Mission Statement

ASLE-ASEAN is an affiliate of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE). ASLE-ASEAN is formed in ASEAN, the regional Association of South-east Asian Nations.

The ASEAN region – comprised of nations with varying degrees of ecological awareness and in different stages of development – is proud of its diverse cultures and ecologies. However, it is also aware of the vulnerability of the region, having survived the Tsunami and subsequent El Niño typhoons—to name only a few disasters precipitated by climate change and global warming in the past decades. The people of ASEAN, therefore, feel the urgent need to come together to examine various ecological issues in a systematic way from a scholarly perspective.

ASLE-ASEAN provides a useful platform to facilitate dialogue between academics, scholars from ecological humanities and ecocritics from different nations within ASEAN. Members will give voice to the multiple perspectives necessary to calibrate the ongoing interactions between humans and non-humans. Accordingly, we focus on areas such as climate change, biodiversity-depletion, ecojustice and related themes through the critical analysis of literature, art, film, music and popular culture, both local and global.