Papers by Alexander Menrisky
GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies
This essay draws on critical studies of food, race, class, and environment to consider food's... more This essay draws on critical studies of food, race, class, and environment to consider food's role in the cultivation of queer literary and political cultures in Appalachia. Texts such as Jeff Mann's Loving Mountains, Loving Men, a collection of poetry and essays, speak to a double-bind in which queer Appalachian writers often profess to find themselves: on the one hand, dismissed as coal-loving “white trash” by urban environmentalists; on the other, subjected to right-wing violence at home. Mann's writing negotiates this tension through poetic engagement with “hillbilly” gustatory traditions—namely, by adopting the recipe form. These poems, and the acts of foraging, preparing, and sharing food they represent, articulate queer communities gathered around tactile experiences of place. They also illustrate the promises and pitfalls of the recipe's representational potential. On the one hand, defining food by its regional character risks reiterating essentialist notions...
Mosaic, an Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, 2019
Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts, 2019
ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 2019
In the summer of 1990, Christopher McCandless left his apartment near Emory University after quie... more In the summer of 1990, Christopher McCandless left his apartment near Emory University after quietly donating his savings to charity. Over two years later, his body was found decomposing in an abandoned bus in the forest south of Denali in Alaska. Four years after that, Jon Krakauer published Into the Wild (1996), which details McCandless' cross-country travels and outlines a cultural narrative that Krakauer suggests made the young man's stringent belief in a firm dualism between nature and civilization possible. The Alaskan bush, McCandless believes, represents a harmony within ecology somehow devoid of cultural influence, a wilderness somehow free of ideology. In Alaska, he is "free from society at last" (McCandless 175), able to begin his "real life" (Krakauer 168). Krakauer himself, however, appears to reject the dualism McCandless employs to distinguish between nature and culture, "real life" and artifice. He challenges McCandless' perceptions, questioning "the powerful cultural myth of the need or even possibility of being 'alone' in nature, underscoring the ways one's travels are always performed in relation to others" (Keirstead 296). Into the Wild foregrounds Krakauer's own awareness of the ways in which nature and culture, or the human and nonhuman, are not neatly divisible spheres, and positions Krakauer and McCandless-both of whose ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment
Books by Alexander Menrisky
Cambridge University Press, 2020
The American wilderness narrative, which divides nature from culture, has remained remarkably per... more The American wilderness narrative, which divides nature from culture, has remained remarkably persistent despite the rise of ecological science, which emphasizes interconnection between these spheres. Wild Abandon considers how ecology's interaction with radical politics of authenticity in the twentieth century has kept that narrative alive in altered form. As ecology gained political momentum in the 1960s and 1970s, many environmentalists combined it with ideas borrowed from psychoanalysis and a variety of identity-based social movements. The result was an identity politics of ecology that framed ecology itself as an authentic identity position repressed by cultural forms, including social differences and even selfhood. Through readings of texts by Edward Abbey, Simon Ortiz, Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, and Jon Krakauer, among others, Alexander Menrisky argues that writers have both dramatized and critiqued this tendency, in the process undermining the concept of authenticity altogether and granting insight into alternative histories of identity and environment.
Public Facing by Alexander Menrisky
Anti-Creep Climate Initiative Comics, 2022
Sometimes we wish we could solve the world’s problems with a *snap* of our fingers, even though w... more Sometimes we wish we could solve the world’s problems with a *snap* of our fingers, even though we know it’s never that simple: compound problems require compound solutions. Still, accelerating climate crisis and the unwillingness of global leaders to take meaningful climate action can breed nihilism – likely we’ve all witnessed it in students, colleagues, family members, and even ourselves. With such nihilism, though, sometimes comes a notion that mass violence could be a viable environmental solution. This specter of ecofascism looms in pop-cultural imaginations as a malevolent threat for some and a tantalizing fantasy for others.
Ecofascism, like fascism, never springs from nowhere. It creeps through our language, metaphors, visual media, narratives, and ideas of environmental health and security. This zine is intended to be a tool to help halt ecofascism wherever, whenever it may be creeping, by examining its roots, prompting reflection, and inspiring action.
The Anti-Creep Climate Initiative smashes ecofascist mythology, champions liberatory environmental futures, and has fun doing it! The Initiative was formed by April Anson, Cassie Galentine, Shane Hall, Alex Menrisky, and Bruno Seraphin. April Anson is an Assistant Professor of Public Humanities at San Diego State University, core faculty for the Institute for Ethics and Public Policy, and affiliate faculty in American Indian Studies. Cassie Galentine is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Oregon. Shane Hall is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Salisbury University. Alex Menrisky is an Assistant Professor of English and affiliate faculty in American Studies at University of Connecticut. Bruno Seraphin is a doctoral candidate in sociocultural Anthropology with a graduate minor in American Indian and Indigenous Studies at Cornell University.
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Papers by Alexander Menrisky
Books by Alexander Menrisky
Public Facing by Alexander Menrisky
Ecofascism, like fascism, never springs from nowhere. It creeps through our language, metaphors, visual media, narratives, and ideas of environmental health and security. This zine is intended to be a tool to help halt ecofascism wherever, whenever it may be creeping, by examining its roots, prompting reflection, and inspiring action.
The Anti-Creep Climate Initiative smashes ecofascist mythology, champions liberatory environmental futures, and has fun doing it! The Initiative was formed by April Anson, Cassie Galentine, Shane Hall, Alex Menrisky, and Bruno Seraphin. April Anson is an Assistant Professor of Public Humanities at San Diego State University, core faculty for the Institute for Ethics and Public Policy, and affiliate faculty in American Indian Studies. Cassie Galentine is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Oregon. Shane Hall is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Salisbury University. Alex Menrisky is an Assistant Professor of English and affiliate faculty in American Studies at University of Connecticut. Bruno Seraphin is a doctoral candidate in sociocultural Anthropology with a graduate minor in American Indian and Indigenous Studies at Cornell University.
Ecofascism, like fascism, never springs from nowhere. It creeps through our language, metaphors, visual media, narratives, and ideas of environmental health and security. This zine is intended to be a tool to help halt ecofascism wherever, whenever it may be creeping, by examining its roots, prompting reflection, and inspiring action.
The Anti-Creep Climate Initiative smashes ecofascist mythology, champions liberatory environmental futures, and has fun doing it! The Initiative was formed by April Anson, Cassie Galentine, Shane Hall, Alex Menrisky, and Bruno Seraphin. April Anson is an Assistant Professor of Public Humanities at San Diego State University, core faculty for the Institute for Ethics and Public Policy, and affiliate faculty in American Indian Studies. Cassie Galentine is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Oregon. Shane Hall is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Salisbury University. Alex Menrisky is an Assistant Professor of English and affiliate faculty in American Studies at University of Connecticut. Bruno Seraphin is a doctoral candidate in sociocultural Anthropology with a graduate minor in American Indian and Indigenous Studies at Cornell University.