Conference Program

We are pleased to announce dates and times for all Conference on Ecopoetics panels, roundtables, and seminars. The full conference program is available for download here.

Friday, Feb. 22

2-4 p.m.
Conference Advisory Board Roundtable on Ecopoetics

Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Forrest Gander, Lynn Keller, Jonathan Skinner, Michael Ziser

4:30-6:30 p.m.

Editing the Book of Nature: New Anthologies of Ecopoetics

Joshua Corey, Camille Dungy, Laura-Gray Street, Ann Fisher-Wirth

Precarity, Neoliberalism, Late Capitalism

Rachel Greenwald Smith, Matthew O'Malley, Andrea Actis, Nicky Tiso, Miriam Nichols, Marthine Satris

The Troping of Ecopoetic Form

Lauren Brozovich, Matthew Cooperman, George Hart, Joshua Schuster, Heidi Lynn Staples, Clara Van Zanten

"We have left our broken house in ecstasy": Ecopoetics Through Travel
Charles Alexander, Diana Arterian, Jenny Browne, Todd Fredson, Andy Meyer, Laura Moriarty, Sarah Vap

Saturday, Feb. 23

8-10 a.m.
The Book, Ecopoetic Instrument

Richard Greenfield, Brenda Iijima, Jared Stanley, Tyrone Williams

Embodied Ecopoetics

Sean Dempsey, Scott Knickerbocker, Katherine R. Lynes, Richard Cole, Matthias Regan

Geopoetics: Thinking Landscapes/Landscaping Thought in German Literature

Jason Groves, Tove Holmes, Bernhard Malkmus

Groundworks: A Collaborative Lab
Jolie Kaytes, Laura Mullen, Linda Russo, Hazel White

(Im)Permeable Matter: Rocks, Stones, Minerals

Tim Cresswell, Rob Halpern, Jasmine Kitses, CJ Martin

10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.

Emergency, Ethics, Ecopoetics: 21st Century Ecopoetry’s Efficacies

Brenda Hillman, Angela Hume, Lynn Keller, Myung Mi Kim

Field Laboratory for Esoteric Ecologies

Kathleen Brown, Adam Dickinson, a.rawlings, Erin Robinsong, Jonathan Skinner

Historical Ecopoetics
Mark Cladis, Carolyn Dekker, Rachel Feder, James Finley, Rebecca Porte

New World Ecopoetics

Anny Dominique Curtius, George Handley, Juliana Leslie, Jorge Marcone, Fenn Elan Stewart, Mac J. Wilson

2-4 p.m.

Chinese Ecoaesthetics

Ronald Egan, Chris Tong, Yiman Wang, Winnie Yee

Ecopoetics of the City

Lara Durback, Pablo Guardiola, Evan Kennedy, Lauren Levin, Michael Nicoloff, Nico Peck, Kathryn Pringle, Yosefa Raz, Barbara Jane Reyes, Wendy Trevino, Stephen Vincent, Alli Warren

Ecopoetics and/as Coexistence

Gwenola Caradec, David Gilcrest, Grant Jenkins, John Shoptaw, John Sitter, Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor

Environmental Dreamscapes and the Heedless Sublime

Nathan Brown, Jed Rasula, Evelyn Reilly, Brian Teare

Poetic Labor

Anne-Lise Francois, Gillian Osborne, Joanna Picciotto, Samia Rahimtoola

4:30-6:30 p.m.

The Ecopoetics of Film

Peter Burghardt, Forrest Gander, Rusty Morrison, Joshua Marie Wilkinson

Illness, Landscape, Healing

Margit Galanter, Petra Kuppers, Juliette Lee, Neil Marcus, Eleni Stecopoulos

Molecules, Microbes, Parasites

Tania Aguila-Way, Karen Andrade, Bo Earle, Megan Fernandes, Charlie Legere

Pacific Ecopoetics

Elizabeth Deloughrey, Dina El Desouky, kuʻualoha hoʻomanawanui, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, Brandy McDougall, Craig Santos Perez

The Thingness of Things: Connecting with the Culture’s Material Trace

Allison Cobb, Alicia Cohen, Jennifer Coleman, CA Conrad, Jen Hofer, Kaia Sand

Sunday, Feb. 24

8-10 a.m.
(De)composition
Stephen Collis, Stephen Cope, Kevin McGuirk, Camilla Nelson, Michael Ziser

Garden, Farm, Poetic Form
Sonnet L'Abbe, Louis Kirk McAuley, Stephen Motika, Michelle Niemann

Queering Ecopoetics: Hybridity, Ferality, Eroticism
Seminar moderated by Anne-Lise Francois

Michelle Detorie, Julia Drescher, Arielle Greenberg, Abby Hagler, Sarah de Leeuw, Dana Maya, Art Middleton, Alyce Miller, Sarah Nolan, Eric Sneathen

Ground Scores: Unburying Ecologies through Embodied Practice
David Buuck, Jen Hofer, Seung-Jae Lee, Rachel Levitsky, Ira Livingston, Jennifer Scappettone, Kathy Westwater

10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.

The Ghost in the (Drum) Machine: Tracking Remix, Reuse, and Return in Contemporary Ecopoetics

Joshua Bennett, Lisa Brown, Katy Didden, Ross Gay, Judith Goldman, Patrick Rosal

Ecopoetics and Affect
Seminar moderated by Charles Altieri

Caleb Beckwith, Dianne Chisholm, Sarah Dimick, Damon Franke, Anna Hiller, Cate Lycurgus, Laurel Peacock, Lisa Sewell, Mande Zecca

Ecopoetics, Object Relations, and Object-Oriented Ontology

Seminar m
oderated by Nathan Brown

Anthony Camara, Duskin Drum, Julia Fiedorczuk, Devin King, Sarah Lewison, Eileen Myles, Tze-Yin Teo

Elegy, Mourning, Melancholia
John Beer, Catherine Owen, Margaret Ronda, Russell Stone

Conference Registration

Registration for the Conference on Ecopoetics is now closed to the public.

Please note, however, that there are three readings—on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights—which are free and open to the public.

We have closed registration because we have reached capacity and we simply cannot accommodate any greater number of attendees, given our space, resource, and budgetary constraints. We have worked to be as accommodating and inclusive as possible while also respecting our responsibility to our hosts, the English Department at UC Berkeley, whose facilities are limited.

Our hope is that this gathering of environmentally minded poets, academics, artists, and activists will be the first of more to come.

Excursions


Friday, Feb. 22, 8 to 11 a.m.

We invite all participants to sign up for one of the following excursions. (You will be prompted to select your excursion at the registration page; however, excursion sign-up is entirely optional.) Excursions with an asterisk (*) take place off campus and may entail a nominal transportation fee (to be determined and collected later). Note: some excursions will run longer than three hours while others will run under, starting later in the morning.

The Aeolian Marsh: An Embodied Poem*

Artist Megan Berner and poet Jared Stanley will lead an excursion/embodied poem at Arrowhead Marsh in Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline Park. The poem will be sewn on ten handmade flags, its words interacting with marsh, wind, and smell. This poem evokes questions about the political implications of memory and marking territory. More broadly, the poem asks whether ecology, ecotone, touch, and language can make an environmental poem, a poem "in" place.

Buried Treasure Island: A Tour and Workshop*
David Buuck, founder of BARGE (The Bay Area Research Group in Enviro-aesthetics), will facilitate a site-specific workshop on Treasure Island, combining elements from "Buried Treasure Island: a detour of the future" (produced for the 2008 Bay Area Now Biennial, a cross-genre "guidebook," gallery installation, audio podcast tour, and guided tour and performance) with hands-on discussions of research, writing, and methodology for urban ecopoetics. Rather than a conventional walking tour, where "ecology" is the thing we look at or for, BARGE practices an embodied engagement with both the materials of the vernacular environment as well as our own production as mediating writers and citizens. (Note: transportation time is one hour round trip.)

Guided Walk with Naturalist David Lukas
Join California naturalist David Lukas for a light, educational hike in/around the UC Berkeley campus' Strawberry Canyon.

Helping Networks: Helping Dances: A Participatory Performance Action
Join artists and activists Petra Kuppers and Neil Marcus in a participatory performance that enacts disability culture and interdependence. In somatic flow, participants will activate thoughts and emotions about the network of helper economies that we create for ourselves, bringing helpers, both human and other-than-human, into the circle, and relating these experiences to issues of class, age, ethnicity, race, disability, humanity, animality, spirituality, and sexuality.

Inanimate Subjects: A Video Screening with Music
Artist and poet Catherine Taylor will present video and music on/around military and surveillance drones and the politics of landscape. At issue are ideas about autonomy, geography, violated boundaries, vertiginous perspectives, the altered soundscapes of surveillance zones, and the radical alteration of the human relationship to the sky.

Point Reyes National Seashore Hike*
Experience wilderness in West Marin’s Point Reyes National Seashore. Excursion leaders Mairi Pileggi and Nicola Pitchford will tailor this coastal hike to the needs and interests of participants. The hike features time for reflection and on-site writing. Sponsored by the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin and the School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences of Dominican University of California. (Note: transportation time is three hours round trip; participants will leave at 7 a.m. and not return to Berkeley until 1 p.m. Coffee and pastries are provided.)

Urban Farm Tour*
Visit a Berkeley urban farm, Urban Adamah, which grows a variety of fruits and vegetables and also raises chickens and bees, distributing all produce to members of the community most in need. Learn about the farm's gardening and community education initiatives, and afterward, join other participants in a conversation about dwelling, community, sustainability, and privilege. Coordinated by Will Elliott.

Sunday Lunch and Service Project

Stella Nonna Boxed Lunches

Sunday, Feb. 24, 1:30 p.m.

Participants may pre-order a Stella Nonna boxed lunch. Boxed lunches will be served Sunday after closing events and before the service project. Each lunch includes a sandwich, side salad, a sweet, and a Hansen Natural soda.

Strawberry Creek Preservation Service Project 
Sunday, Feb. 24, 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. 
At the end of the weekend, spend time outside with fellow conference participants and contribute to a longstanding restoration effort to monitor and improve the water quality of Strawberry Creek and its surrounding habitats. This service project takes place on the UC Berkeley campus and is coordinated by Hilary Kaplan.