Derek Gladwin – författare

Ecological Exile explores how contemporary literature, film, and media culture confront ecological crises through perspectives of spatial justice – a facet of social justice that looks at unjust circumstances as a phenomenon of space. Growing instances of flooding, population displacement, and pollution suggest an urgent need to re-examine the ways social and geographical spaces are perceived and valued in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Maintaining that ecological crises are largely socially produced, Derek Gladwin considers how British and Irish literary and visual texts by Ian McEwan, Sarah Gavron, Eavan Boland, John McGrath, and China Miéville, among others, respond to and confront various spatial injustices resulting from fossil fuel production and the effects of climate change. This ambitious book offers a new spatial perspective in the environmental humanities by focusing on what the philosopher Glenn Albrecht has termed 'solastalgia' – a feeling of homesickness caused by environmental damage. The result of solastalgia is that people feel paradoxically ecologically exiled in the places they continue to live because of destructive environmental changes. Gladwin skilfully traces spatially produced instances of ecological injustice that literally and imaginatively abolish people’s sense of place (or place-home). By looking at two of the most pressing social and environmental concerns – oil and climate – Ecological Exile shows how literary and visual texts have documented spatially unjust effects of solastalgia. This interdisciplinary book will appeal to students, scholars, and professionals studying literary, film, and media texts that draw on environment and sustainability, cultural geography, energy cultures, climate change, and social justice.

An unprecedented compilation of critical and creative essays and visual texts from leading international scholars, Unfolding Irish landscapes presents cross-disciplinary studies of the prose, cartography, visual art and cultural legacy of the award-winning work of cartographer and writer Tim Robinson. This book explores the process in which Robinson has addressed the historical and geographical tensions that suffuse the landscapes of Ireland. Robinson’s distinctive methods of map-making and topographical writing capture the geographical and cultural consciousness of not only Ireland, but also of the entire North Atlantic archipelago. Through both topographic prose and cartography Robinson undertakes one of the greatest explorations of the Irish landscape by a single person in recent history, paralleling, if not surpassing, Robert Lloyd Praeger’s extensive catalogue of writings and natural histories of western Ireland.

From unprecedented ecological breakdown and political upheaval to extreme economic instability and the rise of AI, uncertainty has become a defining condition of our era. People everywhere are left feeling like the world is unravelling, unsure of how to move forward.Being in the Mess offers a hopeful message for the well-being of humanity and the planet: what if the “mess” isn’t something to fix or escape, but the very place where new possibilities can emerge? Educators Derek Gladwin and Naoko Ellis combine philosophical depth with practical insight to help readers discover integrated world views to address global challenges. Moving beyond problem-solving culture, they offer relational ways to be present with each other in dialogue, storying, leading, and co-creation. Instead of struggling with a society focused on speed, disconnection, and security, readers will learn how to sit with ambiguity and paradox and find multiple perspectives on improving collective well-being through the many interconnected systems we inhabit.The authors consider that in every crisis lies opportunity, and what truly shapes change is less about what one does than how they show up. Being in the Mess is an indispensable guide for anyone wanting to build resilience in an ever-changing, entangled world.

Ecological Exile explores how contemporary literature, film, and media culture confront ecological crises through perspectives of spatial justice – a facet of social justice that looks at unjust circumstances as a phenomenon of space. Growing instances of flooding, population displacement, and pollution suggest an urgent need to re-examine the ways social and geographical spaces are perceived and valued in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Maintaining that ecological crises are largely socially produced, Derek Gladwin considers how British and Irish literary and visual texts by Ian McEwan, Sarah Gavron, Eavan Boland, John McGrath, and China Miéville, among others, respond to and confront various spatial injustices resulting from fossil fuel production and the effects of climate change. This ambitious book offers a new spatial perspective in the environmental humanities by focusing on what the philosopher Glenn Albrecht has termed 'solastalgia' – a feeling of homesickness caused by environmental damage. The result of solastalgia is that people feel paradoxically ecologically exiled in the places they continue to live because of destructive environmental changes. Gladwin skilfully traces spatially produced instances of ecological injustice that literally and imaginatively abolish people’s sense of place (or place-home). By looking at two of the most pressing social and environmental concerns – oil and climate – Ecological Exile shows how literary and visual texts have documented spatially unjust effects of solastalgia. This interdisciplinary book will appeal to students, scholars, and professionals studying literary, film, and media texts that draw on environment and sustainability, cultural geography, energy cultures, climate change, and social justice.

Our lives are profoundly connected to the planet’s unfolding ecological crisis, and the language we use - our words, stories, conversations, and beliefs - determines our ability to respond.Becoming Ecological offers a fresh and empowering perspective on the natural world by insisting that our relationship with language can transform issues of sustainability and environmental catastrophe. The book explores how language, meaning, and communication can help us in the ongoing process of “becoming ecological” in our daily lives, encouraging us to listen, relate, and act with greater awareness. Language and literacy experts, Derek Gladwin and Kedrick James subvert the norms of focusing on data and policy in conversations surrounding climate change, and instead centre communication and dialogue as the catalyst for ecological transformation. A powerful and unprecedented reframing – they argue that language has the profound ability to renew our personal and social awareness and steer the course of our future as a society.Drawing from various views on relationships, values, and responsibility, as well as topics like AI, food, compost, sound, economics, improvisation, extinction, climate anxiety, and even the nature of reality, Becoming Ecological is a hopeful invitation to engage with the world differently. Through everyday experiences, this book inspires readers to consider other perspectives, participate more playfully, and spark lasting ecological change.

This book provides a political and geographical history of how boglands (or bogs) are represented in modern and contemporary Irish literature and culture (1880s-present). Drawing on a range of Irish writers, including Bram Stoker, Frank O'Connor, Sean O'Faolain, Daniel Corkery, Seamus Heaney, Marina Carr, Deirdre Kinahan, Erin Hart, and Tim Robinson, Contentious Terrains argues that the destabilizing capacities of the bog provide a space to explore historically fraught colonial tensions and social struggles through the postcolonial Gothic form. This study shows how bogs are more than mere landforms in the Irish landscape, but a kind of narrative that reveal some of the potentially unanswered questions in Irish literary history. Cultural and literary Gothic writings featuring bogs uncover some of the underlying questions during and after colonization in Ireland, and show how they relate to the larger social process in the development of modern Irish literary history, particularly during the Land Wars of the 1880s, the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921), the Troubles (1960s and 1970s), and the Celtic Tiger (1990s and 2000s).Contentious Terrains employs a cross-disciplinary scope and examines a diverse range of Irish writers in various literary genres, thus testifying to the pervasiveness and range of the bog's allure in Irish literary history and culture.

An unprecedented compilation of critical and creative essays and visual texts from leading international scholars, Unfolding Irish landscapes presents cross-disciplinary studies of the prose, cartography, visual art and cultural legacy of the award-winning work of cartographer and writer Tim Robinson. This book explores the process in which Robinson has addressed the historical and geographical tensions that suffuse the landscapes of Ireland. Robinson’s distinctive methods of map-making and topographical writing capture the geographical and cultural consciousness of not only Ireland, but also of the entire North Atlantic archipelago. Through both topographic prose and cartography Robinson undertakes one of the greatest explorations of the Irish landscape by a single person in recent history, paralleling, if not surpassing, Robert Lloyd Praeger’s extensive catalogue of writings and natural histories of western Ireland.

This volume of essays surveys gastronomy across global literary modernisms. Modernists explore public and domestic spaces where food and drink are prepared and served, as much as they create them in the modernist imagination through narrative, language, verse, and style. Modernism as a cultural and artistic movement also highlights the historical politics of food and eating. As the chapters in Gastro-Modernism reveal, critical trends in food studies alert us to many social concerns that emerge in the modernist period because of expanding food literacy and culture. The result is that food production, consumption, and scarcity are abiding themes in modernist literature and culture, reflecting tensions amidst colonial, agricultural, and industrial settings. This timely volume ultimately shows how global literary modernisms engage with food culture known as gastronomy to express anxieties about modernity as much as to celebrate the excesses modern lifestyles produce.