MLA 2021 Special Session: Depression-era Environmental Literature in the U.S.
Dust storms. Flooding. The fear of nuclear fallout. While literary critics associate American authors of the 1930s and 40s with leftist political and economic thought, they often ignore concern in the period’s literature and other cultural works with major environmental crises. In my forthcoming book, The Green Depression: American Ecoliterature of the 1930s and 40s (U of Miss. Press, Oct. 2020), I identify ways that depression-era literature contributed to shifts in conservationist thought during the period that would lay the groundwork for the ...