DECODINGS
Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts Newsletter
Spring 2025, Vol. 35, No.2
*SLSA 2025: Risk (Oregon State University, Corvallis)
*Travel Awards and NSF Travel Grants
*New Book Series: Proximities: Experiments in Nearness
*Call for Volunteer Ombudspersons
*Social Media & Website Redesign
*Policies:Respectful Behavior and Freedom of Speech
*AnthropoScene Book Series
*Configurations Book Reviews
*SLSA Europe
*Conference: SLSAeu 2025 “The Lifespan: Perspectives on Ageing”
SLSA 2025, “Risk,” August 21-24, 2025
Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR
https://slsa2025.org/
Program committee members Ray Malewitz, Tekla Beda, Surabhi Balanchander, and Evan Gottlieb have reviewed conference submissions and sent responses. A registration site will open soon at https://slsa2025.org/ Direct questions to Conference Chair: Raymond Malewitz, raymond.malewitz@oregonstate.edu OR to the
Conference email: SLSA.Conference@oregonstate.edu
To think in terms of risk is to imagine the future as a set of foreseeable possibilities and to ameliorate the potentially hazardous ones through action in the present. Distinct from danger, which is seen as inchoate and incalculable, risk carries with it the notion of statistical, probabilistic, or otherwise enumerated legibility, and the costs and benefits of prospective courses of action are given the narrative authority of mathematical language. But even as risk posits itself as a rational approach to considerations of the future, it ignores the mythology of its own construction: risk is, as its critics note, always a process of storytelling. Put slightly differently, risk management is not just a mathematical but also an affective exercise involving anxieties, fears, rational or irrational speculations, (dis)honorable activities, and ethical claims. Furthermore, the ways risk is managed – through techniques like data mapping and visualization, actuarial accounting, and insurance bands – help to create social – and not merely mathematical – perceptions about who, what, and where might be “risky.” Risk, therefore, is a discourse that constitutes subjects and is capable of perpetuating cycles of injustice and immiseration. https://slsa2025.org/
All SLSA2025 participants must be members of the society. To join or renew membership, see https://litsciarts.org/join-renew-membership/
SLSA Travel Awards
SLSA provides a limited number of travel awards for underfunded individuals attending the annual conference. Members of SLSA who present at the annual conference may apply for travel subventions by emailing their name, title of their SLSA presentation, an indication of how long one has been a member of SLSA, and any information about their funding for the conference to the Executive Director carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu by August 1. Please provide estimated travel expenses and the amount of support (if any) anticipated from other sources. If you have received travel support from SLSA in the past, please include information about that support (when and how much). SLSA officers will review applications and approve funds for as many as our budget permits; preference will be given to students and those most in need. Each person awarded funds will be presented with a US check at the conference business meeting. SLSA funds can be used to defray hotel, registration, transportation, or other travel expenses.
SLSA NSF Travel Grants
SLSA members who are US citizens or students enrolled in US institutions may apply for NSF funds at https://airtable.com/shruYZ97cFfzgp2ky by August 5. Recipients will also need to upload receipts and complete this form by August 31, 2025: https://airtable.com/shrcU9U7zoUk0vID8
Applicants must be independent scholars, artists, graduate students, or recent PhDs who are US citizens or who are enrolled in US institutions. Applications from members of historically excluded groups and from those without access to additional funds, for whom conference attendance would be financially difficult without the NSF travel grant, will be prioritized. SLSA NSF funds can only be applied to transportation to and from the conference and for conference registration. NSF funds can reimburse any airfare purchased on “flagship” carriers or codeshare via the Airline Open Skies agreement. For example, if one books on Delta but Virgin is the airline used, the receipt should show payment was made to Delta in order for the expense to be reimbursed. For more details about the Airline “Open Skies” agreement, see https://litsciarts.org/awards/
Awards: SLSA awards presented at the annual conference include the Bruns prize for the best unpublished graduate student essay and the Schachterle prize for the best published essay by an untenured scholar. Bruns submissions should be sent to Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal (ranjodhsingh.dhaliwal@ unibas.ch) by June 1, 2025, and Schachterle submissions should be sent to Carol Colatrella (carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu) by June 1, 2025.
SLSA Michelle Kendrick Memorial Book Prize: The Kendrick Book Prize competition will move to a new schedule in the coming year. The Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts holds an annual competition for the Michelle Kendrick Memorial Book Prize awarded each year to the best academic book on literature, science, and the arts published by an SLSA member. The prize will be announced at the annual SLSA conference
Established in the fall of 2006 in memory of Michelle Kendrick of Washington State University-Vancouver, an energetic, well-loved scholar of literature and science and long-time member of SLSA, the Kendrick Prize is open to any book of original scholarship on literature, science, and the arts published in the covered period for awarding in the following fall. The winner will receive $250.00.
Thanks are owed to Bob Markley and to all those who have judged entries for the prize since 2006. All judges, but especially Bob, have been extremely generous in reviewing books according to a tight schedule. To accord judges more time, the competition will in the coming year be based on chronological year.
If you already submitted a book published before June 2024, your work is already under consideration for the 2024 prize. A decision on the 2024 prize will be announced at the August 2025 SLSA meeting at Oregon State University. If you have already submitted a book published after June 2024, your book will be forwarded and included for consideration for the 2025 prize.
To submit a book published any time from June 2024 to December 2025 as an entry to the 2025 Kendrick Prize competition, you (or your publisher) should send three copies, along with a note that this book is being submitted for consideration for 2025 Kendrick Prize, by January 5, 2026, to:
Prof. Robert Mitchell, Department of English, Box 90015, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708
Donations for the Kendrick Prize (checks made out to SLSA, with Kendrick Prize in memo) can be sent to
Carol Colatrella, SLSA Executive Director, 580 Cresthill Ave., Atlanta GA 30306
The winner of the 2025 Kendrick Book Prize will be announced at the 2026 SLSA conference, dates TBD.
SLSA BOOK SERIES Proximities: Experiments in Nearness, from University of Minnesota Press
We are thrilled that the first volume of the Proximities Series—Microbial Resolution, by Gloria Chan-Sook Kim—is now published and available!
Adjacencies abound. We are past the moment of merely thinking in terms of how opposites attract and nodes network. Today, disciplines and fields move consciously proximate to one another, in conversation and growing together. Further, the future is no longer sometime in the distance, but appears near to us, often grasped as an impending horizon of political, social, economic, and environmental catastrophe. Now more than ever, so much is so close. See the Call for Proposals (https://litsciarts.org/proximitiesflyer.pdf) for more information.
Books in the Proximities series think proximately, that is, in disciplinary tandem, about the relationships within and between the arts, literature, and science, as well as how scholarship can best be in active dialogue with communities and the world around us today, and in the future. Published in association with the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, this series not only thinks across disciplines, but thinks about the continuities and crossings themselves, interrogating how and why their disciplinary proximities matter. Proximities publishes work that is crafted with nearness in mind: human nearness to one another and the world around us; nearness to one another’s thoughts; to our written and unwritten pasts; to critical trends and crises; to our futures ahead. This kind of scholarship powerfully catalyzes awareness of what it means to work interdisciplinarily by challenging assumptions about disciplinary thinking from the outside in, and the inside out. If interested in submitting a proposal, please contact the editors with a short description of your book project. Series Editors: David Cecchetto—York University (Toronto, Canada) dcecchet@yorku.ca and Arielle Saiber—Johns Hopkins University asaiber@jhu.edu
SLSA OMBUDSPERSONS: Any member interested in volunteering to serve as ombudsperson, should apply by emailing Carol Colatrella (carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu); include a short statement of why you are interested in serving in this role and what experience you can bring the position. Current officers will review applications to make appointments.
Each Ombudsperson is an impartial entity who strives to see that SLSA members and SLSA conference attendees are treated fairly and equitably. Any member/attendee can seek the advice of an Ombudsperson. The Ombudsperson is impartial, neutral, and confidential. The rights and interests of all parties to disputes are considered, with the goal of achieving fair outcomes.
The primary responsibilities of the Ombudsperson are:
Ombudspersons: Marcel O’Gorman marcel@uwaterloo.ca and Kari Nixon mkarinixon@gmail.com
SOCIAL MEDIA AND WEBSITE REDESIGN: Wayne Miller, Electronic Resources Coordinator (wayne.miller@gmail.com), asks for new images for the SLSA website homepage (litsciarts.org). Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal and Ed Chang are developing SLSA social media. SLSA members interested in contributing to social media on behalf of the society are encouraged to email Ed (change@ohio.edu) and Ranjodh (ranjodhsingh.dhaliwal@unibas.ch). Along with Adam Nocek, Wayne, Ranjodh, and Ed are working with a graphic professional to redesign the SLSA website.
POLICIES ADOPTED: Respectful Behavior and Freedom of Speech & Call for Ombudspersons
The updated policies are posted here:
ANTHROPOSCENE: This book series from Penn State University Press was published in collaboration with SLSA. While not all scientists have accepted the term “anthropocene” as part of the geological timescale, the idea that humans are changing the planet and its environments in radical and irreversible ways has provoked new kinds of cross-disciplinary thinking about relationships among the arts, human technologies, and nature. This is the broad, cross-disciplinary basis for books published in the series, which includes specialized studies for scholars in a variety of disciplines as well as widely accessible works of interest to broad audiences. Send questions to the SLSA liaison for the series, Pamela Gossin at psgossin@utdallas.edu or psgossin@gmail.com. Titles in the series appear here: https://www.psupress.org/books/series/book_SeriesAnthropoScene.html SLSA Member Discount from Penn State University Press: Use promo code NR21 for 30% off AnthropoScene titles purchased directly, plus free domestic shipping and discounts on foreign shipping! See https://www.psupress.org/emailassets/NR_SLSA_1021.html
Configurations Book Reviews: Jay Labinger, the Configurations book review editor, will publish around 10 reviews per year, of books–on any topic–that are likely to interest a wide cross-section of SLSA members and Configurations readers. If you wish to propose a book for review, please email Jay (jal@its.caltech.edu) the author/title/publisher, a very brief description and statement of why it merits being reviewed in Configurations, and whether you would like to do the review yourself or, if not, any suggestions you may have for appropriate reviewers. Authors are welcome to propose their own recent book for review, with the same info. Jay will post a list of books on litsci-l and ask anyone interested in reviewing one of them to respond to him. Look at an issue of Configurations to get an idea of the preferred length and style for reviews. After a reviewer has been matched with a book, Jay will ask for submission of the review within four months, and he will share the estimated date of publication.
The EUROPEAN Society for Literature, Science, and the Art is the sister organization of the international, USA-based Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. SLSAeu welcomes colleagues in the humanities, the social sciences, the arts, and all fields of science, medicine, engineering, and computer sciences as well as independent scholars, artists, and scientists. https://www.slsa-eu.org/. The last meeting of SLSAeu, hosted by the Center for Literature and Natural Science in Birmingham, was held April 10-12, 2024, in conjunction with the annual meeting of the British Society for Literature and Science (BSLS) and the biennial conference of the Commission on Science and Literature (CoSciLit). The 2025 conference “The Lifespan: Perspectives on Ageing and the Life Course from the Medical Humanities, the Health Sciences and Age Studies” will be held at King’s College London June 4-6, 2025:
https://www.slsa-eu.org/uploads/3/1/9/7/31971835/slsaeu_2025_save_the_date_25072024.pdf
SLSA EXECUTIVE BOARD (2025)
President: Rajani Sudan, Southern Methodist University (rsudan@mail.smu.edu)
Executive Director: Carol Colatrella, Georgia Institute of Technology (carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu)
First Vice-President: Adam Nocek, Arizona State University (Adam.Nocek@asu.edu)
Second Vice-President: Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal, University of Basel ranjodhsingh.dhaliwal@unibas.ch
Members-at-Large: Paula Leverage (2023-25), Shane Denson (2023-25), Nat Mengist (2024-26)
Graduate Student Liaisons: Elena Maloul (emaloul@umich.edu)
Configurations Editors: Melissa Littlefield, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Rajani Sudan,
Southern Methodist University. Configurations Email address: configurations@smu.edu
Configurations Book Review Editor: Jay Labinger, California Institute of Technology (jal@its.caltech.edu)
Publications Committee: Pamela Gossin; Raymond Malewitz; Bruce Clarke
Electronic Resources Coordinator: Wayne Miller (wayne.miller@gmail.com)
Arts Liaisons: Dennis Summers (dennis@quantumdanceworks.com); Maria Whiteman (mtw1@iu.edu)
Social Media Liaisons: Ed Chang (change@ohio.edu); Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal (ranjodhsingh.dhaliwal@unibas.ch)
Ombudspersons: Marcel O’Gorman (marcel@uwaterloo.ca); Kari Nixon (knixon@whitworth.edu)
Past Presidents: David Cecchetto, York University, Toronto; Marcel O’Gorman, University of Waterloo; Ron Broglio, Arizona State University; Robert Markley, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Laura Otis, Emory University; Richard Nash, Indiana University; Alan Rauch, University of North Carolina-Charlotte; Bruce Clarke, Texas Tech University; Eve Keller, Fordham University; Jay Labinger, California Institute of Technology; T. Hugh Crawford, Georgia Tech; Susan Squier, Penn State; Sidney Perkowitz, Emory University; Stuart Peterfreund, Northeastern University; James J. Bono, SUNY-Buffalo; N. Katherine Hayles, Duke University; Mark Greenberg, Drexel University; Lance Schachterle, Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Stephen J. Weininger, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
The Executive Director can be reached at (404) 894-1241 or carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu.
Postal address: Carol Colatrella, Executive Director, SLSA, School of Literature, Media, and
Communication, Georgia Institute of Technology, 686 Cherry Street, Atlanta, GA 30332-0165
SLSA websites: http://www.litsciarts.org and http://slsa.press.jhu.edu
