Please note the following call for papers for the RMMLA (Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association) Convention which will take place in Vancouver, WA on October 10-12, 2013. Please submit a proposal of 250 words and a brief bio to Géraldine Fiss (gfiss@usc.edu) by March 1, 2013. Notice of acceptance or rejection will be sent out on or before March 31, 2013. http://rmmla.wsu.edu/conferences

Eco-Aesthetics in Modern Chinese Literature and Film

This panel explores the ways in which modern and contemporary Chinese literary texts and films address, explore and negotiate the complex, often ambiguous relationships between human beings and the environment. How do creative works from China and Taiwan present contradictory interactions between people and the natural world? How do literary and visual texts address environmental degradation amid radically transforming ecosystems? How are human relationships with the non-human negotiated symbolically in literature and film, and how have these changed over time? What is the connection – and potential conflict – between individual attitudes toward the environment, classical Chinese cultural ideals concerning the interaction between nature and man, and the exigencies of modern national development? What is the role of cultural translation and China’s engagement with non-Chinese nations, ideas and texts in the evolution of thinking about environmental issues? What is the power of literary and cinematic stories in influencing people’s behavior, and what is uniquely powerful about the aesthetic strategies in Chinese fictional and cinematic texts?
Building upon recent scholarship in the fields of Chinese eco-aesthetics and eco-cinema, this panel seeks theoretically informed papers that further our understanding of how Chinese thinkers, fiction writers and film-makers creatively address and engage these problems in a variety of literary and visual genres. Interdisciplinary and comparative approaches are welcome.

Chair: Géraldine Fiss, University of Southern California (gfiss@usc.edu)
Alternate Chair: Hua Li, Montana State University (huali@montana.edu)