The Ecology of Utopia:
Ecological Concerns and Utopianism in American
Culture
PROGRAM
Updated 29th June 2010
THURSDAY, September 23
09:00 - 10:00 Registration and Conference Welcome
10:00 - 11:30 Plenary Session, Scott SLOVIC (Studies in Literature and Environment University of Nevada, Reno): "The Edge of Ecotopia"
11:30 - 11:45 Break
11:45 - 13:15 Panel 1: Ecology and the Ethnic Other

David H. Evans – “She said the whole world could be seen from here”: Ecotopia
and Epic Vision in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony.

Silvia Martínez Falquina – Avatars and Indians: Colonial Discourse in 21st Century
Ecotopia.

Alexa Weik – Seeing the Other: Ecotopian Vision and Environmental Citizenship in
James Cameron’s Avatar.
13:15 - 15:30 Lunch Break
15:30 - 17:00 Panel 2: Ecofeminist approaches

Ana Mª Cotelo Cancela – Belle: Woman and Nature in Linda Hogan’s Mean Spirit.

Carolina Núñez Puente – Sometopias: Southern Ecofeminism in a Globalized
World.

Inna Suhenko & Mariya Lykashenko – Utopia Needs Borders? How to Avoid
National Environmental Stereotypes.
17:00 - 17:15 Break
17:15 - 18:45 Panel 3: Utopianism and the American Pastoral

Miriam Fernández-Santiago – Edenism and Utopianism in Writings and Rewritings
of Eighteenth-Century Exploration Journals.

Tom Kinnahan – Environmental Utopianism and the American Georgic: An
Ecocritical Study of Timothy Dwight’s Greenfield Hill (1794).

Sara A. Mazzolini – Wilderness is the Beginning of Holiness: The Numinousness of
the Word in Gary Snyder’s Poetry.
18:45 - 19:00 Break
19:00 - 20:15 Screening and discussion: “The Practice of the Wild”
FRIDAY, September 24
9:30 - 11:00 Panel 4: Dystopia

Yehia Kamel El-Sayed – The Dystopian Tradition in the Contemporary
Novel.

María Laura Arce Álvarez – Dystopia and Urban Landscapes in Paul
Auster’s In the Country of the Last Things.

Juan Manuel Castro Carracedo – From Apocalyptic Hysteria to Apocalyptic
Amnesia: Obliterating Ecological Accounts as an Effective Strategy in
American Apocalyptic Literature.
11:00 - 11:15 Break
11:15 - 12:45 Plenary Session, Lucy SARGISSON (Politics - University of Nottingham):
"Climate Change and Utopia in the Twenty-First Century"
12:45 - 13:00 Break
13:00 - 14:15 Panel 5: Ecotopian Spaces and Technologies

Daniel Ogden – “But Would You Really Like to Live There?”

Mª Jesús de Teresa Paredes – Searching for Utopia in the American
Southwest Desert
14:15 - 16:15 Lunch Break
16:15 - 17:30 Panel 6: Ecocritical Readings of American Fiction

Aitor Ibarrola – David Guterson’s The Other: A Failed Attempt at Escaping
“the Unhappiness Machine”

Yen-Hung Chen – Utopian Indifference and Epistemological Aporia: The
Eco-Pehenomenological Reading of Don DeLillo’s White Noise
17:30 – 17:45 Break
17:45 – 19:00 Panel 7: Utopian Sci-Fi
21:00

Ángel Mateos-Aparicio – Ecology, Utopia, and the American Frontier Myth:
The Case of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy.

Alexa Weik – Ecotopian Citizenship and Community in Kim Stanley
Robinson’s Pacific Edge.
Dinner: Utopia Restaurant (final price: 26€) CLICK HERE FOR MORE
INFORMATION
SATURDAY, September 25
9:45 - 11:15
Panel 8: Environmental Activism

Christian Hummelsund Voie – Engagement, “the Germinating Instance”
and the Landscapes of Hope and Fear In American Nature Writing

Elena Clemente – Ecotopia in Space

Juan José Varela Tembra – Approaching Environmental Literary Education
in the 21st Century
11:15 - 11:30 Break
11:30 - 13:00
Plenary Session, José Eduardo PACHECO BARREIROS REIS (Letras, Artes
e Comunicaçao - Universidad de Tràs-os-Montes e Alto Douro): "Science
in Utopia-Utopia in Science"
13:00 - 14:30 Lunch Break
14:30 - 21:00 Visit to Santiago de Compostela (free): CLICK HERE FOR MORE
INFORMATION