Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture: Biology and the Bildungsroman
By Helena Feder. Routledge, 2014.
Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture: Biology and the Bildungsroman draws on work by Kinji Imanishi, Frans de Waal, and other biologists to create an interdisciplinary, materialist notion of culture for ecocritical analysis. In this timely intervention, Feder examines the humanist idea of culture by taking a fresh look at the stories it explicitly tells about itself. These stories fall into the genre of the Bildungsroman, the tale of individual acculturation that participates in the myth of its complete ...
Post Green: Literature, Culture, and Environment
ASLE INDIA CALL FOR PAPERS Post Green: Literature, Culture, and Environment Edited by Murali Sivaramakrishnan and Animesh Roy
One of the central concerns of modern environmentalism in the West, especially in environmental humanities has been a greater preoccupation and a consequent move toward postmaterialist values. Literary environmentalism in the West arose out of a desire toward a posthumanist understanding of the earth, an exploration of how literature and literary criticism could be a potent tool for or against environmental change. Despite Glotfelty and Buell’s noble intentions, ...
Plants and People, Together in Precarity
Plants and People, Together in Precarity ASLE 2021 Virtual Conference Panel
In March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic began to reshape every aspect of American life, garden suppliers reported shortages as people brought plants into their lives and homes. Online house plant accounts shifted from showcasing collections to documenting slow new growth, while beginning and experienced gardeners alike shared images tagged #gardenupdate on social media during lockdown. Taking the COVID-19 pandemic as exemplary of broader patterns in human-plant interaction, this panel explores how precarity, at ...