Special Guests

Keynote speaker:

Scott Slovic moved to the University of Idaho in 2012 after teaching for 17 years at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he helped to create the prominent graduate program in literature and environment and develop the Academy for the Environment and the undergraduate environmental studies program. He has published more than 200 articles, interviews, and reviews and is the author, editor, or co-editor of 22 books, including "Going Away to Think: Engagement, Retreat, and Ecocritical Responsibility" (2008), "Nature and the Environment" for EBSCO/Salem Press’s Critical Insights Series (2012), a second edition of the textbook "Literature and the Environment" (2013), and "Ecoambiguity, Community, and Development: Toward a Politicized Ecocriticism" (2014). His latest books include "Ecocriticism of the Global South," "Currents of the Universal Being: Explorations of the Literature of Energy," and "Numbers and Nerves: Information, Emotion, and Meaning in a World of Data," among others.

Scott served as the founding president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) from 1992 to 1995, and since 1995 has edited the journal ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. He currently serves on the editorial board of thirteen scholarly journals and two book series in the United States and abroad, and in recent years has been a Fulbright National Screening Committee member for the Institute of International Education (IIE) and a panelist in American studies and American literature for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). He has been a Fulbright Scholar in Germany (University of Bonn, 1986-87), Japan (University of Tokyo, Sophia University, and Rikkyo University, 1993-94), and China (Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, 2006) and has been a visiting professor at many universities around the world.

Invited speaker:

Julia Fiedorczuk (b. 1975) is a poet, fiction writer, translator and lecturer in American literature. She has published five volumes of poetry the most recent of which is "tuż-tuż" (Wrocław, 2012) as well as a collection of short stories ("Poranek Marii i inne Opowiadania", 2010) and a novel ("Biała Ofelia", 2010). Her poems have been translated into many languages (including Welsh and Japanese). She is the recipient of the PTWK award for the best first book of the year (Poznań, 2003) and the Hubert Burda Preis (Wienna, 2005). She has translated the work of many American poets, including Wallace Stevens, John Ashbery and Forrest Gander. She has also published a two-volume selection of writings by Laura (Riding) Jackson and - with Laurie Anderson - "Język przyszłości", a collection of Anderson's short narratives with the author's illustrations (Wrocław, 2012). She has taken part in many international literary festivals and has been part of an international project Metropoetica: Women Writing Cities. In addition to academic papers, she has also written articles on animal rights for "Przekrój" and is a regular contributor to the feminist magazine "Zadra". Her academic interests include 20th century American poetry, literary theory, ecocriticism and feminism. She is a member of ASLE (Association for the Study of Language and the Environment). Recently she has published "Cyborg w ogrodzie: wprowadzenie do ekokrytyki" (Cyborg in the Garden: An Introduction to Ecoriticism), "Złożoność nie jest zbrodnią. Szkice o amerykańskiej poezji modernistycznej postmodernistycznej", and the novel "Nieważkość."