Local Natures Global Responsibilities

Laurenz Volkmann is Professor of EFL Teaching at Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, where NAncy Grimm and Katrin Thomson also teach. Ines Detmers is a lecturer in English literature at the Technical University of Chemnitz. --Book Jacket.

Exploring environmental literature from a feminist perspective, this volume presents a diversity of feminist ecocritical approaches to affirm the continuing contributions, relevance, and necessity of a feminist perspective in environmental literature, culture, and science. Feminist ecocriticism has a substantial history, with roots in second- and third-wave feminist literary criticism, women’s environmental writing and social change activisms, and eco-cultural critique, and yet both feminist and ecofeminist literary perspectives have been marginalized. The essays in this collection build on the belief that the repertoire of violence (conceptual and literal) toward nature and women comprising our daily lives must become central to our ecocritical discussions, and that basic literacy in theories about ethics are fundamental to these discussions. The book offers an international collection of scholarship that includes ecocritical theory, literary criticism, and ecocultural analyses, bringing a diversity of perspectives in terms of gender, sexuality, and race. Reconnecting with the histories of feminist and ecofeminist literary criticism, and utilizing new developments in postcolonial ecocriticism, animal studies, queer theory, feminist and gender studies, cross-cultural and international ecocriticism, this timely volume develops a continuing and international feminist ecocritical perspective on literature, language, and culture.

Wandering Women: Urban Ecologies of Italian Feminist Filmmaking explores the work of contemporary Italian women directors from feminist and ecological perspectives. Mostly relegated to the margins of the cultural scene, and concerned with women's marginality, the compelling films Wandering Women sheds light on tell stories of displacement and liminality that unfold through the act of walking in the city. The unusual emptiness of the cities that the nomadic female protagonists traverse highlights the absence of, and their wish for, life-sustaining communities. Laura Di Bianco contends that women's urban filmmaking—while articulating a claim for belonging and asserting cinematic and social agency—brings into view landscapes of the Anthropocene, where urban decay and the erasure of nature intersect with human alienation. Though a minor cinema, it is also a powerful movement of resistance against the dominant male narratives about the world we inhabit. Based on interviews with directors, Wandering Women deepens the understanding of contemporary Italian cinema while enriching the field of feminist ecocritical literature.

How do writers and artists represent the climate catastrophe so that their works stir audiences to political action or at least raise their environmental awareness without, however, appearing didactic? Storying the Ecocatastrophe attempts to answer this question while interrogating the potential of narrative to become a viable political force. The collection of essays achieves this by examining the representational strategies and ideological goals of contemporary cultural productions about climate change. These productions have been created across different genres, such as the traditional novel, dance performance, solarpunk, economic report, collage, and space opera, as well as across different languages and cultures. The volume’s twelve chapters demonstrate that rising temperatures, erratic weather, extinction of species, depletion of resources, and coastal erosion and flooding are an effect of our abusive relationship with nature. They also show that our use of nuclear power, extraction of natural resources and extensive farming, including heavy reliance on pesticides, intersect with intrahuman violence, as fleshed out by heteropatriarchy, racism, (neo)colonialism, and capitalism. They finally argue that human activity has indirectly contributed to other contemporary crises, namely the migrant crisis and the spread of contagious diseases such as Covid-19.

Drawing on the latest debates in ecocritical theory and sustainability studies, Literature as Cultural Ecology: Sustainable Texts outlines a new approach to the reading of literary texts. Hubert Zapf considers the ways in which literature operates as a form of cultural ecology, using language, imagination and critique to challenge and transform cultural narratives of humanity's relationship to nature. In this way, the book demonstrates the important role that literature plays in creating a more sustainable way of life. Applying this approach to works by writers such as Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Zakes Mda, and Amitav Ghosh, Literature as Cultural Ecology is an essential contribution to the contemporary environmental humanities.

Critical Approaches to Joseph Conrad is a collection of essays directed to both new and experienced readers of Conrad. The book takes into account recent developments in literary theory, including the prominence of ecocriticism, ecopostcolonial approaches, and gender studies. Editor Agata Szczeszak-Brewer offers a comprehensive and comprehensible introduction to Conrad's most popular texts, also addressing the most recent academic debates as well as the conversations about narrative and genre in Conrad's canon. Students and scholars of Conrad, twentieth-century literature, and modernism will appreciate the clear, accessible prose by nineteen internationally recognized contributors who approach Conrad in different ways, from postcolonial and ecocritical perspectives, through explorations of gender, to psychoanalysis, narrative theory, and political analysis. Beginning with a biographical introduction by Szczeszak-Brewer, the collection offers an essay outlining the cultural and historical contexts that influenced Conrad's fiction and an essay on reception of Conrad's work. Following that, contributors provide critical approaches to Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Typhoon, Nostromo, The Secret Agent, The Secret Sharer, and Under Western Eyes. In these sections scholars offer insights about complex issues in Conrad's fiction, ranging from the study of specific literary tools and narrative development in his books to the political theories in Conrad's portrayal of the threat of terrorism and violent revolutions.

One of the most fascinating, rapidly developing, and difficult areas of literary and cultural studies today is postcolonialism. Focused on postcolonialism and designed especially for those studying postcolonial studies, Re-Shaping Culture and Identity in postcolonial Fiction: Salman Rushdie and Abdulrazak Gurnah introduces key subject areas of concern such as culture and identity in a clear accessible and organised fashion. It provides an overview of the development of postcolonialism as a discipline and takes a close look at its important authors, Salman Rushdie and Abdulrazak Gurnah, and their selected oeuvres, Fury, Midnight’s Children, By the Sea and Memory of Departure. With a palimpsestic analysis of culture and identity as crucial features of postcolonial texts, Re-Shaping Culture and Identity in postcolonial Fiction: Salman Rushdie and Abdulrazak Gurnah argues how postcolonialism functions in allowing the formation of a new perspective on the contemporary world. Besides, it offers an alternative perspective on their works, one that promotes the importance of the issue of postcolonial agency. This book will prove invaluable to anyone studying English Language and Literature, Migration Studies, and Cultural Studies. Contents Introduction: the borders of culture and identity A critical approach to culture and identity under the light of postcolonial theory The contributons of Abdulrazak Gurnah and Salman Rushdie to postcolonial literature Non- homes in postcolonial culture (Un)belonging postcolonial identity Conclusion: towards a new understanding of culture and identity Bibliography