David M. J. Carruthers
David Carruthers has published several scholarly articles and reviews in publications including Mosaic, Canadian Literature, The Bull Calf Review, and The Goose. He is the co-editor of the edited collection, Perma/Culture: Imagining Alternatives in an Age of Crisis, and the Book Reviews Editor for The Goose, the Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada's scholarly publication. He is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at Queen's University, Kingston, Canada.
Biography
David Carruthers is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at Queen's University, Kingston, Canada, where he studies the Environmental Humanities and Contemporary North American Literatures. His dissertation, entitled "Becoming-Sorcerer: The Plant, the Power, and the Posthuman Periphery," studies the eco-phenomenological plant-human intersections as represented in post-Cold War literature and their relationship to understandings of ecological crisis.Education
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MA, English, Western
BA (Hons Spec), Comparative Literature and English, Western
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
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David Carruthers specializes in the Environmental Humanities, especially 'dark ecology,' post-humanism, plant- and animal-studies, and eco-phenomenology, in relation to post-Cold War North American fiction.
Books
Articles
“A War against Weeds: Combating Climate Change with Polycultural Pacifism”
Published: Jul 11, 2017 by Perma/Culture: Imagining Alternatives in an Age of Crisis
Authors: David M. J. Carruthers
Subjects:
Media and Cultural Studies, Environment and Agriculture
"A War against Weeds" investigates the inherent semantic relationship between post-WWII industrial monoculture and the militaristic rhetoric of "invasion" applied to spreading and naturalizing plant species. The chapter addresses the dangers of industrial monoculture in this, the Anthropocene, while presenting the alternative, perennial polyculture practices of permaculture, as a viable, if not necessary solution to the great ecological hazards of continued industrial farming.
"Lines of Flight of the Deadly Nightshade"
Published: Jun 15, 2015 by Mosaic 48.2 (June 2015)
Authors: David M. J. Carruthers
Subjects:
Media and Cultural Studies, Anthropology - Soc Sci, Environment and Sustainability
Writing of his encounters with a Sonoran sorcerer, Carlos Castaneda describes his experience of flight under the influence of datura. To the question “Did I really fly, don Juan?” his benefactor explains that, while in flight, Carlos’s corporeal body was “in the bushes,” raising questions on the relationships of consciousness to corpse, body to perceptual environments, and human mind to nature’s pharmacopoeia.