1st Edition
International Perspectives in Feminist Ecocriticism
Exploring environmental literature from a feminist perspective, this volume presents a diversity of feminist ecocritical approaches to affirm the continuing contributions, relevance, and necessity of a feminist perspective in environmental literature, culture, and science. Feminist ecocriticism has a substantial history, with roots in second- and third-wave feminist literary criticism, women’s environmental writing and social change activisms, and eco-cultural critique, and yet both feminist and ecofeminist literary perspectives have been marginalized. The essays in this collection build on the belief that the repertoire of violence (conceptual and literal) toward nature and women comprising our daily lives must become central to our ecocritical discussions, and that basic literacy in theories about ethics are fundamental to these discussions. The book offers an international collection of scholarship that includes ecocritical theory, literary criticism, and ecocultural analyses, bringing a diversity of perspectives in terms of gender, sexuality, and race. Reconnecting with the histories of feminist and ecofeminist literary criticism, and utilizing new developments in postcolonial ecocriticism, animal studies, queer theory, feminist and gender studies, cross-cultural and international ecocriticism, this timely volume develops a continuing and international feminist ecocritical perspective on literature, language, and culture.
Foreword Linda Hogan Introduction Greta Gaard, Simon C. Estok, and Serpil Oppermann Part I: Feminist Ecocritical Theory 1. Feminist Ecocriticism: A Posthumanist Direction in Ecocritical Trajectory Serpil Oppermann 2. Toxic Epiphanies: Dioxin, Power, and Gendered Bodies in Laura Conti’s Narratives on Seveso Serenella Iovino 3. Treating Objects Like Women: Feminist Ontology and the Question of Essence Timothy Morton 4. The Ecophobia Hypothesis: Re-membering the Feminist Body of Ecocriticism Simon Estok Part II: Feminist / Postcolonial / Environmental Justice 5. Streams of Violence: Colonialism, Modernization, and Gender in María Cristina Mena’s "John of God, the Water-Carrier" Chiyo Crawford 6. Saving the Costa Rican Rainforest: Anacristina Rossi's Mad About Gandoca Regina Root 7. The Poetics of Decolonisation: Reading Carpentaria in a Feminist Ecocritical Frame Kate Rigby 8. Re-Imagining the Human: Ecofeminism, Affect, and Postcolonial Narration Laura White Part III: Species, Sexuality, and Eco-Activisms 9. Women and Interspecies Care: Dog Mothers in Taiwan Chia-Ju Chang and Iris Ralph 10. The Queer Vegetarian: Understanding Alimentary Activism Lauren Rae Hall 11. Sex, Population, and Environmental Eugenics in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood Rachel Stein 12. Down With People: Queer Tendencies and Troubling Racial Politics in Antinatalist Discourse Nicole Seymour Part IV: Apocalyptic Visions 13. Keep Moving: Place and Gender in a Post-Apocalyptic Environment Christa Grewe-Volpp 14. Queer Green Apocalypse: Tony Kushner’s Angels in America Katie Hogan 15. In(ter)dependence Day: A Feminist Ecocritical Perspective on Fireworks Greta Gaard About the Contributors Index
Biography
Greta Gaard is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls, US.
Simon C. Estok is Professor of English at Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea.
Serpil Oppermann is Professor of English at Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey.
"International Perspectives in Feminist Ecocriticism, the most recent publication in Routledge’s Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature series, offers a much needed reassessment of the crucial contributions of feminist scholarship to the origins of ecocriticism, while at the same time expanding feminist ecocriticism in new and exciting directions. This volume brings together fifteen essays bridging various disciplines, including ecofeminism, postcolonial ecocriticism, animal studies, queer theory, gender studies, and cross-cultural and international ecocriticism." --Sara Gabler Thomas, University of Mississippi, Journal of Ecocriticism
"Gaard, Estok, and Oppermann bring together vibrant essays that range, for example, from an explosion of dioxins in Seveso, Italy, that touches off strong political and ideological polemics over women and their bodies, to discussions in Australia of how to bring postcolonial, ecological, and feminist understandings together to build a grounded ethics and aesthetics of decolonization, to a group of "dog mothers" in Taiwan that defiantly cares for stray animals as a way to resist a massively industrialized economy built on trenchant, institutionalized, and unspoken androcentrism. As a whole, the book powerfully illustrates why feminist views, methods, and interpretations, examined from specifically international contexts, must become more central to the field of ecocriticism.
--Joni Adamson, Professor, English and Environmental Humanities, School of Letters and Sciences and Senior Sustainability Scholar, Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University, US
"I have always felt that there is something intrinsically "feminist" about the practice of ecocriticism, going all the way back to early ecocritical concerns with wild places and marginalized literary genres. One of the central ecocritical urges is the impulse, à la feminism, to critique normativities, to question mainstream or "dominant" ways of viewing the world, particularly those which are unjust and unsustainable. This new volume offers a rich variety of approaches to this vital project, reinforcing our understanding of "feminist ecocriticism" (take note of this important term) as a major dimension of ecocritical thought throughout the world.
--Scott Slovic, University of Idaho, US, Editor of ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment
"Each chapter raises enough issues, ideas, and inspiration for a whole series of further books at the cutting edge of a reinvigorated ecofeminist practice. These authors are driven by a rigorous sense of where feminist ecocriticism has come from, and why it needs to explore the richly diverse and materially alive ethical dramas of gendered ontologies."
--Terry Gifford, Visiting Professor at Bath Spa University, Profesor Honorifico at Universidad de Alicante and co-editor of Feminismo/s 22 ‘Ecofeminism’
"This collection affirms the ongoing importance of feminist perspectives in the environmental humanities. Working both from and against earlier traditions of ecofeminism, contributors to this volume explore issues of gender, sex, natalism, apocalypticism, embodiment, violence, justice, race, species, and colonialism as key analytic concerns for feminist ecocriticism. The collection thus develops a new understanding of ecofeminism, one that is much more attentive to power, intersectionality and diversity than earlier works in the field.
--Catriona Sandilands, Professor, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York
University, and coeditor of Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire (2010).
