Biennial Conference

ASLE 2025 Biennial Conference

Collective Atmospheres: Air, Intimacy, and Inequality

July 8-11, 2025
University of Maryland, College Park,
ancestral lands of the Piscataway People

ASLE 2025 CFP (Deadline has passed)

All submitters will be informed of the status of their proposals by February 27, 2025.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

• Hsuan Hsu, author of The Smell of Risk: Atmospheric Disparities and the Olfactory Arts, and Air Conditioning
• Craig Santos Perez, winner of the 2023 National Book Award for poetry
• JT Roane, author of Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place in Philadelphia, and co-leader of the Black Ecologies Lab at Rutgers
• Kaia Sand, poet, activist, and Executive Director of Street Roots (Portland, OR)
• Nerea Calvillo, architect and author of Aeropolis: Queering Air in Toxicpolluted Worlds (virtual keynote)

Our Sponsors

If you wish to sponsor, exhibit, or advertise at the conference, please see our Sponsors, Exhibitors and Advertisers Prospectus for details.

Pre-Conference Workshops

As we have in the past, we will hold a number of pre-conference workshops on important and emerging topics that reflect the diversity of our approaches and our membership. These workshops will be held on the morning of Tuesday, July 8, prior to the start of general sessions in the afternoon.  Anyone can sign up for a workshop during the conference registration process for an additional $20 fee; limit 15 persons per workshop.

The 2025 in-person workshops are:

• Bridging the Gap with Scientists, led by Heidi Scott and Alaina Gallagher
• Plant Breathing and Ecocrip Respirations: Planting Disabled Futures, led by Petra Kuppers and Orchid Tierney
• Public EH: A practicum in place-based, community-engaged collaboration, led by Allison Carruth and Bethany Wiggin
• Tending the Plant Humanities, led by Aubrey Streit Krug and Megan Kaminski
• Wikipedia, Academia, and ASLE: Research Methodology for Combating Injustice & Harm in Online Knowledge Repositories, led by Kyle Keeler
• Writing From a Changing Place, led by Tamara Dean
• Writing Toward Nature, led by Miranda Schmidt 

The 2025 virtual workshops are:

• Storytelling in the EH (environmental humanities) classroom, led by Jai (Zai) Apate
• Tropospheric Materialities, Led by May Joseph and Sofia Varino

2025 Travel Awards

ASLE will make a small number of $500 travel awards available, as we have at past conferences. The purpose of the travel award is to substantively support members who are in precarious employment or students, who lack institutional funding, and who can reasonably demonstrate that an award will make attending the conference possible. Relatedly, the awards support members whose presence contributes to ASLE’s mission of “promoting equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility on behalf of the membership.” Applications for these awards will open in late .February.

Dates and Deadlines 

• All proposals for pre-formed panels, individual presentations that are part of pre-formed panels, and individual presentations or readings must be submitted via Pheedloop by the extended deadline of 11:59pm PST on January 10, 2025. Any proposals for presentations in pre-formed panels that are not accepted for the conference will automatically be considered as individual presentations. 
• If you submitted a proposal but discover you can no longer attend the conference, please inform the organizer of your panel (if relevant) and ASLE of withdrawal asap, and by January 30, 2025, if possible. 
• We will evaluate all proposals carefully and notify people of whether their proposal has been accepted by February 27, 2025. 

For questions about submitting, please contact us at 2025asleconf@gmail.com. 

Conference Location

As environmental humanists, we recognize that in-person meetings such as the ASLE conference are largely made possible by fossil fuels and thereby contribute to climate change. Guided by the goals outlined in the 2020-2026 ASLE Strategic Plan, we selected this conference site due to its relative proximity to the majority of ASLE members as well as its connectivity to interstate rail transit. Additionally, College Park is located on the Green Line of the DC light rail metro system, and we encourage attendees to utilize it when possible. The stop is about a mile from campus. https://www.wmata.com/rider-guide/stations/college-park.cfm#

The nearby area boasts several projects and landmarks of interest, including ECO City Farms, the Hyattsville Food Forests, the Rachel Carson House, and the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal. As per tradition, the conference will include field trips to such sites, as well as a local “cultural crawl.”   

The University of Maryland, College Park is the state’s flagship university, located just outside Washington, D.C.  One of the nation’s preeminent public research universities with an enrollment nearly 41,000, UMD has a commitment to environmental and social values, such as the programs, projects, and events offered through the Office of Sustainability’s SustainableUMD network and the School of Public Policy’s Do Good Institute.