Member Bookshelf

Editors: Diana Villanueva-Romero, Lorraine Kerslake, and Carmen Flys-Junquera. Brill, 2022.

Imaginative Ecologies: Inspiring Change through the Humanities is part of Brill’s series Nature, Culture and Literature. The collection highlights the role literature and visual arts play in fostering sustainability. It weaves together contributions by international scholars, practitioners and environmental activists whose insights are brought together to illustrate how creative imaginations can inspire change.

Further details can be found through the following link: https://brill.com/view/title/60287?language=en where one can also download the flyer and the introduction to the book.

By Leopoldine Prosperetti. Lund Humphries, 2022.

Woodland Imagery in Northern Art reconnects us with the woodland scenery that abounds in Western painting, from Albrecht Dürer’s intense studies of verdant trees, to the works of many other Northern European artists who captured ‘the truth of vegetation’ in their work. These incidents of remarkable scenery in the visual arts have received little attention in the history of art, until now. Prosperetti brings together a set of essays which are devoted to the poetics of the woodlands ...

By Stacey Balkan. West Virginia University Press, 2022.

Rogues in the Postcolony is a study of Anglophone Indian picaresque novels that dramatize the impacts of extractive capitalism and colonial occupation on local communities in several Indian states. In this materialist history of development on the subcontinent, Stacey Balkan considers works by Amitav Ghosh, Indra Sinha, and Aravind Adiga that critique violent campaigns of enclosure and dispossession at the hands of corporate entities like the English East India Company and its many legatees. By foregrounding the ...

Editor: Cajetan Iheka. Modern Language Association, 2021.

Taking up the idea that teaching is a political act, this collection of essays reflects on recent trends in ecocriticism and the implications for pedagogy. Focusing on a diverse set of literature and media, Teaching Postcolonial Environmental Literature and Media also provides background on historical and theoretical issues that animate the field of postcolonial ecocriticism. The scope is broad, encompassing not only the Global South but also parts of the Global North that have been subject to ...

By Cajetan Iheka. Duke University Press, December 2021.

In African Ecomedia, Cajetan Iheka examines the ecological footprint of media in Africa alongside the representation of environmental issues in visual culture. Iheka shows how, through visual media such as film, photography, and sculpture, African artists deliver a unique perspective on the socioecological costs of media production, from mineral and oil extraction to the politics of animal conservation. Among other works, he examines Pieter Hugo’s photography of electronic waste recycling in Ghana and Idrissou Mora-Kpai’s documentary on ...

Edited by Rose McLarney, Laura-Gray Street and L. L. Gaddy. University of Georgia Press, October 2019.

A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia — a hybrid literary and natural history anthology –showcases sixty of the many species indigenous to the region.

Ecologically, culturally, and artistically, Southern Appalachia is rich in paradox and stereotype-defying complexity. Its species range from the iconic and inveterate-such as the speckled trout, pileated woodpecker, copperhead, and black bear-to the elusive and endangered-such as the American chestnut, Carolina gorge moss, chucky madtom, ...

By Jennifer Browdy. Green Fire Press, 2021.

In Purposeful Memoir as a Quest for a Thriving Future, award-winning author Jennifer Browdy weaves her own story together with the purposeful memoirs of more than 15 writer-activists, including Wangari Maathai, Jane Goodall  and Terry Tempest Williams. Eight essays explore positive qualities needed to create a thriving future, accompanied by writing prompts designed to engage readers in the contemplative practice of purposeful memoir: exploring individual and collective history with the goal of understanding the present more fully, ...

By Mandy-Suzanne Wong. New Rivers Press, 2021. 

In Listen, we all bleed, radical artists from around the world use recordings of nonhuman voices to plead for an end to violence against nonhuman animals. The essays, novelistic and acutely personal, listen to fishes, whales, coyotes, elephants, chickens, and more. Central to this work is the importance of listening—just listening—as a creative effort that is also an activist act. Nominated for the PEN/Galbraith Nonfiction Award, CLMP Firecrackers, and Foreword INDIES Book Award, Listen, we all bleed includes reflections ...

Edited by Luis I. Prádanos, Suzanne M. McCullagh, Ilaria Tabusso Marcyan, and Catherine Wagner. Lexington Books, January 2022.

Contesting Extinctions: Decolonial and Regenerative Futures critically interrogates the discursive framing of extinctions and how they relate to the systems that bring about biocultural loss. The chapters in this multidisciplinary volume examine approaches to ecological and social extinction and resurgence from a variety of fields, including environmental studies, literary studies, political science, and philosophy. Grounding their scholarship in decolonial, Indigenous, and counter-hegemonic frameworks, the contributors advocate ...

Edited by Stacey Balkan and Swaralipi Nandi. Penn State University Press, 2021. 

Oil, like other fossil fuels, permeates every aspect of human existence. Yet it has been largely ignored by cultural critics, especially in the context of the Global South. Seeking to make visible not only the pervasiveness of oil in society and culture but also its power, Oil Fictions stages a critical intervention that aligns with the broader goals of the energy humanities.

Exploring literature and film about petroleum as a genre of world literature, Oil Fictions focuses ...