Coordinated by Scott Slovic I have given the compilers of the following lists an almost impossibl... more Coordinated by Scott Slovic I have given the compilers of the following lists an almost impossible task: to select no more than five important works of "environmental literature" from their home countries (or regions) around the world or from literary traditions in which they have particular expertise. The point here is not to produce exhaustive or definitive lists of "the best" works, but rather to give experts a chance to present some of their own favorites in the hope of inspiring readers to plunge into the wealth of additional works from these places and elsewhere in the world. Environmental literature is a vast and varied field, and it exists wherever human beings write (or speak) to each other about the physical places where we live, about the other species with whom we share this planet, and about the increasingly pressing questions of access to natural resources, mitigating toxic contamination, and how to control our species' ecological footprint. In coordinating this list, I have tried to seek out scholars located in (or knowledgeable about) diverse regions of the world, but I realize many regions are not represented in this booklist. Each of these scholars responded within a few weeks' time, so these are basically top-of-the-head lists, not products of lengthy consideration. The main criteria were that the works be from the past 250 years, that they display genuine "literary quality," and that they have achieved popular appeal. Brief annotations for each title can be found in the online edition of WLT.
Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, 2020
For nearly two decades since Lawrence Buell defined and anatomized “toxic discourse” in Wri... more For nearly two decades since Lawrence Buell defined and anatomized “toxic discourse” in Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond (2001), the storying of toxic experience has received fruitful theoretical and literary attention. Throughout the world, citizens have come to terms with the reality that we live on a poisoned planet and the poisons in our environment are also in ourselves—the poisons our industrial activities spew into the air, water, soil, and food are almost imperceptibly (“slowly,” as Rob Nixon would put it) absorbed into all of our bodies (through the process Stacy Alaimo described as “transcorporeality”). Biologist and literary activist Sandra Steingraber stated in Living Downstream: A Scientist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment (1997) that we must “cultivat[e] an ability to imagine” in order to appreciate the meaning of our post-industrial lives. In this essay, I focus on Ryan Walsh’s new...
Scott Slovic and Paul Slovic (Eds.). Numbers and Nerves: Information, Emotion, and Meaning in a W... more Scott Slovic and Paul Slovic (Eds.). Numbers and Nerves: Information, Emotion, and Meaning in a World of Data (Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press, 2015). 272 pp. ISBN 978-0-87071-776-5. Literature and environment professor Scott Slovic, and his father, psychologist Paul Slovic, editors of this collection of essays and interviews, describe and demonstrate the psychological effects which hamper our ability to comprehend and respond appropriately to large numerical data. The collection then offers a brief survey of art works which, by first appealing to viewers’ emotions, can potentially move the viewer to a better understanding of numbers.
We live in an era of too much information and too little caring. Following up on the work of Numb... more We live in an era of too much information and too little caring. Following up on the work of Numbers and Nerves: Information, Emotion, and Meaning in a World of Data (2015), I will turn my attention in this paper to various “imaginaries” (trans-scalarity, vulnerability, and, in particular, singularity) as a way of suggesting how ecocriticism can overcome intrinsic human insensitivity to information about large, slow, distant phenomena. This paper will emphasize ecocriticism as a field deeply associated with information management and communication
... efforts to protect land in this state that is, as Senator Reid puts it, "defined and ble... more ... efforts to protect land in this state that is, as Senator Reid puts it, "defined and blessed in part by what is not there." Michael Frome's learned foreword helps to place current discussions of Nevada wilderness into the larger context of the history of conservation politics in the ...
Try to imagine a society-or even an individual human being-that does not require some form of int... more Try to imagine a society-or even an individual human being-that does not require some form of interaction with the natural world in order to exist. At the moment, I am reading Sharman Apt Russell's Hunger: An Unnatural History (2005), and she speaks in her opening chapter about certain individuals-eccentrics, desperately overweight individuals, and even "hunger artists" who perform by abstaining from food-who have avoided eating for extraordinary periods of time. An American magician, for instance, had himself suspended in a six-foot by six-foot by three-foot box near the Tower Bridge in London, England, for 44 days without food in 2003. But did this "entertainer," David Blaine, go without water? Without air? And what about the 465-pound Scottish man, known to the public simply as "A.B.," who fasted for 13 months in the mid-1960s in order to lose 276 pounds? Even during this long period of hunger, Mr. A.B. relied upon the planet, upon nature, for his very survival. All human beings throughout history have relied upon their relationship with nature in order to exist. The problem, some might say, is that many of our cultures have either come to take nature for granted or have, as the ecological literary critic, or "ecocritic," Simon Estok, has written, developed an adversarial attitude towards nature, believing that human success and comfort require us to dominate and exploit nature rather than to live in a kind of symbiotic, or cooperative, relationship with the non-human world. Estok refers to this antagonism towards nature as "ecophobia" and argues that it is an essential condition of many contemporary societies, a condition that we may need to overcome if humans are to continue living on this planet well into the future. What I have begun to describe above is a kind of paradox, a strange and ironic situation by which we know that we all need nature; yet, for some peculiar reason we humans like to think of ourselves as being free from the encumbrances of physical
Coordinated by Scott Slovic I have given the compilers of the following lists an almost impossibl... more Coordinated by Scott Slovic I have given the compilers of the following lists an almost impossible task: to select no more than five important works of "environmental literature" from their home countries (or regions) around the world or from literary traditions in which they have particular expertise. The point here is not to produce exhaustive or definitive lists of "the best" works, but rather to give experts a chance to present some of their own favorites in the hope of inspiring readers to plunge into the wealth of additional works from these places and elsewhere in the world. Environmental literature is a vast and varied field, and it exists wherever human beings write (or speak) to each other about the physical places where we live, about the other species with whom we share this planet, and about the increasingly pressing questions of access to natural resources, mitigating toxic contamination, and how to control our species' ecological footprint. In coordinating this list, I have tried to seek out scholars located in (or knowledgeable about) diverse regions of the world, but I realize many regions are not represented in this booklist. Each of these scholars responded within a few weeks' time, so these are basically top-of-the-head lists, not products of lengthy consideration. The main criteria were that the works be from the past 250 years, that they display genuine "literary quality," and that they have achieved popular appeal. Brief annotations for each title can be found in the online edition of WLT.
Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, 2020
For nearly two decades since Lawrence Buell defined and anatomized “toxic discourse” in Wri... more For nearly two decades since Lawrence Buell defined and anatomized “toxic discourse” in Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S. and Beyond (2001), the storying of toxic experience has received fruitful theoretical and literary attention. Throughout the world, citizens have come to terms with the reality that we live on a poisoned planet and the poisons in our environment are also in ourselves—the poisons our industrial activities spew into the air, water, soil, and food are almost imperceptibly (“slowly,” as Rob Nixon would put it) absorbed into all of our bodies (through the process Stacy Alaimo described as “transcorporeality”). Biologist and literary activist Sandra Steingraber stated in Living Downstream: A Scientist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment (1997) that we must “cultivat[e] an ability to imagine” in order to appreciate the meaning of our post-industrial lives. In this essay, I focus on Ryan Walsh’s new...
Scott Slovic and Paul Slovic (Eds.). Numbers and Nerves: Information, Emotion, and Meaning in a W... more Scott Slovic and Paul Slovic (Eds.). Numbers and Nerves: Information, Emotion, and Meaning in a World of Data (Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press, 2015). 272 pp. ISBN 978-0-87071-776-5. Literature and environment professor Scott Slovic, and his father, psychologist Paul Slovic, editors of this collection of essays and interviews, describe and demonstrate the psychological effects which hamper our ability to comprehend and respond appropriately to large numerical data. The collection then offers a brief survey of art works which, by first appealing to viewers’ emotions, can potentially move the viewer to a better understanding of numbers.
We live in an era of too much information and too little caring. Following up on the work of Numb... more We live in an era of too much information and too little caring. Following up on the work of Numbers and Nerves: Information, Emotion, and Meaning in a World of Data (2015), I will turn my attention in this paper to various “imaginaries” (trans-scalarity, vulnerability, and, in particular, singularity) as a way of suggesting how ecocriticism can overcome intrinsic human insensitivity to information about large, slow, distant phenomena. This paper will emphasize ecocriticism as a field deeply associated with information management and communication
... efforts to protect land in this state that is, as Senator Reid puts it, "defined and ble... more ... efforts to protect land in this state that is, as Senator Reid puts it, "defined and blessed in part by what is not there." Michael Frome's learned foreword helps to place current discussions of Nevada wilderness into the larger context of the history of conservation politics in the ...
Try to imagine a society-or even an individual human being-that does not require some form of int... more Try to imagine a society-or even an individual human being-that does not require some form of interaction with the natural world in order to exist. At the moment, I am reading Sharman Apt Russell's Hunger: An Unnatural History (2005), and she speaks in her opening chapter about certain individuals-eccentrics, desperately overweight individuals, and even "hunger artists" who perform by abstaining from food-who have avoided eating for extraordinary periods of time. An American magician, for instance, had himself suspended in a six-foot by six-foot by three-foot box near the Tower Bridge in London, England, for 44 days without food in 2003. But did this "entertainer," David Blaine, go without water? Without air? And what about the 465-pound Scottish man, known to the public simply as "A.B.," who fasted for 13 months in the mid-1960s in order to lose 276 pounds? Even during this long period of hunger, Mr. A.B. relied upon the planet, upon nature, for his very survival. All human beings throughout history have relied upon their relationship with nature in order to exist. The problem, some might say, is that many of our cultures have either come to take nature for granted or have, as the ecological literary critic, or "ecocritic," Simon Estok, has written, developed an adversarial attitude towards nature, believing that human success and comfort require us to dominate and exploit nature rather than to live in a kind of symbiotic, or cooperative, relationship with the non-human world. Estok refers to this antagonism towards nature as "ecophobia" and argues that it is an essential condition of many contemporary societies, a condition that we may need to overcome if humans are to continue living on this planet well into the future. What I have begun to describe above is a kind of paradox, a strange and ironic situation by which we know that we all need nature; yet, for some peculiar reason we humans like to think of ourselves as being free from the encumbrances of physical
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