Routledge Studies in World Literatures and the Environment: Routledge Studies in World Literatures and the Environment
About the Book Series
Since the dawn of human artistic and cultural expression, the natural world and our complex and often vexed relationships with the other-than-human have been essential themes in such expression. This series seeks to offer an encompassing approach to literary explorations of environmental experiences and ideas, reaching from the earliest known literatures to the twenty-first century and accounting for vernacular approaches throughout the world. In recent decades, it has become clear that highly localized, non-Western forms of literary expression and scholarly analysis have much to contribute to ecocritical understanding—such studies, as well as examinations of European and North American literatures, are encouraged. Comparative treatments of literary works from different cultures, cultural expression in various media (including literature and connections with visual and performing arts, ecocinema, music, videogames, and material culture), and interdisciplinary scholarly methodologies would be ideal contributions to the series. What are the lessons regarding human-animal kinship that can be gleaned from indigenous songs in Africa, Amazonia, Oceania, the Americas, and other regions of the world? Which discourses of toxicity in the urban centers of contemporary East Asia and the post-industrial brownscapes of Europe and America might gain traction as we seek to balance human and ecological health and robust economies? What are some of the Third World expressions of postcolonial ecocriticism, posthumanism, material ecocriticism, gender-based ecocriticism, ecopoetics, and other avant-garde trends? How do basic concepts such as "wilderness" or "animal rights" or "pollution" find expression in diverse environmental voices and become imbricated with questions of caste, class, gender, politics, and ethnicity? The global circulation of culturally diverse texts provides resources for understanding and engaging with the environmental crisis. This series aims to provide a home for projects demonstrating both traditional and experimental approaches in environmental literary studies.
Series Editors:
Scott Slovic, University of Idaho, USA
Swarnalatha Rangarajan, Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Previous Editors:
Matthew Wynn Sivils, Iowa State University, USA
Narrating Nonhuman Spaces: Form, Story, and Experience Beyond Anthropocentrism
1st Edition
Edited
By Marco Caracciolo, Marlene Karlsson Marcussen, David Rodriguez
May 31, 2023
Recent debates about the Anthropocene have prompted a re-negotiation of the relationship between human subjectivity and nonhuman matter within a wide range of disciplines. This collection builds on the assumption that our understanding of the nonhuman world is bound up with the experience of space:...
The Tree of Life and Arboreal Aesthetics in Early Modern Literature
1st Edition
By Victoria Bladen
May 31, 2023
The Tree of Life and Arboreal Aesthetics in Early Modern Literature explores the vital motif of the tree of life and what it meant to early modern writers who drew from its long histories in biblical, classical and folkloric contexts, giving rise to a language of trees, an arboreal aesthetics. An ...
Women and Water in Global Fiction
1st Edition
Edited
By Emma Staniland
January 27, 2023
Symbols and tropes of liquidity have long been connected to notions of the feminine and, therefore, with orthodox constructions of femininity and womanhood. Underpinning these ideas is the vital importance of water as life force, which has given it a central place in cultural vocabularies worldwide...
Dystopias and Utopias on Earth and Beyond: Feminist Ecocriticism of Science Fiction
1st Edition
Edited
By Douglas A. Vakoch
January 09, 2023
Caught as we are in a grave climate crisis that seems more irreversible with every passing year, our literary portrayals of the future often feature the dystopian collapse of the world as we know it. Science fiction explores how we got here, while pointing toward a more hopeful path forward. From ...
Ecofeminist Science Fiction: International Perspectives on Gender, Ecology, and Literature
1st Edition
Edited
By Douglas A. Vakoch
January 09, 2023
Ecofeminist Science Fiction: International Perspectives on Gender, Ecology, and Literature provides guidance in navigating some of the most pressing dangers we face today. Science fiction helps us face problems that threaten the very existence of humankind by giving us the emotional distance to see...
Surreal Entanglements: Essays on Jeff VanderMeer’s Fiction
1st Edition
Edited
By Louise Economides, Laura Shackelford
January 09, 2023
This edited collection approaches the most pressing discourses of the Anthropocene and posthumanist culture through the surreal, yet instructive lens of Jeff VanderMeer’s fiction. In contrast to universalist and essentializing ways of responding to new material realities, VanderMeer’s work invites ...
Mushroom Clouds: Ecocritical Approaches to Militarization and the Environment in East Asia
1st Edition
Edited
By Simon C. Estok, Iping Liang, Shinji Iwamasa
September 26, 2022
Mushroom Clouds: Ecocritical Approaches to Militarization and the Environment in East Asia examines the growing significance of the eco-implications of the increasing militarism of East Asia. As a transcultural image and metaphor, mushroom clouds signify anthropogenic violence and destruction, as ...
Climate Change, Ecological Catastrophe, and the Contemporary Postcolonial Novel
1st Edition
By Justyna Poray-Wybranowska
August 01, 2022
Climate Change, Ecological Catastrophe, and the Contemporary Novel responds to the critical need for transdisciplinary research on the relationship between colonialism and catastrophe. It represents the first sustained analysis of the connection between colonial legacy and present-day ecological ...
Packing Death in Australian Literature: Ecocides and Eco-Sides
1st Edition
By Iris Ralph
May 30, 2022
Packing Death in Australian Literature: Ecocides and Eco-Sidesaddresses Australian Literature from ecocritical, animal studies, plantstudies, indigenous studies, and posthumanist critical perspectives. Thebook’s main purpose is twofold: to bring more sustained attention to environmental,vegetal, ...
Modernism in the Green: Public Greens in Modern Literature and Culture
1st Edition
By Julia E. Daniel, Margaret Konkol
December 13, 2021
Modernism in the Green traces a trans-Atlantic modernist fascination with the creation, use, and representation of the modern green. From the verdant public commons in the heart of cities to the lookout points on mountains in national parks, planned green spaces serve as felicitous stages for the ...
Christina Rossetti’s Environmental Consciousness
1st Edition
By Todd Williams
June 30, 2021
Christina Rossetti’s Environmental Consciousness takes a cognitive ecocritical approach to Rossetti’s writing as it developed throughout her career. This study provides a unique understanding of Rossetti’s identity as an artist through a cognitive model while also engaging significantly with her ...
Ecofictions, Ecorealities, and Slow Violence in Latin America and the Latinx World
1st Edition
Edited
By Ilka Kressner, Ana María Mutis, Elizabeth Pettinaroli
June 30, 2021
Ecofictions, Ecorealities and Slow Violence in Latin America and the Latinx World brings together critical studies of Latin American and Latinx writing, film, visual, and performing arts to offer new perspectives on ecological violence. Building on Rob Nixon’s concept of "slow violence," the ...