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Ecocriticism
Basura
Cultures of Waste in Contemporary SpainWhat makes trash trash? How do we decide what to throw away? Driven by these questions and others, Samuel Amago takes us through the streets and alleys of Spain, sorting through recycling bins, libraries, social media, bookstores, and message boards in search of things that have been forgotten,... More
Narrating the Mesh
Form and Story in the AnthropoceneA hierarchical model of human societies’ relations with the natural world is at the root of today’s climate crisis; Narrating the Mesh contends that narrative form is instrumental in countering this ideology. Drawing inspiration from Timothy Morton’s concept of the "mesh" as a metaphor for the... More
Magnificent Decay
Melville and EcologyWhat is Melville beyond the whale? Long celebrated for his stories of the sea, Melville was also fascinated by the interrelations between living species and planetary systems, a perspective informing his work in ways we now term "ecological." By reading Melville in the context of nineteenth-century... More
New Woman Ecologies
From Arts and Crafts to the Great War and BeyondA transatlantic phenomenon of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the "New Woman" broke away from many of the constraints of the Victorian era to enjoy a greater freedom of movement in the social, physical, and intellectual realms. As Alicia Carroll reveals, the New Woman also played... More
Of Land, Bones, and Money
Toward a South African EcopoeticsThe South African literature of iimbongi, the oral poets of the amaXhosa people, has long shaped understandings of landscape and history and offered a forum for grappling with change. Of Land, Bones, and Money examines the shifting role of these poets in South African society and the ways in which... More
Evergreen Ash
Ecology and Catastrophe in Old Norse Myth and LiteratureNorse mythology is obsessed with the idea of an onrushing and unstoppable apocalypse: Ragnarok, when the whole of creation will perish in fire, smoke, and darkness and the earth will no longer support the life it once nurtured. Most of the Old Norse texts that preserve the myths of Ragnarok... More
Italy and the Environmental Humanities
Landscapes, Natures, EcologiesBringing together new writing by some of the field’s most compelling voices from the United States and Europe, this is the first book to examine Italy--as a territory of both matter and imagination--through the lens of the environmental humanities. The contributors offer a wide spectrum of... More
Recomposing Ecopoetics
North American Poetry of the Self-Conscious AnthropoceneIn the first book devoted exclusively to the ecopoetics of the twenty-first century, Lynn Keller examines poetry of what she terms the "self-conscious Anthropocene," a period in which there is widespread awareness of the scale and severity of human effects on the planet. Recomposing Ecopoetics... More
Building Natures
Modern American Poetry, Landscape Architecture, and City PlanningIn Building Natures, Julia Daniel establishes the influence of landscape architecture, city planning, and parks management on American poetry to show how modernists engaged with the green worlds and social playgrounds created by these new professions in the early twentieth century. The modern poets... More
"The Best Read Naturalist"
Nature Writings of Ralph Waldo EmersonRalph Waldo Emerson is one of the most important figures in American nature writing, yet until now readers have had no book devoted to this central theme in his work. "The Best Read Naturalist" fills this lacuna, placing several of Emerson’s lesser-known pieces of nature writing in conversation... More
The Sky of Our Manufacture
The London Fog in British Fiction from Dickens to WoolfThe smoke-laden fog of London is one of the most vivid elements in English literature, richly suggestive and blurring boundaries between nature and society in compelling ways. In The Sky of Our Manufacture, Jesse Oak Taylor uses the many depictions of the London fog in the late nineteenth- and... More
Anthropocene Fictions
The Novel in a Time of Climate ChangeSince the Industrial Revolution, humans have transformed the Earth’s atmosphere, committing our planet to more extreme weather, rising sea levels, melting polar ice caps, and mass extinction. This period of observable human impact on the Earth’s ecosystems has been called the Anthropocene Age. The... More
Dancing with Disaster
Environmental Histories, Narratives, and Ethics for Perilous TimesThe calamitous impacts of climate change that are beginning to be felt around the world today expose the inextricability of human and natural histories. Arguing for a more complex account of such calamities, Kate Rigby examines a variety of past disasters, from the Black Death of the Middle Ages to... More
Different Shades of Green
African Literature, Environmental Justice, and Political EcologyEngaging important discussions about social conflict, environmental change, and imperialism in Africa, Different Shades of Green points to legacies of African environmental writing, often neglected as a result of critical perspectives shaped by dominant Western conceptions of nature and... More
Wild Dog Dreaming
Love and ExtinctionWe are living in the midst of the Earth’s sixth great extinction event, the first one caused by a single species: our own. In Wild Dog Dreaming, Deborah Bird Rose explores what constitutes an ethical relationship with nonhuman others in this era of loss. She asks, Who are we, as a species? How do... More
Pilgrimage to Vallombrosa
From Vermont to Italy in the Footsteps of George Perkins Marsh"Set aside your Bella Tuscanys and Year in Provences for a different kind of travel book. Pilgrimage to Vallombrosa puts a walking stick in your hand and Marsh’s Man and Nature in your knapsack, exploring how Italians have managed their natural and cultural heritage in ways that sustain both. John... More
William Wordsworth and the Ecology of Authorship
The Roots of Environmentalism in Nineteenth-Century CultureIn William Wordsworth and the Ecology of Authorship, Scott Hess explores Wordsworth’s defining role in establishing what he designates as "the ecology of authorship": a primarily middle-class, nineteenth-century conception of nature associated with aesthetics, high culture, individualism, and... More
Postcolonial Green
Environmental Politics and World NarrativesPostcolonial Green brings together scholarship bridging ecocriticism and postcolonialism. Since its inception, ecocriticism has been accused of being inattentive to the complexities that colonialism poses for ideas of nature and environmentalism. Postcolonial discourse, on the other hand, has been... More
Framing the World
Explorations in Ecocriticism and FilmThe essays in this collection make a contribution to the greening of film studies and expand the scope of ecocriticism as a discipline traditionally rooted in literary studies. In addition to highlighting particular films as productive tools for raising awareness and educating us about... More
Out of the Shadow
Ecopsychology, Story, and Encounters with the LandIn western culture, the separation of humans from nature has contributed to a schism between the conscious reason and the unconscious dreaming psyche, or internal human "nature." Our increasing lack of intimacy with the land has led to a decreased capacity to access parts of the psyche not normally... More
Daybooks of Discovery
Nature Diaries in Britain, 1770–1870Rooted in a thriving culture of amateur natural history, the keeping of nature journals and diaries flourished in late-eighteenth-and early-nineteenth-century Britain. As prescientific worldviews ceded to a more materialist outlook informed by an explosion of factual knowledge, lovers of nature... More
Topographies of the Sacred
The Poetics of Place in European RomanticismAlthough the British romantic poets—notably, Blake, Wordsworth, and Byron—have been the subjects of previous ecocritical examinations, Kate Rigby’s Topographies of the Sacred is the first book to compare English and German literary models of romanticism. Rigby treats not only canonical British... More
Topographies of the Sacred
The Poetics of Place in European RomanticismAlthough the British romantic poets—notably, Blake, Wordsworth, and Byron—have been the subjects of previous ecocritical examinations, Kate Rigby’s Topographies of the Sacred is the first book to compare English and German literary models of romanticism. Rigby treats not only canonical British... More
Eco-Man
New Perspectives on Masculinity and NatureThe paradoxical role nature plays in American myth and history grows in part from the male’s reverent fascination with the wilderness and his equally strong impulse to dominate it. Many canonical literary works—think of Thoreau, Melville, Hemingway, Faulkner—look to the wild as the site for... More
Mary Austin's Regionalism
Reflections on Gender, Genre, and GeographyBest known for The Land of Little Rain, a collection of natural-history essays about the California deserts, the Western writer Mary Austin (1868–1934) was a prolific literary figure in the first few decades of the twentieth century. In addition to her essays and short stories, Austin produced... More