Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism Research Papers (original) (raw)

This presentation examines the relationship between adventure sports, masculinity, and nature. My research focuses on how cultural assumptions of masculinity pertain to how male adventure athletes’ nature relationship is represented in contemporary media and consumer marketing and in the ways male adventure athletes themselves describe their nature relationships. In my analysis of the subject I will use both ecocritical theory and theory on masculinities. This combination forms an ecomasculine viewpoint into the subject. My research material consists of contemporary media such as blogs, websites, and adventure films where adventure athletes engage in mountain sports such as mountain climbing, mountain running and ski mountaineering. All of these variations of mountain sports share common elements of danger, need of physical endurance, and the location: mountains. I will discuss, among other things, how a cultural male/female dichotomy extends to how male athletes’ relationship to nature is represented in contemporary media.
______________________________________________________________________KEY WORDS: Adventure Sports, Ecocriticism, Ecomasculinity, Masculinity, Nature

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- Adventure Sports and Tourism, Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism, Ecomasculinity

Chapter 22: "Anthropocene"

- by Alison Sperling
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- Feminist Theory, Feminism, Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism, Anthropocene

Brenda Hillman’s 2018 collection, Extra Hidden Life Among the Days, is rich with many
lives—bacterial, human, arboreal, fungal. A multi-media, mycelial entanglement of elegies, personal photographs, and journal meditations, Hillman’s linguistic materials take the viewer from her family’s home in Tucson to the White House Lawn, weaving contemporary political struggles into her own observations of human-nature relationships, as well as the agency of forests and lichen. How might one describe Hillman’s work? To simply call it ‘ecopoetics’ does not do her experimental storytelling justice. Rather, we might better understand Hillman’s reconfiguration of Romantic, timeless environmental writing into a timely, expansive bio-cultural ecology as ‘political-pastoral,’ a type of poetic writing that embraces humanity’s impact on landscapes, that imbues the natural world with political symbolism.

- by Eleonor Botoman
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- Climate Change, Poetry, Environmental History, Ecofeminism
- by Aarti Madan
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- Indian studies, Brazilian Studies, Global South, Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism

This essay examines the visual and written cultures of grizzly eradication and settler violence in U.S. California. In addition to unpacking the ways that settlers transformed the California Grizzly into a gendered symbol of imperial domination, this piece analyzes the ways that public discourse about the untamed outdoors worked to frame Native nations and wild grizzlies as threats to a properly domesticated and commercially productive U.S. California.

- by Daniel Lanza Rivers
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- Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Animal Studies

The interview was mainly conducted at Tallinn University in January 2019, when Stacy Alaimo visited the Graduate Winter School “The Humanities and Posthumanities: New Ways of Being Human” and gave a plenary lecture titled “Onto-epistemologies for the Anthropocene, or Who will be the Subject of the Posthumanities?”, and completed in spring 2020, to address immediately unfolding issues. Alaimo is an internationally recognized scholar of American literature, ecocultural theory, environmental humanities, science studies, gender theory, and new materialism. She is the author of three monographs on environmental theory and ecocultural studies: Undomesticated Ground: Recasting Nature as Feminist Space (Cornell University Press, 2000); Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self (Indiana University Press, 2010); and Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times (University of Minnesota Press, 2016). Alaimo has edited and co-edited essay col...

- by Stacy Alaimo
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- History, Ecology, Ecocriticism, Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism

Angela Carter (1940-1992) and Lorna Crozier (1948) are two examples of contemporary writers who dedicate part of their work to problematizing historically established constructs that undermine the agency of both nature and women. Carter’s and Crozier’s agenda is, thus, in line with ecofeminist tenets, which are based on the interconnectedness of all living things on a non-hierarchical level. The intention of this article is to conduct a contrastive analysis of Crozier’s and Carter’s retelling of the account of Leda and the swan originally described in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 AD) and later in W.B. Yeats’s poem “Leda and the Swan” (1928). We contend that both Carter’s and Crozier’s versions of the myth challenge patriarchal domination by giving voice to and empowering Leda, the young female character in the myth. This empowerment is closely associated to Leda’s harmonization with the natural world, since, by going back to nature, the young Ledas in Carter’s and Crozier’s works come to terms with their adolescent bodies in order to become women stripped of restrictive cultural and social beliefs. Accordingly, the original meaning of the figure of the swan is also subverted to adopt connotations more in tune with the creation of a sense of community that challenge the powerful enclosed violence that Ovid and Yeats attributed to this animal by presenting it as Zeus in disguise.

- by Núria Mina-Riera
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- Poetry, Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism

This paper is a study of the Indigenous literatures of Australia and Canada. As Indigenous writings reflect the symbiosis of nature and culture, an important aspect of Indigenous people is that they try to return to nature to receive Indigenous spirituality that has its roots in harmony among all beings. These writings based on nature-centred thoughts, belief system, traditional patterns, spirituality and cultural practices, environmental knowledge and respect, change and catastrophe, and dependence on nature and natural resources have been studied as presented in some relevant texts.

- by Ars Artium
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- English Literature, English, Ecology, Indian English Literature

Mother earth tied to the train tracks: The scriptive implications of melodrama in climate change discourse abSTracT This article examines the way climate change narratives have mobilized melodramatic frameworks, by examining An Inconvenient Truth (Guggenheim, 2006) as paradigmatic. It engages with recent scholarship that recuperates melodrama from the realm of the pejorative to observe how it structures political discourse and expands on that scholarship by introducing a performance studies methodology to examine how melodrama offers the broad outlines of a script that the would-be hero is asked to improvise within. The essay examines the tropes of melodrama – which include Manichaean dichotomies of good and evil, the implication that suffering is a marker of virtue, and the imperative of a dialectic of pathos and action – in order to analyse their implications for the potential to solve the impending tragedy of devastating climate change. This essay engages in close readings of performances struc-tured by generic scriptive discourse to argue that, for climate change activists, the forms that environmental narratives take, may communicate as much as the content of those narratives.

- by Shannon Davies Mancus
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- Cultural Studies, American Studies, Gender Studies, Media Studies

The chapter focuses on the ways in which Hollywood films have represented the material and emotional dimensions of nuclear risk and on how these representations engage viewers. James Bridges’s The China Syndrome and Mike Nichols’s Silkwood both frame their representation of risk as suspense-driven political thrillers and in both cases the fictional drama is heightened by the films’ relationships to real-world risks and events. While the invisibility of radiation raises representational problems, both films use their viewers’ preexisting risk perceptions to engage them in plotlines that are driven by the anticipation of catastrophes rather than by the catastrophes themselves. By telling melodramatic stories about courageous individuals who struggle to uncover the truth about nuclear risk, argues Weik von Mossner, the films not only illustrate Ulrich Beck’s claim that the determination of risk is a form of ethics; they also demonstrate that emotional processes such as fear are vital components of ethical decision making in the face of unpredictable material agencies and the environmental risks they pose.

- by Alexa Weik von Mossner
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- American History, Cultural Studies, Emotion, American Studies

Yuk King Tan’s video Limits of Visibility (2012) transports the viewer to the bay of Hong Kong and the cargo area where a tonnage of paper (the perpetual waste, even in the digital age) is compacted into modular cubes, stacked and waiting to be craned onto long barges. Tan asserts that the ‘material is prepared to become another kind of vast colony [see plate 11]. Sent to less developed countries [to be] further broken down and salvaged, the waste material is a literal paper trail about the scale, power and wastage of economic development and trade.’

- by Jane Chin Davidson
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- Visual Studies, Art History, Contemporary Art, Environmental Studies
- by Carmen Flys
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- Art, Ecocriticism, Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism

Ecopoetry is a type of poetry that uses a powerful ecological stress or message. If we examine ecopoetry included in ecocriticism subject, we can see the difference between nature poetry and ecological poetry in many ways when we consider nature and eco writing. Considering the diversity it contains, it is hard to fit ecopoetry into a single meaning, but the definition of the American poet Juliana Spahr gives us an idea. In her book, Well Then There Now, Juliana Spahr defines ecopoetry and its associate with ecopoetics tradition as "a systematic analysis of the distinctions between nature and culture." According to her, based on ecopoetry, it is fed by many dualisms such as natural, cultural, material discursive and is based on an abstractive narrative. For example, while ecopoetry depicts a bird on the tree, it does not mention the bulldozer that will destroy the bird's habitat soon. Or it does not mention where the same bird emigrated from there and how it interacted with the ecosystem in which it lives.

- by Aleyna Poyraz
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- Ecocriticism, Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism, Ecopoetry

Historians have noted that male bureaucrats and natural resource experts tended to dominate early twentieth-century national and hemispheric conservationist movements in Latin America, but a constellation of female activists, notably Gabriela Mistral, strengthened conservationism in the cultural sphere. Capitalizing on her leadership in Pan-Americanism, transnational feminist networks, and cutting-edge teaching, Mistral functioned throughout her career as an advocate for conservationism, gendering the natural environment in strategically essentialist ways. Important tropes throughout her poetry, Nature and Mother Earth became specific themes in Mistral’s journalistic prose. Here Mistral blended conservationism with anti-imperialism, arguing that Mother Earth was threatened both by man’s failure to care for her and by predatory imperialists. Environmental stewardship also played a central role in her Pan-American initiatives and complimented the “official” Pan-American Conservation Movement of the inter-war period. Mistral’s de facto ecofeminism is echoed in Latin American women’s writing of the 1920s, 30s and 40s, suggesting that Nature represented an alternate sphere for women beyond the urban manifestations of modernization. The gathering of female voices around the gendered image of Mother Nature also represents a corpus of early environmental prophets in Latin American letters and culture.

- by Greta Gaard
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- Environmental Studies, Environmental Ethics, Ecofeminism, Feminism

This book examines literary representations of human and non-human animality in British Romanticism, a period in which scientific, political, and industrial revolutions radically transformed the status of the human and redefined the... more

- by Peter Heymans
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- Aesthetics, Kant, Romanticism, Theology

In this paper, I posit a theoretical intersection that may seem counterintuitive on the surface, but through my analysis and interrogations, I hope to illuminate how each school of theory seems made to fit into the other. I will disclose my theoretical base first before I establish the history, major postulates, and cinematic purpose for each theory separately and finally move into a section of synthesis in which I intend to reveal the ways that each theory informs the other, forging a new body of work over my theoretical base. Ultimately, I will propose and validate a new, hybrid school of theory that hopefully has incredible potential in application with film. I claim a mode of analysis engaged with the queer ecosemiotics of film. What I call a queer ecosemiotic theory draws on cognitivist, cultural, and semiotic approaches to film. I work from the bases established by New Queer Cinema and ecocinema, each bursting out of the 1990s, as well as the writings of thinkers like Richard Dyer, Karl Marx, Fredric Jameson, Christian Metz, Maureen Turim, and Nicole Seymour.

- by Sam Lauer
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- Queer Studies, New Queer Cinema, Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism, Queer Ecology

Con lenguaje claro e ilustraciones evocadoras, este libro nos ofrece las claves de un pensamiento contemporáneo emergente. ¿Qué es el ecofeminismo? ¿Cómo ha surgido y evolucionado? ¿Qué nos dice con respecto a nuestros cuerpos y nuestra sexualidad? ¿Cómo cultivar una ética del cuidado en la vida cotidiana, la ciencia y la tecnología? ¿Qué características debe tener una Educación Ambiental ecofeminista? ¿Es la violencia hacia los animales una práctica patriarcal? ¿Cómo se transforman las identidades de género gracias a las nuevas formas de sensibilidad y conciencia hacia los animales? Estas son algunas de las preguntas que encuentran respuesta en esta obra innovadora.
A diferencia de algunas formas de ecofeminismo que insisten en las capacidades de cuidado de las mujeres, olvidando sus reivindicaciones, o rechazan los derechos sexuales y reproductivos conquistados por el feminismo, o se preocupan exclusivamente por el ecosistema sin atender al sufrimiento animal, Alicia H. Puleo _pensadora de referencia en el ecofeminismo_ nos invita a imaginar y proyectar un mundo de igualdad y de paz con la Naturaleza, un mundo sin explotación humana o animal y en el que la diversidad no sea motivo de opresión. El placer y la amistad del Jardín-Huerto de la escuela epicúrea sirven de inspiración para un Jardín-Huerto ecofeminista en esta obra ilustrada por la artista hipermedia ecofeminista Verónica Perales. Verde y rebelde, libre y lleno de vida, sus caminos soleados y sus senderos umbríos nos permiten pensar un futuro más justo y feliz.

- by Alicia Puleo
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- Gender Studies, Ethics, Feminist Theory, Animal Studies
- by Elisa Bolchi
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- Virginia Woolf, Ecocriticism, Jeanette Winterson, Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism

Hispanic Ecocriticism finds a rich soil in the main topics of environmental concern in the literature of Latin America and Spain, not only as a source for renewing critical analysis and hermeneutics, but also for the benefit of global environmental awareness. In a renewed exchange of transatlantic relationships, Hispanic Ecocriticism intermingles Latin American ecocritical issues of interest — the oil industry; contamination of forests and rivers; urban ecologies; African, Andean, and Amazonian biocultural ecosystems — with those of interest in Spain — animal rights and the ecological footprints of human activity in contemporary narratives of eco-science fiction, in dystopias, and in literature inspired by natural or rural landscapes that conceal ways of life and cultures in peril of extinction.

In her novel Through the Arc of the Rainforest (1990) Karen Tei Yamashita deploys magical realist narrative technique to offer a globally-embracing ecocritical criticism that unfolds global connectivity of peoples, places, and their destinies. As such, she uses a deterritorialized environmental approach, which favors eco-cosmopolitanism over bioregionalism, drawing our attention to the shortcomings of locally-based ecocritical studies that overlook the inextricable political, social, and cultural connections between the local and the global in an age of unprecedented mobility and global modernity. Another environmental issue Yamashati sheds light upon is the fact of slow violence, a violence, as Rob Nixon argues, appears out of sight, and over time. To render this invisible violence visible, she employs magical realism. The intersection between magical realism and ecocriticism in Through the Arc fuels a representational void by giving shape not only to the insidious workings of global capitalism masquerading as "scientific development," and/or "progress" but also to the slow, invisible environmental violence whose long-term effects bring about human and environmental cost. In her novel Through the Arc of the Rainforest (1990) Karen Tei Yamashita deploys magical realist narrative technique to offer a globally-based ecocritical criticism that unfolds global connectivity of peoples, places, and their destinies. As such, she uses a deterritorialized environmental approach which reveals the indispensable link between the local/the national and the global that leads to the loosening of ties between culture and geography. Yamashita favors eco-cosmopolitanism over bioregionalism drawing our attention to the shortcomings of locally-based ecocritical studies, namely bioregionalism, which overlooks the inextricable political, social, and cultural connections between the local and the global in an age of unprecedented mobility and global modernity. Magical realist elements in the novel not only uncover the seamless link between the local and the global but also the slow violence, a violence, as Rob Nixon argues, appears out of sight, and over time. The intersection between magical realism and ecocriticism in Through the Arc fuels a representational void by giving shape not only to the insidious workings of global capitalism masquerading as "scientific development," and/or "progress" but also to the slow, invisible environmental violence whose long-term effects bring about human and environmental cost. Furthermore, Yamashita's

This paper sheds light on a squat biography of Virginia Woolf the indefatigable ecofeminist introduces the core subject. Woolf influenced by the green fuse and ecofeminism perception. Her novels are not only providing us great pleasure in evoking all our five senses, but also induce our spirit to safeguard the nature of our forthcoming generations. Centering the viewer’s attention on the green philosophy of life, they lead their audience to believe that nature as the relieving tool to resolve all the wounds and capture all the things in a sort of good old memories. Her novels are portraits of nature with infinitesimal observance.

- by Dr. K Sivaranjani
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- Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism

Global capitalism and its ongoing demand for ever more oil render life in the Niger Delta precarious. Exploitative conditions and ecological devastation are repeatedly resisted by activists in the Niger Delta, as well as by writers of diasporic ecocritical literature. This essay focuses on two short stories by Nnedi Okorafor, representing critical African-futurist cultures of resistance to oil’s local and global devastations. Set in rural Niger Delta communities, “Spider the Artist” and “The Popular Mechanic” locate the petroviolence of the Niger Delta within global circuits of petroleum production and consumption by focusing on the pipeline in all its networked visibility and materiality. These stories center local pipelines, connecting them to the global supply chain of oil consumption. Okorafor’s use of the speculative enables both a critical view of global oil’s predations, and irruptions of African-centered feminist agency and futurity. These two stories present female protagonists who confront the violent environments of their petroleum-ravaged communities, and craft modes of resistance, pleasure, and possibility. If the pipeline is a metonym for the global web of petromodernity, Okorafor’s fiction hacks the pipeline.

Bessie Head's first novel, When Rain Clouds Gather, is perhaps one of her most ethico-political narratives to examine the introduction of modern capitalism and patriarchal science against the haunting spectral of traditional tribal systems in pre-Independence Botswana. Set in Golema Mmidi, which ironically translates to "grow crops," Head provides a detailed historical trajectory of how the imposition of agribusiness development projects onto traditional pastoral livelihoods devoured traditional tribal structures and ecosystems. In this essay, I examine how the implementation of modernized agricultural technology supplanted the collective relationship of subsistence farming, kinship systems, and cattle herding. I argue that When Rain Clouds Gather offers an interdisciplinary space for probing ecologies of pain in which scientific agribusiness projects have violently separated humanity from nature and rendered 63 percent of the Botswana's population food insecure.

- by Eleonor Botoman
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- Poetry, HIV/AIDS, African American Literature, Gender
- by Ben De Bruyn
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- Fiction Writing, American Literature, American Studies, Comparative Literature
- by Bianca Del Villano
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- American Literature, British Literature, Canadian Studies, American Studies
- by Hatice Övgü Tüzün
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- Science Fiction, Feminism, Ecocriticism, Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism
- by Gabriel Gudding
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- Critical Animal Studies, Poetics, Speculative Realism, Ecocriticism
- by Caterina Salabe'
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- Shakespeare, Ecofeminism, Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism

This paper investigates the extent to which Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Indian literature as a whole, addresses the challenge of ecocriticism’s attempt to preserve India’s dying ecological crisis. The novel nostalgically discusses possible dimensions from which Rushdie reconnects readers with the once beautiful environment in order to suggest alternatives that may inspire a nation’s caring for its fast dying environment. Given that ecocriticism attempts to link and synthesize literary criticism and the environment by examining the various ecological crises in eco-literary discourses, this paper discusses possible axioms where conceptual problems can be raised, and suggests the need for an expansive ecological representation in literary discourses. The attempts to preserve the physical environment and paintings depicting eco-heritage suggest a green politic of national eco-consciousness. Such heritage conservation and preservation in literature reveals Rushdie’s composite vision of the future of the methods of living, habitation and habitats across geographical boundaries. Rushdie’s green politics which interrogates the role of literature in the discourse of the environment re-echoes artistic postcoloniality as an alternative view that requires the participation of everyone in conserving the degrading environment.
Keywords: nation, ecocriticism, eco-consciousness, green politics, heritage

- by nyanchi marcel ebliylu
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- Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism
- by Pauline Amy de la Breteque
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- Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Caribbean Literature, Feminism
- by Ecem Seckin
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- Philosophy, Environmental Philosophy, Environmental Ethics, Ecofeminism