Ecocritical Theory and Practice – serie

The romantic perception of the American Southwest as a wild and dangerous frontier where heroic settlers prove their endurance has often responded to a common human desire to escape from the pressures of civilization and experience an “authentic” relationship with nature. This idealized notion about life in the Southwest, however, has contributed the subjugation of the indigenous populations and the natural world while helping rationalize the conquest of both. In Myth and Environment in Recent Southwestern Literature, Theda Wrede brings contemporary Southwestern American literature under the microscope to examine the ways in which the mythic narrative has influenced attitudes toward the land in the region. Focusing on popular novels by Corrmac McCarthy, Barbara Kingsolver, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Denise Chávez, Wrede explores the psychology behind the myth and discusses the ways in which the four authors deploy the mythic narrative, interrogate its validity, and offer visions for alternative modes of inhabiting the Southwest. In combining ideas from a culturally sensitive ecofeminist theory, psychoanalysis, postcolonial studies, and literary studies, the study offers an innovative conceptual framework for discussions about environmental responsibility in the twenty-first century. Finally, it also encourages its readers to partake in the process of mythogenesis by imagining “sustainable” narratives to help rescue the promise of the Southwest for the new millennium.

T. S. Eliot enjoyed a profound relationship with Earth. Criticism of his work does not suggest that this exists in his poetic oeuvre. Writing into this gap, Etienne Terblanche demonstrates that Eliot presents Earth as a process in which humans immerse themselves. The Waste Land and Four Quartets in particular re-locate the modern reader towards mindfulness of Earth’s continuation and one’s radical becoming within that process. But what are the potential implications for ecocriticism? Based on its careful reading of the poems from a new material perspective, this book shows how vital it has become for ecocriticism to be skeptical about the extent of its skepticism, to follow instead the twentieth century’smost important poet who, at the end of searing skepticism, finds affirmation of Earth, art, and real presence.

Feminist Ecocriticism examines the interplay of women and nature as seen through literary theory and criticism, drawing on insights from such diverse fields as chaos theory and psychoanalysis, while examining genres ranging from nineteenth-century sentimental literature to contemporary science fiction. The book explores the central claim of ecofeminism—that there is a connection between environmental degradation and the subordination of women—with the goal of identifying and fostering liberatory alternatives. Feminist Ecocriticism analyzes the work of such diverse women writers as Rachel Carson, Barbara Kingsolver, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Mary Shelley. By including chapters from a comparable number of women and men, this book dispels the notion that ecofeminism is relevant to and used by only female scholars.After uncovering the oppressive dichotomies of male/female and nature/culture that underlie contemporary environmental problems, Feminist Ecocriticism focuses specifically on emancipatory strategies employed by ecofeminist literary critics as antidotes, asking what our lives might be like as those strategies become increasingly successful in overcoming oppression. Thus, ecofeminism is not limited to the critique of literature, but also helps identify and articulate liberatory ideals that can be actualized in the real world, in the process transforming everyday life. Providing an alternative to rugged individualism, for example, ecofeminist literature promotes a more fulfilling sense of interrelationship with both community and the land. In the process of exploring literature from ecofeminist perspectives, the book reveals strategies of emancipation that have already begun to give rise to more hopeful ecological narratives. Feminist Ecocriticism provides a novel integration of two important strands of contemporary literary criticism that have often failed to make contact: feminist criticism and ecocriticism. The openness of both feminist criticism and ecocriticism to multiple, even incompatible perspectives, without the insistence on unitary definitions of their fields, has given rise to a new hybrid discipline: feminist ecocriticism.

This collection of ecocritical essays is focused on the work of Japan’s foremost writer on environment and culture, Ishimure Michiko. Ishimure is known for her pioneering trilogy that exposed the Minamata Disease incident and the nature of modern industrial pollution. She is also regarded by many critics as Japan’s most original and important literary writer. Ishimure has written over 50 volumes in a wide range of genres, including novels, Noh drama, poetry, children’s stories, essays, and mixed-genre writing. This collection brings together the work of scholars from Japan, the U.S., and Canada who are authorities on Ishimure’s writing. Contributors discuss Ishimure’s writing in the context of the latest issues in ecocritical theory, arguing for an expanded, more-than-Western understanding of literature, theory, and environmental responsibility. It will help to relate various environmental, cultural, and ecocritical issues, ranging from the events at Minamata to those at Fukushima, and consider how they point to future developments.

A chief innovation of Explorations in Ecocriticism is to push ecological criticism beyond its focus on literary studies to engage with other arts and culture. One chapter closely examines the pictures commissioned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to valorize its big dam projects. Previously, no one has written about the large art collection that toured the nation under the auspices of the Smithsonian in the early 1970s, when the Bureau of Reclamation was under fire and new environmental regulations were becoming law. Another chapter, “An Iconography of Sabotage,” previously published in France as part of a Paris symposium, looks at the pictorial dimension of saboteurs throughout American history, with a special emphasis on the IWW and Earth First! The book draws extensively on the social sciences. Ecology and environment are treated too often as technical topics that go over the heads of lay readers. Many Americans care about air and water quality, the extinction of species, and the unfortunate politicization of science. But they also find the discourse daunting, the details exceedingly complex. By leavening such heavy subjects with current events, Explorations in Ecocriticism makes environmental issues accessible to lay readers and offers routes to sustainability in the United States today.

By pursuing an ecocritical reading, The Forest in Medieval German Literature examines passages in medieval German texts where protagonists operated in the forest and found themselves either in conflictual situations or in refuge. By probing the way the individual authors dealt with the forest, illustrating how their characters fared in this sylvan space, the role of the forest proved to be of supreme importance in understanding the fundamental relationship between humans and nature. The medieval forest almost always introduced an epistemological challenge: how to cope in life, or how to find one’s way in this natural maze. By approaching these narratives through modern ecocritical issues that are paired with premodern perspectives, we gain a solid and far-reaching understanding of how medieval concepts can aid in a better understanding of human society and nature in its historical context. This book revisits some of the best and lesser known examples of medieval German literature, and the critical approach used here will allow us to recognize the importance of medieval literature for a profound reassessment of our modern existence with respect to our own forests.

By pursuing an ecocritical reading, The Forest in Medieval German Literature examines passages in medieval German texts where protagonists operated in the forest and found themselves either in conflictual situations or in refuge. By probing the way the individual authors dealt with the forest, illustrating how their characters fared in this sylvan space, the role of the forest proved to be of supreme importance in understanding the fundamental relationship between humans and nature. The medieval forest almost always introduced an epistemological challenge: how to cope in life, or how to find one’s way in this natural maze. By approaching these narratives through modern ecocritical issues that are paired with premodern perspectives, we gain a solid and far-reaching understanding of how medieval concepts can aid in a better understanding of human society and nature in its historical context. This book revisits some of the best and lesser known examples of medieval German literature, and the critical approach used here will allow us to recognize the importance of medieval literature for a profound reassessment of our modern existence with respect to our own forests.

The term “urban ecology” has become a buzzword in various disciplines, including the social and natural sciences as well as urban planning and architecture. The environmental humanities have been slow to adapt to current theoretical debates, often excluding human-built environments from their respective frameworks. This book closes this gap both in theory and in practice, bringing together “urban ecology” with ecocritical and cultural ecological approaches by conceptualizing the city as an integral part of the environment and as a space in which ecological problems manifest concretely. Arguing that culture has to be seen as an active component and integral factor within urban ecologies, it makes use of a metaphorical use of the term, perceiving cities as spatial phenomena that do not only have manifold and complex material interrelations with their respective (natural) environments, but that are intrinsically connected to the ideas, imaginations, and interpretations that make up the cultural symbolic and discursive side of our urban lives and that are stored and constantly renegotiated in their cultural and artistic representations. The city is, within this framework, both seen as an ecosystemically organized space as well as a cultural artifact. Thus, the urban ecology outlined in this study takes its main impetus from an analysis of examples taken from contemporary culture that deal with urban life and the complex interrelations between urban communities and their (natural and built) environments.

The term “urban ecology” has become a buzzword in various disciplines, including the social and natural sciences as well as urban planning and architecture. The environmental humanities have been slow to adapt to current theoretical debates, often excluding human-built environments from their respective frameworks. This book closes this gap both in theory and in practice, bringing together “urban ecology” with ecocritical and cultural ecological approaches by conceptualizing the city as an integral part of the environment and as a space in which ecological problems manifest concretely. Arguing that culture has to be seen as an active component and integral factor within urban ecologies, it makes use of a metaphorical use of the term, perceiving cities as spatial phenomena that do not only have manifold and complex material interrelations with their respective (natural) environments, but that are intrinsically connected to the ideas, imaginations, and interpretations that make up the cultural symbolic and discursive side of our urban lives and that are stored and constantly renegotiated in their cultural and artistic representations. The city is, within this framework, both seen as an ecosystemically organized space as well as a cultural artifact. Thus, the urban ecology outlined in this study takes its main impetus from an analysis of examples taken from contemporary culture that deal with urban life and the complex interrelations between urban communities and their (natural and built) environments.

With twelve original essays that characterize truly international ecocriticisms, New International Voices in Ecocriticism presents a compendium of ecocritical approaches, including ecocritical theory, ecopoetics, ecocritical analyses of literary, cultural, and musical texts (especially those not commonly studied in mainstream ecocriticism), and new critical vistas on human-nonhuman relations, postcolonial subjects, material selves, gender, and queer ecologies. It develops new perspectives on literature, culture, and the environment. The essays, written by contributors from the United States, Canada, Germany, Turkey, Spain, China, India, and South Africa, cover novels, drama, autobiography, music, and poetry, mixing traditional and popular forms. Popular culture and the production and circulation of cultural imaginaries feature prominently in this volume—how people view their world and the manner in which they share their perspectives, including the way these perspectives challenge each other globally and locally. In this sense the book also probes borders, border transgression, and border permeability. By offering diverse ecocritical approaches, the essays affirm the significance and necessity of international perspectives in environmental humanities, and thus offer unique responses to environmental problems and that, in some sense, affect many beginning and established scholars.

The nineteenth-century roots of environmental writing in American literature are often mentioned in passing and sometimes studied piece by piece. Writing the Environment in Nineteenth-Century American Literature: The Ecological Awareness of Early Scribes of Nature brings together numerous explorations of environmentally-aware writing across the genres of nineteenth-century literature. Like Lawrence Buell, the authors of this collection find Thoreau’s writing a touchstone of nineteenth-century environmental writing, particularly focusing on Thoreau’s claim that humans may function as “scribes of nature.” However, these studies of Thoreau’s antecedents, contemporaries, and successors also reveal a range of other writers in the nineteenth century whose literary treatments of nature are often more environmentally attuned than most readers have noticed.The writers whose works are studied in this collection include canonical and forgotten writers, men and women, early nineteenth-century and late nineteenth-century authors, pioneers and conservationists. They drew attention to the conflicted relationships between humans and the American continent, as experienced by Native Americans and European Americans. Taken together, these essays offer a fresh perspective on the roots of environmental literature in nineteenth-century American nonfiction, fiction, and poetry as well as in multi-genre compositions such as the travel writings of Margaret Fuller. Bringing largely forgotten voices such as John Godman alongside canonical voices such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson, the authors whose writings are studied in this collection produced a diverse tapestry of nascent American environmental writing in the nineteenth-century. From early nineteenth-century writers such as poet Philip Freneau and novelist Charles Brockden Brown to later nineteenth-century conservationists such as John James Audubon and John Muir, Scribes of Nature shows the development of an environmental consciousness and a growing conservationist ethos in American literature. Given their often surprisingly healthy respect for the natural environment, these nineteenth-century writers offer us much to consider in an age of environmental crisis. The complexities of the supposed nature/culture divide still work into our lives today as economic and environmental issues are often seen at loggerheads when they ought to be seen as part of the same conversation of what it means to live healthy lives, and to pass on a healthy world to those who follow us in a world where human activity is becoming increasingly threatening to the health of our planet.

The nineteenth-century roots of environmental writing in American literature are often mentioned in passing and sometimes studied piece by piece. Writing the Environment in Nineteenth-Century American Literature: The Ecological Awareness of Early Scribes of Nature brings together numerous explorations of environmentally-aware writing across the genres of nineteenth-century literature. Like Lawrence Buell, the authors of this collection find Thoreau’s writing a touchstone of nineteenth-century environmental writing, particularly focusing on Thoreau’s claim that humans may function as “scribes of nature.” However, these studies of Thoreau’s antecedents, contemporaries, and successors also reveal a range of other writers in the nineteenth century whose literary treatments of nature are often more environmentally attuned than most readers have noticed.The writers whose works are studied in this collection include canonical and forgotten writers, men and women, early nineteenth-century and late nineteenth-century authors, pioneers and conservationists. They drew attention to the conflicted relationships between humans and the American continent, as experienced by Native Americans and European Americans. Taken together, these essays offer a fresh perspective on the roots of environmental literature in nineteenth-century American nonfiction, fiction, and poetry as well as in multi-genre compositions such as the travel writings of Margaret Fuller. Bringing largely forgotten voices such as John Godman alongside canonical voices such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson, the authors whose writings are studied in this collection produced a diverse tapestry of nascent American environmental writing in the nineteenth-century. From early nineteenth-century writers such as poet Philip Freneau and novelist Charles Brockden Brown to later nineteenth-century conservationists such as John James Audubon and John Muir, Scribes of Nature shows the development of an environmental consciousness and a growing conservationist ethos in American literature. Given their often surprisingly healthy respect for the natural environment, these nineteenth-century writers offer us much to consider in an age of environmental crisis. The complexities of the supposed nature/culture divide still work into our lives today as economic and environmental issues are often seen at loggerheads when they ought to be seen as part of the same conversation of what it means to live healthy lives, and to pass on a healthy world to those who follow us in a world where human activity is becoming increasingly threatening to the health of our planet.

The Green Thread: Dialogues with the Vegetal World is an interdisciplinary collection of essays in the emerging field of Plant Studies. The volume is the first of its kind to bring together a dynamic body of scholarship that shares a critique of long-standing human perceptions of plants as lacking autonomy, agency, consciousness, and, intelligence.The leading metaphor of the book—“the green thread”, echoing poet Dylan Thomas’ phrase “the green fuse”—carries multiple meanings. On a more apparent level, “the green thread” is what weaves together the diverse approaches of this collection: an interest in the vegetal that goes beyond single disciplines and specialist discourses, and one that not only encourages but necessitates interdisciplinary and even interspecies dialogue. On another level, “the green thread” links creative and historical productions to the materiality of the vegetal—a reality reflecting our symbiosis with oxygen-producing beings. In short, The Green Thread refers to the conversations about plants that transcend strict disciplinary boundaries as well as to the possibility of dialogue with plants.

The Green Thread: Dialogues with the Vegetal World is an interdisciplinary collection of essays in the emerging field of Plant Studies. The volume is the first of its kind to bring together a dynamic body of scholarship that shares a critique of long-standing human perceptions of plants as lacking autonomy, agency, consciousness, and, intelligence.The leading metaphor of the book—“the green thread”, echoing poet Dylan Thomas’ phrase “the green fuse”—carries multiple meanings. On a more apparent level, “the green thread” is what weaves together the diverse approaches of this collection: an interest in the vegetal that goes beyond single disciplines and specialist discourses, and one that not only encourages but necessitates interdisciplinary and even interspecies dialogue. On another level, “the green thread” links creative and historical productions to the materiality of the vegetal—a reality reflecting our symbiosis with oxygen-producing beings. In short, The Green Thread refers to the conversations about plants that transcend strict disciplinary boundaries as well as to the possibility of dialogue with plants.

This book includes a collection of essays that explore the relationship between Disability Studies and literary ecocriticism, particularly as this relationship plays out in American literature and culture. The contributors to this collection operate from the premise that there is much to be gained for both fields by putting them in conversation, and they do so in a variety of ways. In this manner, the collection contributes to what Joni Adamson and Scott Slovic have referred to as a “third wave of ecocriticism.” Adamson and Slovic attribute the rise of this “third wave” to the richly diverse contributions to ecocriticism over the past decade by scholars intent on including postmodernism, ecofeminism, transnationalism, globalization, and postcolonialism into ecocritical discussions. The essays in Toward an Ecosomatic Paradigm extend this approach of this “third wave” by analyzing disability from an “environmental point of view” while simultaneously examining the environmental imagination from a disability studies perspective.More specifically, the goal of the collection is to investigate the role that literary narratives play in fostering the “ecosomatic paradigm.” As a theoretical framework, the ecosomatic paradigm underscores the dynamic and inter-relational process wherein human mind-bodies interact with the places, both built and wild, they inhabit. That is, the ecosomatic paradigm proceeds from the assumption that nature and culture are meshed in an ongoing and deep relationship that has implications for both the human subject and the natural world. An ecosomatic approach highlights the profound overlap between embodiment and emplacement, and is therefore enriched by both disability studies and ecocritical insight. By drawing on points of confluence between disability studies and ecological criticism, the various ecosomatic readings in this collection challenge normative (even ableist) constructions of the body-environment dyad by complicating and expanding our understanding of this relationship as it is represented in American literature and culture. Collectively, the essays in this book augment the American environmental imagination by highlighting the relationship between disability and the environment as reflected in American literary texts across multiple periods and genres.

Persuasive Aesthetic Ecocritical Praxis continues Patrick D. Murphy's focus on transversal ecocritical praxis by considering literature and cinema in terms of the persuasive force of aesthetic activity and whether or not artistic production and its criticism can be considered forms of activism. Murphy argues that literature and other forms of aesthetic production hold out the promise of being able to move some individuals deeply through both affective and intellectual engagement in ways that facilitate ideological reflection. To analyze aesthetic production ecocritically requires a transversal orientation in order to work continuously at accommodating a vast array of often seemingly disparate perspectives, disciplines, and contextual information, as well as the ever changing thematic, plot, setting, and contextual elements of the aesthetic works under consideration and the responses of changing audiences through time and across cultures. Murphy demonstrates this approach through presenting theories of transversality and applying them with attention to issues of propaganda, agitation, and persuasion, both in terms of artistic production and the criticism of such production. He also brings an ecofeminist orientation to the fore with particular attention to the gendered economic aspects of environmental issues in an age of land grabs and plantation economies. Along the way he treats a wide range of literary works, films and miniseries. In American literature he discusses realist and science fiction works, from Susan Fenimore Cooper's Rural Hours to Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior to Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312, and Ana Castillo's So Far from God to Leslie Marmon Silko's Gardens in the Dunes. In international literature, he analyzes Mo Yan's The Garlic Ballads, Jiang Rong's Wolft Totem, Michiko Ishimure's The Lake of Heaven, Miyuki Miyabe's All She Was Worth, and other novels. The book concludes with a reading of Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia and Ecotopia Emerging, an Afterword recommending further directions for transversal ecocritical research an and interview that discusses Murphy's previous book, Transversal Ecocritical Praxis, and provides some personal background on the author.

The volume offers a survey of the contribution of German literature and culture to the evolution of ecological thought. As the field of ecocritical theory and practice is rapidly expanding towards transnational and global dimensions, it seems nevertheless necessary to consider the distinct manifestations of ecological thought in various cultures. In this sense, the volume demonstrates in twenty-six essays from different disciplines how German literature, philosophy, art, and science have contributed in unique ways to the emergence of ecological thought on national and transnational scale. The volume maps the most important and characteristic of these developments both on a theoretical and on a textual-analytical level. It is structured in five parts ranging from proto-ecological thought since early modern times (part I) to major theoretical approaches (part II), environmental history (part III), and ecocritical case studies (part IV), to ecological visions in different media and art forms (part V). The four editors have widely published and are actively involved in ecocritical literary and cultural studies. The group of editors consists of two scholars of German literature and cultural studies, Gabriele Duerbeck and Urte Stobbe (both University of Vechta), a scholar in German and comparative literature, Evi Zemanek (University of Freiburg), as well as a scholar of Anglo-American ecoliterature and ecocriticism, Hubert Zapf. All of them are involved in various projects and research networks on ecology and literature. The contributors of the individual chapters likewise are all experts in their respective fields, ranging from German literature, history, environmental studies, art history, music and art. The book is a unique and readily accessible collection of essays that is of relevance not only for a German and continental European but for a worldwide audience.

The volume offers a survey of the contribution of German literature and culture to the evolution of ecological thought. As the field of ecocritical theory and practice is rapidly expanding towards transnational and global dimensions, it seems nevertheless necessary to consider the distinct manifestations of ecological thought in various cultures. In this sense, the volume demonstrates in twenty-six essays from different disciplines how German literature, philosophy, art, and science have contributed in unique ways to the emergence of ecological thought on national and transnational scale. The volume maps the most important and characteristic of these developments both on a theoretical and on a textual-analytical level. It is structured in five parts ranging from proto-ecological thought since early modern times (part I) to major theoretical approaches (part II), environmental history (part III), and ecocritical case studies (part IV), to ecological visions in different media and art forms (part V). The four editors have widely published and are actively involved in ecocritical literary and cultural studies. The group of editors consists of two scholars of German literature and cultural studies, Gabriele Duerbeck and Urte Stobbe (both University of Vechta), a scholar in German and comparative literature, Evi Zemanek (University of Freiburg), as well as a scholar of Anglo-American ecoliterature and ecocriticism, Hubert Zapf. All of them are involved in various projects and research networks on ecology and literature. The contributors of the individual chapters likewise are all experts in their respective fields, ranging from German literature, history, environmental studies, art history, music and art. The book is a unique and readily accessible collection of essays that is of relevance not only for a German and continental European but for a worldwide audience.

The vast majority of existing ecocritical studies, even those which espouse the “postcolonial ecocritical” perspective, operate within a first-world sensibility, speaking on behalf of subalternized human communities and degraded landscapes without actually eliciting the voices of the impacted communities. Ecocriticism of the Global South seeks to allow scholars from (or intimately familiar with) underrepresented regions to “write back” to the world’s centers of political and military and economic power, expressing views of the intersections of nature and culture from the perspective of developing countries. This approach highlights what activist and writer Vandana Shiva has described as the relationship between “ecology and the politics of survival,” showing both commonalities and local idiosyncrasies by juxtaposing such countries as China and Northern Ireland, New Zealand and Cameroon. Much like Ecoambiguity, Community, and Development, this new book is devoted to representing diverse and innovative ecocritical voices from throughout the world, particularly from developing nations. The two volumes complement each other by pointing out the need for further cultivation of the environmental humanities in regions of the world that are, essentially, the front line of the human struggle to invent sustainable and just civilizations on an imperiled planet.

Ecocriticism is a critical approach that focuses on the representation in literature of the non-human elements of the natural world, a method of inquiry that has been largely limited to literature written in English. The aim of Ecocritical Approaches to Literature in French is twofold: to introduce ecocriticism to scholars of French-language literature, and to open ecocriticism to the vision and voices of French literature.The chapters look at work not only from France, but also from North America, the Caribbean, and Africa. The discussions include fiction, poetry, film and pedagogy. The goal of the collection is to demonstrate not only the applicability of ecocritical inquiry to literature in French, but to demonstrate the possibilities of ecocritical theory on the study of French literature, and also for ecocriticism itself. This collection will be a useful resource both for scholars of French-language literature and also for ecocritics who may have had only limited contact with literatures in languages other than English.

The philosophy of existentialism is undergoing an ecological renewal, as global warming, mass extinction, and other signs of the planetary scale of human actions are making it glaringly apparent that existence is always ecological coexistence. One of the most urgent problems in the current ecological emergency is that humans cannot bear to face the emergency. Its earth-shattering implications are ignored in favor of more solutions, fixes, and sustainability transitions. Solutions cannot solve much when they cannot face what it means to be human amidst unprecedented uncertainty and intimate interconnectedness. Attention to such uncertainty and interconnectedness is what "ecological existentialism" (Deborah Bird Rose) or "coexistentialism" (Timothy Morton) is all about.This book follows Rose, Morton, and many others (e.g., Jean-Luc Nancy, Peter Sloterdijk, and Luce Irigaray) who are currently taking up the styles of thinking conveyed in existentialism, renewing existentialist affirmations of experience, paradox, uncertainty, and ambiguity, and extending existentialism beyond humans to include attention to the uniqueness and strangeness of all beings—all humans and nonhumans woven into ecological coexistence. Along the way, coexistentialism finds productive alliances and tensions amidst many areas of inquiry, including ecocriticism, ecological humanities, object-oriented ontology, feminism, phenomenology, deconstruction, new materialism, and more. This is a book for anyone who seeks to refute cynicism and loneliness and affirm coexistence.

The philosophy of existentialism is undergoing an ecological renewal, as global warming, mass extinction, and other signs of the planetary scale of human actions are making it glaringly apparent that existence is always ecological coexistence. One of the most urgent problems in the current ecological emergency is that humans cannot bear to face the emergency. Its earth-shattering implications are ignored in favor of more solutions, fixes, and sustainability transitions. Solutions cannot solve much when they cannot face what it means to be human amidst unprecedented uncertainty and intimate interconnectedness. Attention to such uncertainty and interconnectedness is what "ecological existentialism" (Deborah Bird Rose) or "coexistentialism" (Timothy Morton) is all about.This book follows Rose, Morton, and many others (e.g., Jean-Luc Nancy, Peter Sloterdijk, and Luce Irigaray) who are currently taking up the styles of thinking conveyed in existentialism, renewing existentialist affirmations of experience, paradox, uncertainty, and ambiguity, and extending existentialism beyond humans to include attention to the uniqueness and strangeness of all beings—all humans and nonhumans woven into ecological coexistence. Along the way, coexistentialism finds productive alliances and tensions amidst many areas of inquiry, including ecocriticism, ecological humanities, object-oriented ontology, feminism, phenomenology, deconstruction, new materialism, and more. This is a book for anyone who seeks to refute cynicism and loneliness and affirm coexistence.

Romantic Ecocriticism: Origins and Legacies is unique due to its rare assemblage of essays, which has not appeared within an edited collection before. Romantic Ecocriticism is distinct because the essays in the collection develop transnational and transhistorical approaches to the proto-ecological early environmental aspects in British and American Romanticism. First, the edition’s transnational approach is evident through transatlantic connections such as, but are not limited to, comparisons among the following writers: William Wordsworth, William Howitt, and Henry D. Thoreau; John Clare and Aldo Leopold; Charles Darwin and Ralph W. Emerson. Second, the transhistorical approach of RomanticEcocriticism is evident in connections among the following writers: William Wordsworth and Emily Bronte; Thomas Malthus and George Gordon Byron; James Hutton and Percy Shelley; Erasmus Darwin and Charlotte Smith; Gilbert White and Dorothy Wordsworth among others. Thus, Romantic Ecocriticism offers a dynamic collection of essays dedicated to links between scientists and literary figures interested in natural history.

Romantic Ecocriticism: Origins and Legacies is unique due to its rare assemblage of essays, which has not appeared within an edited collection before. Romantic Ecocriticism is distinct because the essays in the collection develop transnational and transhistorical approaches to the proto-ecological early environmental aspects in British and American Romanticism. First, the edition’s transnational approach is evident through transatlantic connections such as, but are not limited to, comparisons among the following writers: William Wordsworth, William Howitt, and Henry D. Thoreau; John Clare and Aldo Leopold; Charles Darwin and Ralph W. Emerson. Second, the transhistorical approach of RomanticEcocriticism is evident in connections among the following writers: William Wordsworth and Emily Bronte; Thomas Malthus and George Gordon Byron; James Hutton and Percy Shelley; Erasmus Darwin and Charlotte Smith; Gilbert White and Dorothy Wordsworth among others. Thus, Romantic Ecocriticism offers a dynamic collection of essays dedicated to links between scientists and literary figures interested in natural history.

The essays in this volume provide a theorization of what we might call the “denatured” wild, in other words a notion of environmental “restoration” or "reinhabitation" that recognizes and reconfigures the human factor as an interdependent entity. Acknowledging the contributions of Marco Armerio, Serenella Iovino, Giovanna Ricoveri, Patrick Barron and Anna Re among others, Ecocritical Approaches to Italian Culture and Literature: The Denatured Wild negotiates the ground within the historicizing, theoretical perspectives, and surveying spirit of these writers. Despite the central role that nature has played in Italian culture and literature, there has been an evident lack of critical approaches free of the bridles of the socio-political manipulations of nationalism. The authors in this collection, by recognizing the groundbreaking work of many non-Italian ecocritics, challenge the narrowly defined conventions of Italian Studies and illuminates the complexities of an Italian ecocriticism that reveals a rich environmentally engaged literary and cultural tradition.

Romantic Sustainability is a collection of sixteen essays that examine the British Romantic era in ecocritical terms. Written by scholars from five continents, this international collection addresses the works of traditional Romantic writers such as John Keats, Percy Shelley, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, and Samuel Coleridge but also delves into ecocritical topics related to authors added to the canon more recently, such as Elizabeth Inchbald and John Clare. The essays examine geological formations, clouds, and landscapes as well as the posthuman and the monstrous. The essays are grouped into rough categories that start with inspiration and the imagination before moving to the varied types of consumption associated with human interaction with the natural world. Subsequent essays in the volume focus on environmental destruction, monstrous creations, and apocalypse. The common theme is sustainability, as each contributor examines Romantic ideas that intersect with ecocriticism and relates literary works to questions about race, gender, religion, and identity.

The Mythology of the Animal Farm in Children’s Literature: Over the Fence analyzes the ways in which myths about farmed animals’ lives are perpetuated in children’s materials. Specifically, this book investigates the use of five recurring thematic devices in about eighty books for young children published during the past five decades. The close readings of texts and images draw on a wide range of fields, including animal theory, psychoanalytic and Marxian literary criticism, child development theory, histories of farming and domestication, and postcolonial theory. In spite of the underlying seriousness of the project, the material lends itself to humorous and not overly heavy-handed explications that provide insight into the complex workings of a literary genre based on the covering up of real animal lives.

Today’s highly industrialized and technologically controlled global food systems dominate our lives, shaping our access and attitudes towards food and deeply influencing and defining our identities. At the same time, these food systems are profoundly and destructively impacting the health of the environment and threatening all of us, human and nonhuman, who must subsist in ecological conditions of increasing fragility and scarcity. This collection examines and exposes the myriad ways that the food systems, driven by global commodity capitalism and its imperative of growth at any cost, increasingly controls us and conforms us to our roles as consumers and producers. This collection covers a range of topics from the excess of consumers in the post-industrial world and the often unacknowledged yet intrinsic connection of their consumption to the growing ecological and health crises in developing nations, to topics of surveillance and control of human and nonhuman bodies through food, to the deep linkages of cultural values and norms toward food to the myriad crises we face on a global scale.

Today’s highly industrialized and technologically controlled global food systems dominate our lives, shaping our access and attitudes towards food and deeply influencing and defining our identities. At the same time, these food systems are profoundly and destructively impacting the health of the environment and threatening all of us, human and nonhuman, who must subsist in ecological conditions of increasing fragility and scarcity. This collection examines and exposes the myriad ways that the food systems, driven by global commodity capitalism and its imperative of growth at any cost, increasingly controls us and conforms us to our roles as consumers and producers. This collection covers a range of topics from the excess of consumers in the post-industrial world and the often unacknowledged yet intrinsic connection of their consumption to the growing ecological and health crises in developing nations, to topics of surveillance and control of human and nonhuman bodies through food, to the deep linkages of cultural values and norms toward food to the myriad crises we face on a global scale.