Editorial introduction to The Goose Volume 15, Issue 1 (2016)

Di Battista, Amanda M.

Huebener, Paul

English

Wilfrid Laurier University

The GooseVolume 15 | No. 1 Article 608-31-2016Editor's NotebookAmanda M. Di BattistaFaculty of Environmental Studies, York UniversityPaul HuebenerAthabasca UniversityPart of the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Literature in English, North AmericaCommons, Nature and Society Relations Commons, and the Place and Environment CommonsFollow this and additional works at / Suivez-nous ainsi que d’autres travaux et œuvres:https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegooseThis article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Goose by anauthorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact scholarscommons@wlu.ca.Cet article vous est accessible gratuitement et en libre accès grâce à Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Le texte a été approuvé pour faire partie intégrantede la revue The Goose par un rédacteur autorisé de Scholars Commons @ Laurier. Pour de plus amples informations, contactezscholarscommons@wlu.ca.Recommended Citation / Citation recommandéeDi Battista, Amanda M., and Paul Huebener. "Editor's Notebook." The Goose, vol. 15 , no. 1 , article 60, 2016,https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/60.AMANDA DI BATTISTA and PAUL HUEBENER  Editor’s Notebook   Photo: Rachel Krebs   In June of 2016, ecocritics from across Canada and around the world gathered at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario for the fourth biennial ALECC conference. The conference theme, "Making Common Causes: Crisis, Conflict, Creation, Conversation," made space for discussions about the role of ecocriticism as a response to environmental crisis, particularly as it is enacted as part of a wider environmental commons. 1Di Battista and Huebener: Editor's NotebookPublished by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016While individual papers, panel discussions, and the excellent keynote speakers explored a wide range of ecocritical issues, it seemed as though questions of indigeneity, love of place, and embodied environmental knowledge were on the minds of all in attendance. With Canada's brutal history of colonial violence as exposed through The Truth and Reconciliation Commission fresh in our common consciousness and keynote speaker Bob Lovelace's invitation to "re-indigenize" ringing in our ears, conversations around the lunch table, in hallways, and in panel discussions circled around what re-indigenization might look like. Respect for indigeneity must involve an ongoing process of affirming the necessity of space and time for diverse Indigenous voices within scholarly and other communities. For those who do not come from Indigenous backgrounds themselves, attending to these voices must be a key concern as we ask what it might mean to attend to place with a commitment to indigenization. Meanwhile, how can scholars attend to a place such as a university campus with generosity and love within the current conditions of campus corporatization, chronic underfunding in the humanities, and increasing job precarity where many of us are struggling to put down roots? Can we turn to one another for guidance on how to live a good life, a placed life, personally and professionally, in the face of dire environmental crises and the constant demands of academic life? As we consider the matter of indigeneity in particular, let us start by acknowledging that the field of ecocriticism has far too often failed to serve as a widely inclusive community. The Goose is one place where we can speak out about this failure and begin to address it. Help us share the word that this journal wants to include more voices—that it should belong to everyone with a stake in how culture interacts with the environment. The contributors to Issue 15.1 of The Goose engage with many of the questions raised during the 2016 ALECC conference. They struggle with histories of colonial violence, act as witnesses to environmental loss, explore what it might mean to attend to nature or a place or even an element, and consider the role of art and science in understanding our world. Interestingly, all of the articles in this issue combine visual narratives with written ones, using mixed forms to express the complexity of their subject matter. The alarming pace of species extinctions is one of the defining characteristics of our time, and while we have no hope of developing a sense of the identities of most lost species, Daniel Hudon’s “Brief Eulogies for Lost Species” cracks open the door, giving us the beginnings of narratives for great auks, Lake Hadley sticklebacks, and other species whose own stories have been cut short. In her photo-memoir, “Tangled Roots, Bittersweet Exposure,” Chase Clow explores the troubled and knotty colonial past of the Pacheco Creek valley in California. With honesty, attentiveness, and love, Clow combines an appreciation of the land with questions about how to adequately confront her position as one of many settlers of this place. In “Searching Cézanne's Provence,” Robert Girvan traces his personal journey through the geographical, historical, and aesthetic landscapes of Cézanne's work. In his engagement with past and present experiences of the natural world—and a consideration of how we might 2The Goose, Vol. 15, No. 1 [2016], Art. 60https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol15/iss1/60experience the natural world through Cézanne's painting—Girvan grapples with the complicated and shifting relationships between art, nature, and affect. Finally, in her photo essay “Combustion,” Cate Sandilands uncovers the ways in which fire shapes our cultural worlds, our histories, and our everyday experiences. From woodstoves to wildfires, from controlled burns to Fort McMurray, Sandilands shows how we might rethink, and perhaps transform, our relationship to fire. What happens when science and poetry mix? Madhur Anand, an ecologist and poet whose book A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes was a finalist for the 2016 Trillium Book Award for Poetry, sits down for an interview with Alec Follett. Moving between the realms of poetic metaphor and ecological fieldwork, Anand discusses how we might approach the relationship between scientific and poetic forms of knowledge. This has been a busy year so far at The Goose. Our founding co-editor Lisa Szabo-Jones has stepped down to take a well-deserved break from the journal. Her sustained dedication to fostering the relationship between the environment and the arts over the past decade has helped to shape, and continues to inform, the larger community of the environmental humanities in Canada. Thank you, Lisa! Amanda Di Battista, who joined The Goose as reviews editor in 2013, has now stepped into the role of co-editor. Tempest Emery has taken on the reviews editor position and has assembled an excellent cluster of reviews for this issue. Camilla Nelson continues as poetry editor, and she introduces a robust selection of poetry in this issue. We also welcome two new members of our team: Dave Carruthers and Joey Maslen have joined The Goose as copy editors.  The contributors to this issue offer no easy suggestions for how we might attend to the world, just as the ALECC conference left us with many complex and pressing questions. They do, however, demonstrate their own deep attention to particular ways of understanding the world and, as is often the case in The Goose, they urge us to reflect on and reconsider our own ways of understanding and acting within our material, political, academic, and imagined worlds. We hope you enjoy the new issue.  AMANDA DI BATTISTA is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. Her research focuses on postsecondary environmental education and the role of literary engagement in college and university classrooms.  PAUL HUEBENER is an assistant professor of English at Athabasca University. His book Timing Canada: The Shifting Politics of Time in Canadian Literary Culture was a finalist for the 2015 Gabrielle Roy Prize. 3Di Battista and Huebener: Editor's NotebookPublished by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016

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