nature and Human Values: An Interdisciplinary Model for Teaching Environmental Ethics and Debunking Myths about Environmentalism”
Patrick Howard (Cape Breton University, Canada): “Finding a Language for Sustainability: Children and the Promise of Bioregional Poetry”
B) 4:00-5:30pm, Arts Block (4050-B)
Title: Ecopoetics
Chair: Dr. Philip Coleman (Trinity College Dublin)
Lucy Collins (University College Dublin): “Invisible Places: Alice Oswald’s Ecopoetics”
Lisa Szabo-Jones (University of Alberta): “Ecopoetics: Matters of Concern in Daphne Marlatt’s Steveston”
Camilla Nelson (University College Falmouth): “Material Conservation: The Presence of ‘Nature’ in Literature”
Brian Bartlett (St Mary’s University, Halifax): “‘I couldn’t believe the strength it had’: Fabulous Narratives in Contemporary Canadian Nature Poetry”
5:30-6:30: Dinner break (On your own)
6:30: Opening Remarks and Plenary, Neill/Hoey Lecture Theatre, Trinity Long Room Hub
Opening Remarks:
Alison Lacivita and Megan Kuster (Conference Organizers)
Plenary: "The Changing Role of Literature in Environmental Protection"
Dr. John Elder (Professor Emeritus, Middlebury College, Vermont, USA)
Chair: Alison Lacivita (Trinity College Dublin)
John Elder joined the Middlebury College faculty in 1973. His original appointment was in English, followed by a split-appointment in English and American Literatures and in Environmental Studies. Starting in 1981, he also taught most summers at Middlebury’s Bread Loaf School of English, including at the Alaska, New Mexico, and North Carolina campuses as well as at the main campus in Ripton, Vermont.
John's special areas of interest as a teacher are in American nature writing, English Romantic Poetry, modern American poetry of nature, and Japan's haiku tradition. In recent years, he has also enjoyed exploring the possibilities for service-learning and community-based education, through courses related to residents' sense of place in the nearby town of Starksboro and to the challenges and hopes of eleven Addison County, Vermont farmers. This particular class, “Portrait of a Vermont Town”, was the subject of a New York Times article in 2008, titled “Vermont Town Turns to College in Bid to Guide Change”.
John Elder has served as both President and Vice-President of ASLE (Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment).
In addition to dozens of articles published during his career, John Elder has published and co-edited many important works of nature writing and environmental literary and cultural criticism. A selected list of these publications includes Imagining the Earth: Poetry and the Vision of Nature (1985); Following the Brush: An American Encounter with Classical Japanese Culture (2000); and edited with Robert Finch the Norton Anthology of Nature Writing (2002). His three most recent books -- Reading the Mountains of Home (1998); The Frog Run: Words and Wildness in the Vermont Woods (2001); and Pilgrimage to Vallombrosa (2006) -- have each combined discussion of literature, description of Vermont's landscape and natural history, and personal memoir.
Saturday, 3 September
8:00-9:00am: Coffee/tea and light breakfast, Arts Block 4017
PANEL 3, 9:00-10:30am
A) 9:00am-10:30am, Arts Block 3051
Title: Animal Studies
Chair: Philip Keel Geheber (Trinity College Dublin)
Vineet Mehta (Doaba College, Jalandhar): “Conservation Politics and the Decentring of the Tiger in The Hungry Tide”
Lorraine Shannon (University of Technology, Sydney): “Greek Mythology and the More-Than-Human Environment”
Micha Gerrit-Philipp Edlich (Johannes-Gutenberg Universität Mainz): “Considerate Carnivores: The Ethics of Hunting and Meat Consumption in Contemporary North American Environmental Life Writing”
Anna Barcz (The Institute of Literary Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw): “The Fox. On Hunting”
B) 9:00am-10:30am, Arts Block 3025
Title: Ethics & the Environment
Chair: Dr. Dara Downey (Trinity College Dublin)
Gillian Groszewski (Trinity College Dublin): “Rachel Carson and Ted Hughes”
Miles Link (Trinity College Dublin): “Ground Bursts and Gaia: Environmental Disaster in Nuclear Fiction”
Shivani Jha (Bharati College, Delhi University): “A Return to the Roots: Relevance and Exemplification”
Peter Doherty (Trinity College, Dublin): “The Imagination of Place in Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea”
10:30am-11:00am Coffee & Tea Break, Arts Block 4017
PANEL 4, 11:00am-12:30pm
11:00am-12:30pm, Arts Block 3051
Title: Politics, Economics and the Irish Environment
Chair: Dr. Sam Slote (Trinity College Dublin)
Niamh Dowdall (Trinity College Dublin): “Elizabeth Bowen’s Landscapes”
Yi-Peng Lai (Queen’s University, Belfast): “‘Prosper! Give shade on languorous days, trees of Ireland!’ Reafforestation and Irish Nationalism”
Marion Naugrette (University of Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle): “Economics and Ecology in Derek Mahon’s Poetry”
12:30pm-1: 30pm Lunch (included, vegetarian), Arts Block 4017
PANEL 5, 1:30pm-3:00pm
1:30pm-3:00pm, Arts Block 3051
Title: Perspectives in Ecocriticism
Chair: Alison Lacivita (Trinity College Dublin)
Maria Alessandra Woolson (Middlebury College): “Sustainability as Analytical Framework: an Ecocritical Observation of Latin America’s Contemporary Literature in Luis Sepulveda’s Un Viejo que leía novelas de amor”
Megan Kuster (Trinity College Dublin): “‘In the Luxemburg Gardens’ with the fictions of Jean Rhys and Elizabeth Bowen”
Dorothy Yamamoto (Independent Scholar): “‘How long does it take to make the woods?’ England’s woodland and the literary imagination”
Sharae Deckard (University College Dublin): “Postcolonial Form, Ecology and Resistance”
3:15pm-5:00pm, Round Table:
“How can literature influence environmental responsibility?”
and
Concluding Remarks, Neill/Hoey Lecture Theatre, Trinity Long Room Hub
Chair: Professor John Elder
Participants:
Dr. Seán Lysaght (Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology)
Dr. Juliana Adelman (Trinity College Dublin Long Room Hub Research Fellow)
Dr. Charles Travis, via Skype (University of South Florida)
Closing Remarks: Alison Lacivita and Megan Kuster
Conference Dinner: 6:00 pm, James Joyce Centre, 35 North Great George’s Street (Included)
Vegetarian dinner (buffet-style) and poetry readings by Seán Lysaght, Moya Cannon and Mark Roper.
Sean Lysaght: Seán Lysaght was born in 1957 and grew up in Limerick. He was educated at UCD, where he received a BA and an MA in Anglo-Irish Literature.
In 1985 he was an award winner at the annual Patrick Kavanagh poetry festival. His first collection of poetry, Noah's Irish Ark was published in 1989, followed by The Clare Island Survey (Gallery, 1991; nominated for The Irish Times/Aer Lingus poetry award). Between 1990 and 1994 he lectured in English at St Patrick's College, Maynooth and received a PhD for his work on the life and writings of Robert Lloyd Praeger, subsequently published as Robert Lloyd Praeger: The Life of a Naturalist (Four Courts, 1998). His subsequent collections, Scarecrow (1998) and Erris (2002), The Mouth of a River (2007) a re published by The Gallery Press. He recently received the 2007 O’Shaughnessy Award for Poetry. Venetian Epigrams (Translations after Goethe) was published in June 2008. His Selected Poems is being published in October 2010.
Moya Cannon Moya Cannon was born in Donegal and has lived for many years in Galway. She studied history and politics at University College, Dublin and international relations at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Her early work is informed by the landscapes and seascapes of Galway, Clare and Donegal, of the ways in which humanity marks and is marked by landscape. Many of her poems reflect preoccupations with archaeology, with music, with language itself and with the history of migration – the migration of birds, of humans, of human culture.
Her first collection, Oar, (Salmon Press, Galway 1990) won the inaugural Brendan Behan Award. Since then she has published two further collections, The Parchment Boat (Gallery Press, 1997) and Carrying the Songs, (Carcanet Press, Manchester, 2007). A limited edition art book, Winter Birds, was published by Traffic Street Press, (2005), in association with the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota. Her forthcoming collection ‘Hands’, (Carcanet Press, November 2011), although mainly grounded in native territory, also relates to time spent in Spain, France and Latin America.
She has been editor of Poetry Ireland Review and was the recipient of the 2001 Laurence O Shaughnessy Award, presented by the University of St.Paul, Minnesota. She was the 2011 Heimbold Chair of Irish Studies at Villanova University, and is a member of Aosdana, the Irish affiliation of creative artists.
Mark Roper Mark Roper is an English-born poet and editor now living near Piltown, in Kilkenny. He studied at Reading and Oxford Universities. His first collection of poetry The Hen Ark (1990, Peterloo) won the 1992 Aldeburgh Prize for best first collection. His other poetry is collected in Catching the Light (1997, Peterloo), The Home Fire (1998, Abbey Press), and Whereabouts (2005, Abbey Press & Peterloo). Roper was the 1999 editor of Poetry Ireland Review and also edited Ink Bottle in 2001. He was awarded Kilkenny’s Father Sean Swayne Art Bursary. Roper also runs creative writing courses and workshops in many different settings in Waterford and Kilkenny, including schools, prisons and senior citizen centres. He led a workshop at the 2002 Geneva Writers’ Convention and served as writer in residence at Waterford Regional Hospital. In 2008 Dedalus published his New and Selected Poems, Even So and in 2010 he was anthologised in Landing Places: Immigrant Poets in Ireland (Dedalus, 2010). The River Book: A Celebration of the Suir, a collaboration with photographer Paddy Dwan was published by Whimbrel Press in 2010.
Sunday, 4 September
9:45am: Optional hiking trip to Glendalough. Pre-registration required.
*Depart Nassau Street. This is on the south side of Trinity College. Between Dawson Street and Kildare Street, you will see many coaches lined up. We will be travelling to Glendalough with Avondale Coaches.
11:00am: Guided tour of Glendalough visitor centre and monastic site. (Approximately 1.5 hours).
1:00pm-3:00pm: Hiking time! There are several well-marked trails around Glendalough. We will be leading whoever is interested around the orange trail, which takes approximately 2 hours, but those who wish to explore on their own can do so.
3:00pm: Lunch at the Glendalough Hotel in the lounge.
