Affective Ecocriticism

Kyle Bladow is an assistant professor of Native American studies at Northland College. Jennifer Ladino is an associate professor of English at the University of Idaho. She is the author of Reclaiming Nostalgia: Longing for Nature in American Literature.

“Affective Ecocriticism cements the importance of affect – and not only data or narrative – to understanding current environmental crises and relations. It also posits how affect bears on acting on these crises (or not) and pivoting our relations. That is, the essays here aren’t merely descriptive or diagnostic; they also look to possibilities for response.”-Heather Houser, associate professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Ecosickness in Contemporary U.S. Fiction: Environment and Affect “Affect theory and ecocriticism are both already vibrant fields of inquiry, but Affective Ecocriticism makes a strong case for their inherent compatibility. This field-defining book demonstrates the deeper ground that both of these approaches might find were they to understand the basic fact of their shared concerns, methods, and aims.”-Rachel Greenwald Smith, associate professor of English at Saint Louis University and author of Affect and American Literature in the Age of Neoliberalism

• List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Toward an Affective Ecocriticism: Placing Feeling in the Anthropocene Kyle Bladow and Jennifer LadinoPart 1. Theoretical Foundations1. “what do we do but keep breathing as best we can this / minute atmosphere”: Juliana Spahr and Anthropocene Anxiety Nicole M. Merola2. From Nostalgic Longing to Solastalgic Distress: A Cognitive Approach to Love in the Anthropocene Alexa Weik von Mossner3. A New Gentleness: Affective Ficto-Regionality Neil CampbellPart 2. Affective Attachments: Land, Bodies, Justice4. Feeling the Fires of Climate Change: Land Affect in Canada’s Tar Sands Jobb Arnold5. Wendell Berry and the Affective Turn William Major6. A Hunger for Words: Food Affects and Embodied Ideology Tom Hertweck7. Uncanny Homesickness and War: Loss of Affect, Loss of Place, and Reworlding in Redeployment Ryan HedigerPart 3. Animality: Feeling Species and Boundaries8. Desiring Species with Darwin and Freud Robert Azzarello9. Tragedy, Ecophobia, and Animality in the Anthropocene Brian Deyo10. Futurity without Optimism: Detaching from Anthropocentrism and Grieving Our Fathers in Beasts of the Southern Wild Allyse Knox-RussellPart 4. Environmentalist Killjoys: Politics and Pedagogy11. The Queerness of Environmental Affect Nicole Seymour12. Feeling Let Down: Affect, Environmentalism, and the Power of Negative Thinking Lisa Ottum13. Feeling Depleted: Ecocinema and the Atmospherics of Affect Graig Uhlin14. Coming of Age at the End of the World: The Affective Arc of Undergraduate Environmental Studies Curricula Sarah Jaquette RayList of Contributors Index