This paper is a collaborative transdisciplinary examination of the scientific, political, and cul... more This paper is a collaborative transdisciplinary examination of the scientific, political, and cultural determinants of the conservation status of mammal species that occur in both Canada and the USA. We read Canada's Species at Risk Act (2002) as a document of bio-cultural nationalism circumscribed by the weak federalism and Crown-Indigenous relations of the nation's constitution. We also provide a numerical comparison of at-risk species listings either side of the US-Canada border and examples of provincial/state listings in comparison to those at a federal level. We find 17 mammal species listed as at-risk in Canada as distinct from the USA, and only six transboundary species that have comparable levels of protection in both countries, and we consider several explanations for this asymmetry. We evaluate the concept of 'jurisdictional rarity', in which species are endangered only because a geopolitical boundary isolates a small population. The paper begins and ends with reflections on interdisciplinary collaboration, and our findings highlight the importance of considering and explicitly acknowledging political influences on science and conservation-decision making, including in the context of at-risk-species protection.
Memory in the Twenty-First Century: New Critical Perspectives from the Arts, Humanities and Sciences, 2016
'One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of... more 'One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.' Drawing on personal memories of listening to Dylan Thomas's 'A Child's Christmas in Wales', the article reflects on certain ironies of climatic memory and representation.
The paper contrasts the recriminalization of zoophilia at the instigation of animal rights organi... more The paper contrasts the recriminalization of zoophilia at the instigation of animal rights organisations with the revelation of diverse animal sexualities. It posits the existence of a 'stallion/gelding complex' that expects animals to be either unremittingly sexual or wholly sexless. The paper then examines the representation of zoophilic relationships in David Garnett's 'Lady into Fox', Marian Engel's 'Bear' and Robinson Devor's film 'Zoo'.
A range of possible ecocritical responses to the June 2016 ‘Brexit’ referendum decision are revie... more A range of possible ecocritical responses to the June 2016 ‘Brexit’ referendum decision are reviewed. English nationalism is identified as a key factor in Leavers’ cultural identity, which motivates close attention to contemporary defences of the English countryside and depictions of English ethnic identity and pastoral loss. The potential for empathetic and depolarising treatment of conservative cultures of nature is assessed.
Environment and Narrative: New directions in eco narratology, 2020
This essay attempts to develop a new framework for interpreting narrative ecocritically. It combi... more This essay attempts to develop a new framework for interpreting narrative ecocritically. It combines environmental virtue ethics from philosophy with narrative ethics from narrative theory, and provides a detailed reading of Richard Powers' novel 'Gain' that exemplifies the proposed reading practice.
Drawing on IA Richards's work on practical criticism and close reading, the article critiques the... more Drawing on IA Richards's work on practical criticism and close reading, the article critiques the idea of motivated form in ecopoetics, which suggests that there is a non-trivial relationship between poetic form and some aspect of physical ecosystems. Two ecopoems are closely analysed to indicate how questions of form might be used in ecopoetic analysis.
Cultivating Sustainability in Language and Literature Pedagogy, 2021
The chapter questions the emphasis on environmental activism in ecocritical pedagogy, particularl... more The chapter questions the emphasis on environmental activism in ecocritical pedagogy, particularly in relation to the contention with the socio-ecological issue of climate change. While the facts established by the IPCC should not be up for debate in the humanities classroom, there is strong evidence that cultural identity, not scientific knowledge, predicts students' views on climate change. As such, instructional techniques that welcome viewpoint diversity should be cultivated to support constructive, depolarizing discussions in the classroom. Specific examples of successful and unsuccessful examples from the author's experience are adduced.
NB: The pre-review draft has a different title to the published version. The latter is used above.
The 'scientification' of climate change, which placed the issue beyond democratic debate by decla... more The 'scientification' of climate change, which placed the issue beyond democratic debate by declaring it a matter for the scientific expertise of the IPCC, has not provoked the required political and economic action to resolve it. 'Tipping point' rhetoric and apocalyptic fictions, conveying increased urgency and shaming the present-day, appear also to yield diminishing returns. Instead of representing the present as a binary choice-catastrophe or salvation-a Humanities-informed viewpoint would represent past, present and future in terms of unknowability, frailty, unavoidable interpretation and limited agency.
The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities, ed. U Heise and J Christensen, 2017
Part of the challenge of climate change communication is to convey complex concepts in lay terms ... more Part of the challenge of climate change communication is to convey complex concepts in lay terms accessible to politicians and journalists. It is argued that the environmental humanities has not done so, despite its orientation towards public engagement. The article seeks to summarize the achievement of the environmental humanities under the chiasmic headings of 'ecologizing humanity' and 'humanizing ecology'.
This article examines some tales of feral dogs in the context of ecocriticism and critical animal... more This article examines some tales of feral dogs in the context of ecocriticism and critical animal studies. It discusses the concept of ferality in ethology and evolutionary biology, and considers environmentalist conceptions of ferality as a kind of biological pollution alongside the celebration of ferality in animal studies as a subversive biological tendency.. Fictional texts discussed include Eva Hornung's novel Dog Boy, Alistair Macleod's collec tion As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories and Jack London's The Call of the Wild.
In this paper, I trace the trajectories of Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan from ecofeminist to Dar... more In this paper, I trace the trajectories of Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan from ecofeminist to Darwinist assumptions in their fictional worlds. The essay focuses on Atwood's Surfacing, The Handmaid's Tale and Life Before Man, and McEwan's The Child in Time, Enduring Love, and Saturday.
The article contrasts cornucopian and declensionist environmentalist historiographies, represente... more The article contrasts cornucopian and declensionist environmentalist historiographies, represented by Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist and David Orr's Earth in Mind, in relation to key concerns of environmental education. For the environmental humanities, Orr's Romantic pessimism is analysed as reductive and pegagogically regressive. By contrast, ecocritical pedagogy is framed, following Jonathan Skinner, as a 'practice of emergency' that stresses both urgency and openness.
""In this essay I attempt - a little less than half-seriously - to predict (or at any rate projec... more ""In this essay I attempt - a little less than half-seriously - to predict (or at any rate project) how Ian McEwan would set about writing a novel about climate change by analysing his earlier novels, including 'The Child in Time', 'Atonement', 'Saturday' and 'Enduring Love'.
Ian McEwan: Contemporary Critical Perspectives, 2013
Ian McEwan’s novel about climate change Solar (2010) was
eagerly anticipated by those who hoped f... more Ian McEwan’s novel about climate change Solar (2010) was eagerly anticipated by those who hoped for a dramatic shift in public consciousness of the issue in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Most critics found it disappointing, yet the let-down is complex and instructive, illuminating the cultural politics of climate in the noughties and the intrinsic challenges of climate change as a topic for realist novels. The novel is limited both by McEwan’s choice of satirical allegory as a genre, and by the topical parables that continually dissipate the momentum of the allegorical plot. Solar may also indicate the limit of McEwan’s belief in the capacity of Enlightenment science and liberal democracy to avert climate apocalypse.
De Gruyter Handbook of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology, 2016
This chapter argues that climate change politics is characterized by competing temporalities: "wa... more This chapter argues that climate change politics is characterized by competing temporalities: "warmists" claim time is running out, while skeptics assert that global temperature rise has stopped. In addition, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) process is yielding diminishing returns in terms of public support for emissions reductions, which suggests a broader approach than the purely scientific is required. The chapter examines the specific contribution of Barbara Kingsolv-er's (2012) Flight Behaviour, which epitomizes both "conciliation" of polarized perspectives in the USA and "consilient" integration of scientific and literary knowledge.
Climate change suffers from a relative lack of moral salience due to its enormous geographical an... more Climate change suffers from a relative lack of moral salience due to its enormous geographical and temporal scale, and the uneven distribution of likely effects. Evolutionary psychologists and sociologists have offered explanations for the lack of political and, for the most part, individual action in response to climatic threats. The essay links these explanations to ecocritical analyses of the problem of literary genre, and presents readings of Ian McEwan's 'Solar', Helen Simpson's 'In-Flight Entertainment' and Michael Crichton's 'State of Fear'.
""Ecofeminism has sought to unravel the interarticulation of gender oppression with the dominatio... more ""Ecofeminism has sought to unravel the interarticulation of gender oppression with the domination of nature, while queer theory has pursued a cultural project of subversion of sexual heteronormativity. Queer ecology brings together and extends both discourses, at once drawing upon contemporary biology and subjecting its taxonomies to skeptical critique. The essay argues that queer theory needs ecocriticism to rescue it from its biophobic assumptions, but it is not yet clear what ecocriticism stands to gain from queer theory. Moreover, it is argued that queer ecology risks the appearance of partial, opportunistic and conspicuously biased engagement with biology.
Ecocriticism has tended to avoid modernist texts in favour of ones that make vivid, epiphanic ref... more Ecocriticism has tended to avoid modernist texts in favour of ones that make vivid, epiphanic reference to nature. Beckett's 'Endgame' states, in common with some environmentalists, that 'there's no more nature' - but refuses to reveal the dimensions of its absence. Reread as a precursor to ecocriticism, it is paradoxically the perfect play for the era of anxiety about climate change, which eludes both sensory apprehension and generic representation.
This essay on ecocritical pedagogy includes the results of my small-scale English Subject Centre ... more This essay on ecocritical pedagogy includes the results of my small-scale English Subject Centre study on the impact of teaching ecocriticism.
This paper is a collaborative transdisciplinary examination of the scientific, political, and cul... more This paper is a collaborative transdisciplinary examination of the scientific, political, and cultural determinants of the conservation status of mammal species that occur in both Canada and the USA. We read Canada's Species at Risk Act (2002) as a document of bio-cultural nationalism circumscribed by the weak federalism and Crown-Indigenous relations of the nation's constitution. We also provide a numerical comparison of at-risk species listings either side of the US-Canada border and examples of provincial/state listings in comparison to those at a federal level. We find 17 mammal species listed as at-risk in Canada as distinct from the USA, and only six transboundary species that have comparable levels of protection in both countries, and we consider several explanations for this asymmetry. We evaluate the concept of 'jurisdictional rarity', in which species are endangered only because a geopolitical boundary isolates a small population. The paper begins and ends with reflections on interdisciplinary collaboration, and our findings highlight the importance of considering and explicitly acknowledging political influences on science and conservation-decision making, including in the context of at-risk-species protection.
Memory in the Twenty-First Century: New Critical Perspectives from the Arts, Humanities and Sciences, 2016
'One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of... more 'One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.' Drawing on personal memories of listening to Dylan Thomas's 'A Child's Christmas in Wales', the article reflects on certain ironies of climatic memory and representation.
The paper contrasts the recriminalization of zoophilia at the instigation of animal rights organi... more The paper contrasts the recriminalization of zoophilia at the instigation of animal rights organisations with the revelation of diverse animal sexualities. It posits the existence of a 'stallion/gelding complex' that expects animals to be either unremittingly sexual or wholly sexless. The paper then examines the representation of zoophilic relationships in David Garnett's 'Lady into Fox', Marian Engel's 'Bear' and Robinson Devor's film 'Zoo'.
A range of possible ecocritical responses to the June 2016 ‘Brexit’ referendum decision are revie... more A range of possible ecocritical responses to the June 2016 ‘Brexit’ referendum decision are reviewed. English nationalism is identified as a key factor in Leavers’ cultural identity, which motivates close attention to contemporary defences of the English countryside and depictions of English ethnic identity and pastoral loss. The potential for empathetic and depolarising treatment of conservative cultures of nature is assessed.
Environment and Narrative: New directions in eco narratology, 2020
This essay attempts to develop a new framework for interpreting narrative ecocritically. It combi... more This essay attempts to develop a new framework for interpreting narrative ecocritically. It combines environmental virtue ethics from philosophy with narrative ethics from narrative theory, and provides a detailed reading of Richard Powers' novel 'Gain' that exemplifies the proposed reading practice.
Drawing on IA Richards's work on practical criticism and close reading, the article critiques the... more Drawing on IA Richards's work on practical criticism and close reading, the article critiques the idea of motivated form in ecopoetics, which suggests that there is a non-trivial relationship between poetic form and some aspect of physical ecosystems. Two ecopoems are closely analysed to indicate how questions of form might be used in ecopoetic analysis.
Cultivating Sustainability in Language and Literature Pedagogy, 2021
The chapter questions the emphasis on environmental activism in ecocritical pedagogy, particularl... more The chapter questions the emphasis on environmental activism in ecocritical pedagogy, particularly in relation to the contention with the socio-ecological issue of climate change. While the facts established by the IPCC should not be up for debate in the humanities classroom, there is strong evidence that cultural identity, not scientific knowledge, predicts students' views on climate change. As such, instructional techniques that welcome viewpoint diversity should be cultivated to support constructive, depolarizing discussions in the classroom. Specific examples of successful and unsuccessful examples from the author's experience are adduced.
NB: The pre-review draft has a different title to the published version. The latter is used above.
The 'scientification' of climate change, which placed the issue beyond democratic debate by decla... more The 'scientification' of climate change, which placed the issue beyond democratic debate by declaring it a matter for the scientific expertise of the IPCC, has not provoked the required political and economic action to resolve it. 'Tipping point' rhetoric and apocalyptic fictions, conveying increased urgency and shaming the present-day, appear also to yield diminishing returns. Instead of representing the present as a binary choice-catastrophe or salvation-a Humanities-informed viewpoint would represent past, present and future in terms of unknowability, frailty, unavoidable interpretation and limited agency.
The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities, ed. U Heise and J Christensen, 2017
Part of the challenge of climate change communication is to convey complex concepts in lay terms ... more Part of the challenge of climate change communication is to convey complex concepts in lay terms accessible to politicians and journalists. It is argued that the environmental humanities has not done so, despite its orientation towards public engagement. The article seeks to summarize the achievement of the environmental humanities under the chiasmic headings of 'ecologizing humanity' and 'humanizing ecology'.
This article examines some tales of feral dogs in the context of ecocriticism and critical animal... more This article examines some tales of feral dogs in the context of ecocriticism and critical animal studies. It discusses the concept of ferality in ethology and evolutionary biology, and considers environmentalist conceptions of ferality as a kind of biological pollution alongside the celebration of ferality in animal studies as a subversive biological tendency.. Fictional texts discussed include Eva Hornung's novel Dog Boy, Alistair Macleod's collec tion As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories and Jack London's The Call of the Wild.
In this paper, I trace the trajectories of Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan from ecofeminist to Dar... more In this paper, I trace the trajectories of Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan from ecofeminist to Darwinist assumptions in their fictional worlds. The essay focuses on Atwood's Surfacing, The Handmaid's Tale and Life Before Man, and McEwan's The Child in Time, Enduring Love, and Saturday.
The article contrasts cornucopian and declensionist environmentalist historiographies, represente... more The article contrasts cornucopian and declensionist environmentalist historiographies, represented by Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist and David Orr's Earth in Mind, in relation to key concerns of environmental education. For the environmental humanities, Orr's Romantic pessimism is analysed as reductive and pegagogically regressive. By contrast, ecocritical pedagogy is framed, following Jonathan Skinner, as a 'practice of emergency' that stresses both urgency and openness.
""In this essay I attempt - a little less than half-seriously - to predict (or at any rate projec... more ""In this essay I attempt - a little less than half-seriously - to predict (or at any rate project) how Ian McEwan would set about writing a novel about climate change by analysing his earlier novels, including 'The Child in Time', 'Atonement', 'Saturday' and 'Enduring Love'.
Ian McEwan: Contemporary Critical Perspectives, 2013
Ian McEwan’s novel about climate change Solar (2010) was
eagerly anticipated by those who hoped f... more Ian McEwan’s novel about climate change Solar (2010) was eagerly anticipated by those who hoped for a dramatic shift in public consciousness of the issue in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Most critics found it disappointing, yet the let-down is complex and instructive, illuminating the cultural politics of climate in the noughties and the intrinsic challenges of climate change as a topic for realist novels. The novel is limited both by McEwan’s choice of satirical allegory as a genre, and by the topical parables that continually dissipate the momentum of the allegorical plot. Solar may also indicate the limit of McEwan’s belief in the capacity of Enlightenment science and liberal democracy to avert climate apocalypse.
De Gruyter Handbook of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology, 2016
This chapter argues that climate change politics is characterized by competing temporalities: "wa... more This chapter argues that climate change politics is characterized by competing temporalities: "warmists" claim time is running out, while skeptics assert that global temperature rise has stopped. In addition, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) process is yielding diminishing returns in terms of public support for emissions reductions, which suggests a broader approach than the purely scientific is required. The chapter examines the specific contribution of Barbara Kingsolv-er's (2012) Flight Behaviour, which epitomizes both "conciliation" of polarized perspectives in the USA and "consilient" integration of scientific and literary knowledge.
Climate change suffers from a relative lack of moral salience due to its enormous geographical an... more Climate change suffers from a relative lack of moral salience due to its enormous geographical and temporal scale, and the uneven distribution of likely effects. Evolutionary psychologists and sociologists have offered explanations for the lack of political and, for the most part, individual action in response to climatic threats. The essay links these explanations to ecocritical analyses of the problem of literary genre, and presents readings of Ian McEwan's 'Solar', Helen Simpson's 'In-Flight Entertainment' and Michael Crichton's 'State of Fear'.
""Ecofeminism has sought to unravel the interarticulation of gender oppression with the dominatio... more ""Ecofeminism has sought to unravel the interarticulation of gender oppression with the domination of nature, while queer theory has pursued a cultural project of subversion of sexual heteronormativity. Queer ecology brings together and extends both discourses, at once drawing upon contemporary biology and subjecting its taxonomies to skeptical critique. The essay argues that queer theory needs ecocriticism to rescue it from its biophobic assumptions, but it is not yet clear what ecocriticism stands to gain from queer theory. Moreover, it is argued that queer ecology risks the appearance of partial, opportunistic and conspicuously biased engagement with biology.
Ecocriticism has tended to avoid modernist texts in favour of ones that make vivid, epiphanic ref... more Ecocriticism has tended to avoid modernist texts in favour of ones that make vivid, epiphanic reference to nature. Beckett's 'Endgame' states, in common with some environmentalists, that 'there's no more nature' - but refuses to reveal the dimensions of its absence. Reread as a precursor to ecocriticism, it is paradoxically the perfect play for the era of anxiety about climate change, which eludes both sensory apprehension and generic representation.
This essay on ecocritical pedagogy includes the results of my small-scale English Subject Centre ... more This essay on ecocritical pedagogy includes the results of my small-scale English Subject Centre study on the impact of teaching ecocriticism.
The revised version of this critical response paper will appear in a collection edited by Matthew... more The revised version of this critical response paper will appear in a collection edited by Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Alexa Weik von Mossner, Wojciech Małecki and Frank Hackemulder (U of Minnesota P, forthcoming).
This essay has been accepted for inclusion in Tess Somervell and Susannah Edney, 'Georgic Literat... more This essay has been accepted for inclusion in Tess Somervell and Susannah Edney, 'Georgic Literature and the Environment: Working Land, Reworking Genre', Routledge, forthcoming
'Paradise haunts gardens, and it haunts mine', wrote Derek Jarman. The garden he nurtured in the shingle at Dungeness, a gorgeous riot of drought-tolerant plants and rusting, discarded implements, is therefore thrice-haunted: by the Eden myth; by its deceased author; and by the containment building that seals in the furnace of nuclear fission on the horizon. It is also, though, a gesture of ultimate confidence in the capacity of humans to found, with time and work, a constructive 'georgic' relationship with the environment. As such, it subtly challenges the queer emphasis on subversion and identification with exclusion and negativity, the terminus for which is Lee Edelman's defiant acceptance of the association of queers with the 'death drive': 'No Future'. For life itself is, as Jarman writes of the lizards that 'dance / in the santolina', 'not straight at all'.
The essay assesses the treatment of deep evolutionary time and the 'disenchantment of nature' by ... more The essay assesses the treatment of deep evolutionary time and the 'disenchantment of nature' by science lamented in Matthew Arnold's poem 'Dover Beach' through an analysis of Ian McEwan's novels 'Saturday' and 'On Chesil Beach'.
The third edition of 'Ecocriticism', first published in 2004, is 5000 words longer, with 85% new ... more The third edition of 'Ecocriticism', first published in 2004, is 5000 words longer, with 85% new material, including a major new chapter on 'Indigeneity'. The attached Preface indicates some of the changes I've made.
'The Culture of Nature' by Alex Wilson has been one of my favorite books since I first read it in... more 'The Culture of Nature' by Alex Wilson has been one of my favorite books since I first read it in the mid-90s. It inspired me to think about landscape and environment in a more capacious way than the academic publications on Wordsworth, Thoreau and ecopoetry that made up the then-emergent field of environmental literary criticism or 'ecocriticism.'
The first edition was printed on a shoestring, though, which limited the quality of the many photos included in the book, and Wilson's death in 1991 deprived readers of follow-up publications and further editions. In 2019, I collaborated with Between the Lines, an independent Canadian press, on a second edition featuring re-mastered photos, and prepared this Preface by talking to Wilson's widower about the author's life and work. I hope environmental humanists will buy this superb new edition of a classic in the field.
'Climate Change Scepticism: A Transnational Ecocritical Analysis' is co-authored by Greg Garrard,... more 'Climate Change Scepticism: A Transnational Ecocritical Analysis' is co-authored by Greg Garrard, Axel Goodbody, George B. Handley, and Stephanie Posthumus. In response to the acute polarization of climate change politics, we set out to read sceptical texts empathetically, to understand how sceptics see - and write about - the world. The Open Access book is available here: https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/book/climate-change-scepticism-a-transnational-ecocritical-analysis/
Climate Change Scepticism: A Transnational Ecocritical Analysis, 2019
A chapter, authored by George Handley, from a co-authored transnational ecocritical study of clim... more A chapter, authored by George Handley, from a co-authored transnational ecocritical study of climate scepticism in the UK, the US, and in Germany and France. This chapter covers the grounds for climate scepticism as manifested in popular American cultural imagination and in conservative Christian theology.
The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism provides a broad survey of the longstanding relationship betw... more The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism provides a broad survey of the longstanding relationship between literature and the environment. The moment for such an offering is opportune in many respects: multiple environmental crises are increasingly inescapable at both transnational and local levels; the role of the humanities in addition to technology and politics is increasingly recognized as central for exploring and finding solutions; and the subject of ecocriticism has reached a kind of critical mass, both within its Anglo-American heartlands and beyond. From its origins in the study of American Nature Writing and British Romanticism, ecocriticism has developed along numerous theoretical, historical, cultural and geographical axes, the most contemporary and exciting of which will be represented in the Handbook. The contributors include eminent founders of the field, including Michael Branch and Richard Kerridge, a number of key 'second-wave' ecocritics, and the best up-and-coming scholars. Topics covered include: Renaissance anxieties about nature; the challenges of representing climate change; the racialization of the environment in the early 20th century; language and the concept of biosemiotics; and the possibilities for environmental humour.
This edited collection on ecocritical pedagogy includes essays by Richard Kerridge, Ursula Heise,... more This edited collection on ecocritical pedagogy includes essays by Richard Kerridge, Ursula Heise, Timothy Morton, Anthony Lioi, Adrian Ivakhiv and Louise Westling.
Recent studies of the concepts and ideologies of Romanticism have neglected to explore the ways i... more Recent studies of the concepts and ideologies of Romanticism have neglected to explore the ways in which Romanticism defined itself by reconfiguring its literary past. In Wordsworth's Pope Robert J. Griffin shows that many of the basic tenets of Romanticism derive from mid-...
Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this pa... more Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what ...
My ecocritical research has recently come under fire from Greta Gaard and Simon Estok. In ISLE, G... more My ecocritical research has recently come under fire from Greta Gaard and Simon Estok. In ISLE, Gaard claims that I minimise the formative influence of ecofeminism, while in 'International Perspectives in Feminist Ecocriticism' Estok critiques 'How Queer is Green?'. His conclusion is that: 'Queer theory bashing looks a lot like plain old ordinary queer bashing, although through protective rarefied discourse, and queer bashing looks a lot like homophobia to me.' Since I cannot publish a reply to a book chapter, I have written this response for academia.edu readers, and for Gaard, Estok and Serpil Oppermann, the editors of the ecofeminism collection.
For this revised version, I am grateful for the responses provided by Profs. Gaard and Oppermann to my original essay.
Animal studies theorists and scientists have written a great deal on the question of anthropomorp... more Animal studies theorists and scientists have written a great deal on the question of anthropomorphism and related topics, but there seems to be no agreement about terminology. In this draft outline, I seek to provide a simple typology of animal representations to help students. I'd be grateful for comments, especially: types of animal representation I've missed out; the location of any existing typology; and examples of the rarer types from literature or science (especially what I've called 'allomorphism'). Please email my Bath Spa account, rather than academia.
Nerter Revista Dedicada a La Literatura El Arte Y El Conocimiento, 2010
... Ecocrítica: la habilidad para estudiar artefactos culturales desde una perspectiva ecológica.... more ... Ecocrítica: la habilidad para estudiar artefactos culturales desde una perspectiva ecológica. Autores: Greg Garrard; Localización: Nerter: Revista dedicada a la literatura, el arte y el conocimiento, ISSN 1575-8621, Nº 15-16, 2010 , págs. 27-32. Fundación Dialnet. ...
Richard Kerridge and I prepared this report in 2005 for the now-defunct English Subject Centre (p... more Richard Kerridge and I prepared this report in 2005 for the now-defunct English Subject Centre (part of the Higher Education Academy). It attempts to show the 'state of the art' in the subject at that time.
'Environmental Cultures' is a new series, co-edited by Greg Garrard and Richard Kerridge, from Bl... more 'Environmental Cultures' is a new series, co-edited by Greg Garrard and Richard Kerridge, from Bloomsbury Academic (formerly Continuum). It aims to publish innovative work in ecocriticism and the environmental humanities.
Environmental crisis is simultaneously and inseparably material and cultural, destructive and revolutionary. Besides complicating and endangering relationships between humans and other beings, it transforms human identities, communities and nations in unpredictable ways. Old distinctions between nature and culture are being eroded; new values, genres and media are emerging that respond to the crisis with mourning, scepticism, dismay, resourcefulness or ironic resignation. 'Environmental Cultures' reflects the belief that cultural criticism can help avert, resolve, mitigate or at least comprehend ecological problems. It will publish ambitious, innovative literary ecocriticism and interdisciplinary, transnational and pedagogical scholarship on both traditional and digital media. The series will encourage reflexive theoretical critique and searching exploration of anti-environmentalist cultural forms as well as sophisticated literary analysis. Cultures are unavoidably environmental, for good and ill. 'Environmental Cultures' will show how.
We seek book proposals on any topic in this field. We are especially looking for monographs that take the environmental humanities in new directions or widen its geographical scope, such as: digital ecocriticism; world/comparative literatures; anti-environmentalist cultures; new modes of nature writing; literary responses to ecological science. We are also commissioning ecocritical studies of national or regional literatures. We will commission monographs and collaboratively written books, but not edited collections or conference proceedings.
Titles in the 'Environmental Cultures' series will be published as Bloomsbury Open Content. This successful publishing model ensures that the full text of each book is freely available online (under a Creative Commons licence) for browsing and searching at the same time as being available for sale as print or ebooks.
It's sad, I know, but I enjoy these cover designs I've done for 'Green Letters: Studies in Ecocri... more It's sad, I know, but I enjoy these cover designs I've done for 'Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism'. Plus they could form the nucleus of a portfolio in case I get fired from academia and have to try and get into marketing or something.
Uploads
Published papers by Greg Garrard
NB: The pre-review draft has a different title to the published version. The latter is used above.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/cli/summary/v050/50.4.garrard.html "
eagerly anticipated by those who hoped for a dramatic shift in public
consciousness of the issue in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Most critics found it disappointing, yet the let-down is complex and
instructive, illuminating the cultural politics of climate in the noughties
and the intrinsic challenges of climate change as a topic for realist
novels. The novel is limited both by McEwan’s choice of satirical allegory
as a genre, and by the topical parables that continually dissipate
the momentum of the allegorical plot. Solar may also indicate the limit
of McEwan’s belief in the capacity of Enlightenment science and liberal
democracy to avert climate apocalypse.
Volume 8, nos.1-2, Winter 2010""
NB: The pre-review draft has a different title to the published version. The latter is used above.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/cli/summary/v050/50.4.garrard.html "
eagerly anticipated by those who hoped for a dramatic shift in public
consciousness of the issue in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Most critics found it disappointing, yet the let-down is complex and
instructive, illuminating the cultural politics of climate in the noughties
and the intrinsic challenges of climate change as a topic for realist
novels. The novel is limited both by McEwan’s choice of satirical allegory
as a genre, and by the topical parables that continually dissipate
the momentum of the allegorical plot. Solar may also indicate the limit
of McEwan’s belief in the capacity of Enlightenment science and liberal
democracy to avert climate apocalypse.
Volume 8, nos.1-2, Winter 2010""
'Paradise haunts gardens, and it haunts mine', wrote Derek Jarman. The garden he nurtured in the shingle at Dungeness, a gorgeous riot of drought-tolerant plants and rusting, discarded implements, is therefore thrice-haunted: by the Eden myth; by its deceased author; and by the containment building that seals in the furnace of nuclear fission on the horizon. It is also, though, a gesture of ultimate confidence in the capacity of humans to found, with time and work, a constructive 'georgic' relationship with the environment. As such, it subtly challenges the queer emphasis on subversion and identification with exclusion and negativity, the terminus for which is Lee Edelman's defiant acceptance of the association of queers with the 'death drive': 'No Future'. For life itself is, as Jarman writes of the lizards that 'dance / in the santolina', 'not straight at all'.
The first edition was printed on a shoestring, though, which limited the quality of the many photos included in the book, and Wilson's death in 1991 deprived readers of follow-up publications and further editions. In 2019, I collaborated with Between the Lines, an independent Canadian press, on a second edition featuring re-mastered photos, and prepared this Preface by talking to Wilson's widower about the author's life and work. I hope environmental humanists will buy this superb new edition of a classic in the field.
https://btlbooks.com/book/culture-of-nature
For this revised version, I am grateful for the responses provided by Profs. Gaard and Oppermann to my original essay.
Environmental crisis is simultaneously and inseparably material and cultural, destructive and revolutionary. Besides complicating and endangering relationships between humans and other beings, it transforms human identities, communities and nations in unpredictable ways. Old distinctions between nature and culture are being eroded; new values, genres and media are emerging that respond to the crisis with mourning, scepticism, dismay, resourcefulness or ironic resignation. 'Environmental Cultures' reflects the belief that cultural criticism can help avert, resolve, mitigate or at least comprehend ecological problems. It will publish ambitious, innovative literary ecocriticism and interdisciplinary, transnational and pedagogical scholarship on both traditional and digital media. The series will encourage reflexive theoretical critique and searching exploration of anti-environmentalist cultural forms as well as sophisticated literary analysis. Cultures are unavoidably environmental, for good and ill. 'Environmental Cultures' will show how.
We seek book proposals on any topic in this field. We are especially looking for monographs that take the environmental humanities in new directions or widen its geographical scope, such as: digital ecocriticism; world/comparative literatures; anti-environmentalist cultures; new modes of nature writing; literary responses to ecological science. We are also commissioning ecocritical studies of national or regional literatures. We will commission monographs and collaboratively written books, but not edited collections or conference proceedings.
Titles in the 'Environmental Cultures' series will be published as Bloomsbury Open Content. This successful publishing model ensures that the full text of each book is freely available online (under a Creative Commons licence) for browsing and searching at the same time as being available for sale as print or ebooks.
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=406097
On the idea of 'slow reading':
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=412075