ASLE EcoCast Podcast

In this month's episode, we spoke with Sarah Dimick about her new book Unseasonable: Climate Change in Global Literatures. It connects literature and the environment through an idea of seasonality and rhythm. Climate change can be understood as a time of unseasonableness, of environmental events and cycles being outside normal rhythms of time. Living today is defined by this arrhythmia, and Sarah charts new territory in studying literature for its reflections of this cyclicality, what she calls literary phenology.   For more from Sarah Dimick:   Email: sarah.dimick@northwestern.edu   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)!   Episode recorded January 30, 2025   CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Today's episode begins a slight turn toward ecoaesthetics in the next few episodes, and we begin with Carolyn Fornoff's new book Subjunctive Aesthetics: Mexican Cultural Production in the Era of Climate Change (2024). Carolyn spoke to us about subjunctivity, a grammatical mood characterized by hypotheticals, and how its imaginative style has sprouted up in recent Mexican film, activism, and texts not to depict climate change in an "evidentiary" sense (a typical narrative style of eco-literature and scholarship to highlight society's quantifiable effect on the environment) but in a more conditional and conjectural sense of possibility. What might the future hold, and what might be done about it?   For more from Carolyn:   Website: https://carolynfornoff.wordpress.com/ Bluesky: @c4.noff.bsky.social   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)!   Episode recorded December 12, 2024. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In the final episode of our extinction series, we chatted with two extinction biologists, Hope Sutton and Sara Schweitzer, who work for the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. Sara is the assistant chief and wildlife diversity program director and Hope is the eastern wildlife diversity supervisor. We discussed their challenges in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Asheville and their triumphs in the successful rehabilitation of some of the more than 100 endangered animals under their purview! While their work is field-focused, they remind us that the stories told about the animals are extremely important to influence public support for the species.   For more on Sara and Hope, go to Ncwildlife.org, where the organization publishes quarterly reports.   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer   If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)! Episode recorded December 16, 2024. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In this second episode of our ongoing extinction series, we sit down with Jean-Thomas Tremblay and Steven Swarbrick to discuss their thought-provoking co-written manuscript, Negative Life: The Cinema of Extinction. Our conversation with them touches not only on the concrete topics of extinction and cinema, but also explores the theoretical potential of negations and contradictions as frameworks for understanding the relationship (or not) between humans and the more-than-human world.    For more from Jean-Thomas and Steven:   https://jeanthomastremblay.carrd.co/ https://www.stevenswarbrick.com/   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette Alex Tischer: @ak_tischer If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)! Episode recorded September 26, 2024. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

In this first episode of our extinction series, we met with Todd May to discuss his new book Should We Go Extinct? A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Times. This massive question is accessibly analyzed yet Todd also brings in issues underdiscussed in extinction discourse: Who is the inexact "we" behind the question, how do different humans contribute to ecological crisis and therefore human and nonhuman extinction, and what is the role of art in deciding whether humanity's existence should continue? Instead of concluding on one side or the other, Todd finds asking the question of humanity's extinction itself is a productive thought experiment for ourselves and our community.   For more on Todd May: Website: https://www.toddmayphilosopher.com/ Email: todd-may@warren-wilson.edu   Todd's Reading Recommendation: The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration by Peter Goldie (2002).   ASLE EcoCast: If you have an idea for an episode, please submit your proposal here: https://forms.gle/Y1S1eP9yXxcNkgWHA   Twitter: @ASLE_EcoCast Lindsay Jolivette: @lin_jolivette If you’re enjoying the show, please consider subscribing, sharing, and writing reviews on your favorite podcast platform(s)! Episode recorded September 18, 2024. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0