Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada

2024 Biennial Conference: Migrations
19-22 June, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario

The 2024 Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada (ALECC) biennial conference takes migrations as its theme as it seeks new ways of comprehending and responding to the complexity of migration in the past, present, and future. Migrations, in its plural register, is understood expansively, recognizing its many forms and the modes of unevenly distributed power that shape migrant experiences, whether human or otherwise. We understand migration not only as a consistent theme in planetary human and more-than-human history, but also as a phenomenon that is historically interconnected and shaped.

Our host site, Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, is located on the shared traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishnaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples, which is part of the Dish with One Spoon Treaty between the Haudenosaunee and Anishnaabe peoples. This Treaty symbolizes the agreement to share and protect our resources, and not to engage in conflict.

The 2024 ALECC conference hosts thoughtful responses to interactions between literal and figurative more-than-human and human migrations. Submissions are welcome on the proposed theme and other related areas of interest from artists, creative writers, and scholars in the environmental arts and humanities, and migration studies, broadly defined.