Sunflower Summer: A Tribute to Takeshi Kitano and Romero

Sunflower Summer

That summer had a face like a sunflower

mane of yellow hair framing circle of tan

Clytie watching Apollo kiss her sister beside the coal bin

in the back of a three-car garage

In Takeshi Kitano’s Hana-Bi

 “flower fires” create and consume

Horibe painting smiling flower heads on lions

bending upward toward hana-bi hung in the sky

like Romero’s Land of the Dead

flowers in the graveyard

not the kind you lay on the ground

sky flowers way up in heaven

reflecting off a paddle boat

in the center of Duck Lake

and those chipped teeth

moving to face the sun

distracting decoys planted in a line

their thick stalks confront the wind

seeds weakening growth

like Clytie’s sister locked in a cave

or

planted in loose soil behind the Buick

Clytie turning slowly

Her flower face following

Apollo’s dazzling chariot and radiant crown

Lions in Winter Schedule: All Events on January 27, 2018

Eastern Illinois University 

Schedule

Registration is Required for Attendance at Craft Talks & for Breakfast and Lunch.

Writers’ Readings are Free and Open to the Public.

9:00-9:30     Continental Breakfast and Welcome 

*If you have not purchased a breakfast ticket with your registration and would like breakfast, you may purchase a ticket at the registration desk.

[Doudna Concourse]

 9:30-10:10   Rachael Hanel Reading 

Free and Open to the Public

[Doudna Recital Hall]

10:20-11:10  Craft Talk with Creative Nonfiction Writer Rachael Hanel

“Time Is of the Essence—Chronology in Memoir”

[Doudna Lecture Hall]

11:20-12:00  CM Burroughs Reading 

Free and Open to the Public

[Doudna Recital Hall]

12:05-1:00    Lunch 

*If you have not purchased a lunch ticket with your registration and would like lunch, you may purchase a ticket at the registration desk.

[Doudna Concourse]

1:05-1:55       Craft Talk with Poet CM Burroughs

“Logic of the Eye”

[Doudna Lecture Hall]

2:00-2:45     Vu Tran Reading 

Free and Open to the Public

[Doudna Recital Hall]

2:55-3:45      Craft Talk with Novelist Vu Tran

“What Movies Can Teach Us As Writers”
[Doudna Lecture Hall]

4:00-5:00    Undergraduate & Graduate Student Reading 

Students from nearby universities come together to present their creative work. Free and Open to the Public. [Doudna Recital Hall]

5:05-6:00     Editors’ Panel Discussion

Hear the editors of featured journals talk about the submission process, literary citizenship, and helpful dos and don’ts.

[Doudna Lecture Hall]

The Lions in Winter Bookfair, including works by our featured writers, will run

from 9:30 AM to 12 Noon and from 2:00 to 4:00 PM, in the Doudna Concourse. 

Authors will be happy to sign books throughout the day’s activities.

Free and Open to the Public.

Lions in Winter Craft Talks

Craft Talks

Poetry: CM Burroughs 
Logic of the Eye 

How does a poet keep her reader stable when a poem’s narrative is nonlinear or difficult to discern? In these moments, the image can be a powerful tool. Burroughs  will demonstrate how you might lead a reader from your first line to your last using imagery as primary energy, and how to read poems that are grounded strongly in the logic of the eye.

Creative Nonfiction: Rachael Hanel
Time is of the Essence—Chronology in Memoir

In memoir the author must make decisions about chronology, whether the action takes place in a narrow time frame or spreads out over many years. An effective memoir doesn’t simply start at Point A and go straight through to end at Point Z. Instead, the story shifts back and forth from past to present, sometimes chapter by chapter but at other times it’s even as nuanced as paragraph by paragraph. This talk will examine how memoirists deal with the notion of time.

Fiction: Vu Tran 
What Movies Can Teach Us As Writers 

For better or for worse, movies affect the way we read and write fiction.  Many writers approach their work with a cinematographer’s eye and a screenwriter’s heart, but even for those who rarely watch movies and have no desire to write or see their work adapted for the screen, the language of cinema has already spent over a century seeping into the ways we tell stories on the page.  How has it degraded the art of fiction, and how has it enhanced and expanded the art?  What cinematic impulses do we knowingly and unknowingly bring to our work, and how might we learn from and take advantage of those impulses, the bad as well as the good?  In this talk, we’ll consider all these questions, including the most important one of all: what can literature do that cinema cannot?

Lions in Winter Literary Festival Includes Film Writing

Featured Writers

Lions in Winter is a full-day literary festival that includes author readings, craft talks by featured writers in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, an editors panel, a book fair, and more. Readings are free and open to the public.  All craft talks with authors require registration. Registration also includes continental breakfast and lunch.

CM Burroughs is Assistant Professor of Poetry at Columbia College Chicago. Her book of poems The Vital System is published by Tupelo Press. Burroughs has been awarded fellowships and grants from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, Djerassi Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Cave Canem Foundation, Callaloo Writers Workshop, and the University of Pittsburgh. She has received commissions from the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Warhol Museum to create poetry in response to art installations. Her poetry has appeared in journals including Poetry, Callaloo, jubilat, Ploughshares, VOLT, Bat City Review, Best American Experimental Writing 2015, and Volta. Burroughs is a graduate of Sweet Briar College, and she earned her MFA from the University of Pittsburgh.

Rachael Hanel is a writer and assistant professor of mass media in Mankato, Minnesota. Her memoir, We’ll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down: Memoir of a Gravedigger’s Daughter (2013, U of Minnesota Press), was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award. She has written several nonfiction books for children. Her essays have appeared in online and print literary journals such as Bellingham Review and New Delta Review. She is completing a PhD in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.

Vu Tran’s first novel is Dragonfish, a New York Times Notable Book and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. He is the winner of a Whiting Award, and his short stories have appeared in publications like the O. Henry Prize Stories and the Best American Mystery Stories. Born in Vietnam and raised in Oklahoma, Vu received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and his PhD from the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Practice in Creative Writing at the University of Chicago.

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Another Call for Papers: 6th International Symposium on Literature and Environment in East Asia

Deadline: February 26, 2018
Contact: Rachel Wang, Secretary General of ASLE-Taiwan
Email: asle.taiwan@gmail.com

6th International Symposium on Literature and Environment in East Asia

War and Peace: Militarism, Biopolitics and the Environment in East Asia

October 20-21, 2018
National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment in Taiwan (ASLE-Taiwan), in conjunction with the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Taiwan University, invites proposals for the 6th International Symposium on Literature and Environment in East Asia (ISLE-EA) to be held during October 20-21, 2018 at National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. The major theme of the 2018 symposium concerns the entanglement of militarism, biopolitics and the environment in East Asia. As 2018 marks the 70th anniversary of the divided Korea, it reminds us of the Pacific War, the Cold War, the war on terror, etc. that have assaulted East Asia. In The Birth of Biopolitics (2008; lectures given 1978-1979), Michel Foucault relates biopolitics to war: He states, “the principle underlying the technics of battle—that one has to become capable of killing in order to go on living—has become the principle that defines the state” (qtd. in Dillon and Neal, 2008, 10). This is a principle that weds eating/living to killing, peace to war. In the globalized war state, while we yearn for peace, we also live in the huge shadow of war, an everlasting presence. After World War II, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after the Korean War, after the shelling of Kinmen and Matsu, East Asia is now again a flash point that threatens to trigger a nuclear holocaust. We would like to ask, do war and peace define each other? Are they indeed twins? What are the environmental consequences, psychological as well as material, in East Asia, the region of our focus? In this context, we would like to invite proposals that explore the question of war and peace and the environment in East Asia, and beyond. Topics may include but are not limited to the following—

–Militarization and the environment in East Asia
–Militarized Islands in East Asia
–Military tourism in East Asia
–Nuclear bombing in East Asia
–Nature parks in East Asia
–Cold War ecocriticism
–Cold War landscapes and seascapes
–Cold War eco cinema
–Eco-tourism in DMZ
–Environmental politics
–War and nature
–Others

Proposals of 300 words should be sent using the ISLE-EA Submission Form to asle.taiwan@gmail.com by February 26, 2018. The membership in ASLE-Japan, ASLE-Korea, ASLE-Taiwan, or another ASLE affiliation is required to present a paper at the symposium. A US$100 registration fee is also required for presentation. The notification of acceptance will be sent by April 30, 2018.

For further inquiries, please contact—
Ms. Rachel Wang, Secretary General of ASLE-Taiwan
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
National Taiwan University
#1 Roosevelt Road Section 4
Taipei, Taiwan 10610
Email: asle.taiwan@gmail.com
Tel: 886-980-060-737 (Mobile)

Clockwork Green Call for Papers: Submissions Due on December 1

CFP: A Clockwork Green: Ecomedia in the Anthropocene

Posted on July 12, 2017

A Nearly Carbon Neutral Virtual SymposiumSponsored by the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment and the University of California, Santa Barbara

June 14-30, 2018

A troubling paradox lies at the heart of ecomedia studies: those of us who study and teach about the intersection of ecological issues and non-print media also recognize that the production, consumption, and circulation of media texts take a massive toll on the Earth’s environment, an issue well documented by media scholars. In other words, as ecomedia scholars and environmental filmmakers, we must admit that our own media production, consumption, and research practices — which are felt disproportionately across communities and cultures — make us complicit in the ever-escalating global environmental crisis. Yet if we are to better understand the vital role that film and media play in reflecting, responding to, and shaping public attitudes about the relationships between the human and non-human worlds, as well as different human communities, we must embrace this paradox. In this first-ever ASLE online symposium, we will collectively situate and define ecomedia studies and its relationship to environmental humanities, film and media studies, and cultural studies through a series of virtual presentations and conversations. While ecomedia will be our buzzword for the event, proposals on all aspects of environmental criticism are welcome.

In a May 2014 interview, deep-green activist Dan Bloom — arguably the first to use the term cli-fi for climate fiction and film — asserts, “I believe that cli fi novels and movies can serve to wake up readers and viewers to the reality of the Climapocalypse that awaits humankind if we do nothing to stop it” (Vemuri). Bloom’s claims echo those of Rahman Badalov, who declares of the Lumiere Brothers’ Oil Wells of Baku, “Blazing oil gushers make marvelous cinematographic material…. Only cinema can capture the thick oil bursting forth like a fiery monster.” But Badalov not only views these oil gushers as monstrous nature; he also notes the dual message of the view: to both condemn environmental degradation and entertain with spectacle (Murray/Heumann). Perhaps acknowledging this dual message is a way of “dwelling in the dissolve” or “performing exposure,” as Stacy Alaimo puts it. Alaimo asserts “performing exposure as an ethical and political act means to reckon with — rather than disavow — such horrific events and to grapple with the particular entanglements of vulnerability and complicity that radiate from disasters and their terribly disjunctive connection to everyday life in the industrialized world.” Environmental justice issues of gender, race, ability, class, and ethnicity are invariably exposed as part and parcel of the material networks of media. In the provocative essay “Ecocriticism and Ideology: Do Ecocritics Dream of a Clockwork Green?”, Andrew Hageman calls for “a practice of dialectical critique to read films for what they reveal to us about the contradictions within the culture, society, and ourselves that we readily recognize in such films.” We invite you to answer that call by examining any text or context broadly related to our symposium and join us for what we hope to be a unique, timely, and thoroughly enjoyable digital event.

Hageman asks, “What can film, given its ideological constraints, do to advance ecological knowledge, attitudes, and behavior?” In your presentations, we invite you to consider this and other questions, such as the following:

• How is ecomedia deployed by communities at the margins of traditional media practice and at the frontlines of environmental disaster?
• How are mainstream econarratives of gender, sexuality, race, etc. resisted and re-inscribed?
• How does the material impact of ecomedia (film, television, gaming, etc.) undermine or emphasize its message?
• How can ecomedia be useful in persuading resistant audiences?
• What strategies have worked (or not worked) in teaching ecomedia?
• What impact have comics, gaming, habitat dioramas, and other forms of ecomedia had on the field?
• What broad definitions of ecomedia can account for the wide range of forms it entails (more than just cinematic)?
• What broad definitions of ecomedia can account for a wide range of ecological alternatives, ideologies, or perspectives?
• How does ecohorror inform our understanding of ecomedia in this era of climapocalypse?
• How can re-reading historical ecomedia inform our understanding of past and/or current cultural climate?
• What cinematic strategies and practices best reflect various ecological ideologies?
• Can or should the focus be shifted away from the human in ecomedia?

Though the focus of the conference is ecomedia, ASLE and ASLE affiliate members will be welcome to present on a range of topics. We also encourage U.S. and international filmmakers and scholars to participate and encourage participants to meet together through local viewing/discussion groups on their home campuses.

Beyond a drastically lower carbon footprint, the nearly carbon neutral conference approach also is more inclusive of international scholars who may have funding or travel issues for a U.S.-based conference, is more inclusive of differently abled scholars who may have difficulty with physical accessibility and who may need closed captioning and/or audio screen readers, is open access after the conference window, can be used in classrooms, and has been proven to elicit more discussion than a traditional conference format. The conference is formatted as follows:

• Speakers record their own talks. This is typically A) a video of them speaking, generally filmed with a webcam or smartphone, B) a screen recording of a presentation, such as a PowerPoint, or C) a hybrid of the two, with speaker and presentation alternately or simultaneously onscreen.
• Talks are uploaded to the conference website where they can be viewed at any time during the conference timeframe. Talks are organized into panels (i.e. individual web pages) that generally have three speakers each and a shared Q&A session.
• Participants and panelists contribute to online Q&A sessions, which are similar to online forums, by posing and responding to written questions and comments.

We eagerly welcome international submissions, but please keep in mind the presentations should be in English or subtitled in English, and the Q&A will be in English. Also, please note that all talks will become part of a permanent conference archive open to the public.

Please submit abstracts of 300 words by December 1 to Christy Tidwell (christy.tidwell@gmail.com). Contact Christy Tidwell with questions about submissions and Bridgitte Barclay (bbarclay@aurora.edu) and/or Shannon Davies Mancus (shannonmancus@gmail.com) with questions about the conference more broadly.