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Together, their work signals a new direction in the field and offers refreshingly original insights into a broad spectrum of texts.
The concept of a relational self has been prominent in feminism, communitarianism, narrative self theories, and social network theories, and has been important to theorizing about practical dimensions of selfhood. However, it has been largely ignored in traditional philosophical theories of personal identity, which have been dominated by psychological and animal theories of the self. This book offers a systematic treatment of the notion of the self as constituted by social, cultural, political, and biological relations. The author’s account incorporates practical concerns and addresses how a relational self has agency, autonomy, responsibility, and continuity through time in the face of change and impairments. This cumulative network model (CNM) of the self incorporates concepts from work in the American pragmatist and naturalist tradition. The ultimate aim of the book is to bridge traditions that are often disconnected from one another—feminism, personal identity theory, and pragmatism—to develop a unified theory of the self.
The essays in Maine’s Place in the Environmental Imagination address – from a variety of perspectives – how Maine’s unique identity among the states of the United States has been formed, and what that identity is: A place that is still imagined by others primarily through its environmental associations, its “nature” and landscape, rather than through its social arrangements and human history. The collection attempts a foundational study, not of a regional literature, but of a state literature. In doing so, it makes the case that Maine was constructed imaginatively and environmentally through its literature, and that this image is the one that endures even now. The essays suggest how this identity was formed, by discussing writings ranging from the recently recovered work of Joseph Nicolar, a member of the Penobscot Nation in the late 19th century, to the contemporary Maine author Carolyn Chute; from Thoreau’s canonical essay, “Ktaadn,” to the modernist E.B. White, whose works have an under-appreciated environmental project. Contributors include scholars Nathaniel Lewis, Annette Kolodny, Linda Kornasky, Daniel Malachuk, Kent Ryden, and Lynn Wake
A snapshot of ecocriticism in action, Coming into Contact collects sixteen previously unpublished essays that explore some of the most promising new directions in the study of literature and the environment. They look to previously unexamined or underexamined aspects of literature's relationship to the environment, including swamps, internment camps, Asian American environments, the urbanized Northeast, and lynching sites. The authors relate environmental discourse to practice, including the teaching of green design in composition classes, the restoration of damaged landscapes, the persuasive strategies of environmental activists, the practice of urban architecture, and the impact of human technologies on nature. The essays also put ecocriticism into greater contact with the natural sciences, including elements of evolutionary biology, biological taxonomy, and geology. Engaging both ecocritical theory and practice, these authors more closely align ecocriticism with the physical environment, with the wide range of texts and cultural practices that concern it, and with the growing scholarly conversation that surrounds this concern.
The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism explores a range of critical perspectives used to analyze literature, film, and the visual arts in relation to the natural environment. Since the publication of field-defining works by Lawrence Buell, Jonathan Bate, and Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm in the 1990s, ecocriticism has become a conventional paradigm for critical analysis alongside queer theory, deconstruction, and postcolonial studies. The field includes numerous approaches, genres, movements, and media, as the essays collected here demonstrate. The contributors come from around the globe and, similarly, the literature and media covered originate from several countries and continents. Taken...
Environmental and global outlooks are currently at the center of the most lively and urgent international scholarship. This volume serves to overcome the self-referentiality of American studies by intersecting the study of American literature and history with the questions and concerns raised by these perspectives. It re-conceptualizes the mutual and shifting positions of center(s) and margin(s), and subject(s) and object(s) in terms of relation and an inclusive structure of relations based on an ecological ethics. The contributions here explore many methodological hypotheses, ranging from Christa Greve-Vollp’s work on eco-cosmopolitanism to Peter Bardaglio’s report on US climate activis...
Examines the literatures of the Caribbean from an ecocritical perspective in all language areas of the region. This book explores the ways in which the history of transplantation and settlement has provided unique challenges and opportunities for establishing a sense of place and an environmental ethic in the Caribbean.
First in-depth study of the use of landscape in fantasy literature Winner of the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Myth and Fantasy Studies (2016) Fantasy worlds are never mere backdrops. They are an integral part of the work, and refuse to remain separate from other elements. These worlds combine landscape with narrative logic by incorporating alternative rules about cause and effect or physical transformation. They become actors in the drama—interacting with the characters, offering assistance or hindrance, and making ethical demands. In Here Be Dragons, Stefan Ekman provides a wide-ranging survey of the ubiquitous fantasy map as the point of departure for an in-depth discussion of what s...
Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies is a collection of essays written by European and North American scholars who argue that nature and culture can no longer be thought of in oppositional, mutually exclusive terms. They are united in an effort to push the theoretical limits of ecocriticism towards a more rigorous investigation of nature’s critical potential as a concept that challenges modern culture’s philosophical assumptions, epistemological convictions, aesthetic principles, and ethical imperatives. This volume offers scholars and students of literature, culture, history, philosophy, and linguistics new insights into the ongoing transformation of ecocriticism into an innovative force in international and interdisciplinary literary and cultural studies.
Defined as an ecological epoch in which humans have the most impact on the environment, the Anthropocene poses challenging questions to literary and cultural studies. If, in the Anthropocene, the distinction between nature and culture increasingly collapses, we have to rethink our division between historiography and natural history, as well as notions of the subject and of agency since the Enlightenment. This anthology collects papers from literary and cultural studies that address various issues surrounding the topic. Even though the new epoch seems to require a collective self-understanding as a unified species, readings of the Anthropocene and conceptualizations of human-nature relationsh...