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Ecocriticism
Ecocriticism is the study of literature and ecology from an interdisciplinary point of view, where literature scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns and examine the various ways literature treats the subject of nature. It was first originated by Joseph Meeker as an idea called “literary ecology” in his ''The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology (''1972). The term 'ecocriticism' was coined in 1978 by William Rueckert in his essay "Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism". It takes an interdisciplinary point of view by analyzing the works of authors, researchers and poets in the context of environmental issues and nature. Some ecocritics brainstorm possible solutions for the correction of the contemporary environmental situation, though not all ecocritics agree on the purpose, methodology, or scope of ecocriticism. In the United States, ecocriticism is often associated with the Association for the Study of Literature and Environme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ashton Nichols
Brooks Ashton Nichols (born 1953) is the Walter E. Beach ’56 Distinguished Chair Emeritus in Sustainable Studies and Professor of English Language and Literature Emeritus at Dickinson College. His interests are in literature, contemporary ecocriticism, Romanticism, and nature writing. Nichols taught courses in Romanticism, 19th century literature, literature and the environment, and nature writing. He is especially well-known for his study of James Joyce's literary concept of "epiphany," his definition of Romantic natural histories, and his coinage of the phrase "Urbanatural roosting," an idea which links urban with natural modes of existence and argues for ways of living more lightly on the earth, for inhabiting our planet the way animals do, by altering our environments without harming those same environments. Academic background Nichols graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A. with high honors in Philosophy in 1975. As an undergraduate, he received a four-yea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cultural Ecology
Cultural ecology is the study of human adaptations to social and physical environments. Human adaptation refers to both biological and cultural processes that enable a population to survive and reproduce within a given or changing environment. This may be carried out diachronically (examining entities that existed in different epochs), or synchronically (examining a present system and its components). The central argument is that the natural environment, in small scale or subsistence societies dependent in part upon it, is a major contributor to social organization and other human institutions. In the academic realm, when combined with study of political economy, the study of economies as polities, it becomes political ecology, another academic subfield. It also helps interrogate historical events like the Easter Island Syndrome. History Anthropologist Julian Steward (1902-1972) coined the term, envisioning cultural ecology as a methodology for understanding how humans adapt to s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Association For The Study Of Literature And Environment
The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), also known as ASLE-USA, is the principal professional association for American and international scholars of ecocriticism and environmental humanities. It was founded in 1992 at a special session of the Western Literature Association conference in Reno, Nevada for the purpose of "sharing of facts, ideas, and texts concerning the study of literature and the environment." The association hosts a biennial conference since 1995, alternating with symposia in non-conference years. Its journal is ''Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment'' (''ISLE''), a quarterly published by Oxford University Press, in which the most current scholarship in the rapidly evolving field of environmental humanities can often be found. ASLE Presidents, Conferences and Symposia This is a list of people who have served as presidents of ASLE since its inception in 1992. The biennial conferences/symposia held during their tenure ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ecopoetry
Ecopoetry is poetry with a strong ecological emphasis or message. Many poets, poems and books of poems have expressed ecological concerns; but only recently has the term ''ecopoetry'' gained use. There is now, in English-speaking poetry, a recognisable subgenre of ecopoetry. Prior to the term, a number of poems had ecological messages. Although these poets did not mention the word, they were clearly 'Ecopoetic' in stance and exerted an influence on the subsequent subgenre. Examples include: the book ''Ecopoemas'' of Nicanor Parra (1982), ''The White Poem'' by Jay Ramsay & Carole Bruce (Rivelin Grapheme Press, 1988), ''Bosco'' (Hearing Eye, 1999; 2001) and (more recently) ''Heavy Water: a poem for Chernobyl'' (Enitharmon Press, 2004). Early publications also include ''The Green Book of Poetry'' by Ivo Mosley (1995, Frontier Publishing and Harper San Francisco, 1996 as ''Earth Poems ''). It includes over three hundred poems from around the world, many translated by Mosley, and h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthropocentrism
Anthropocentrism (; ) is the belief that human beings are the central or most important entity in the universe. The term can be used interchangeably with humanocentrism, and some refer to the concept as human supremacy or human exceptionalism. From an anthropocentric perspective, humankind is seen as separate from nature and superior to it, and other entities (animals, plants, minerals, etc.) are viewed as resources for humans to use. Anthropocentrism interprets or regards the world in terms of human values and experiences. It is considered to be profoundly embedded in many modern human cultures and conscious acts. It is a major concept in the field of environmental ethics and environmental philosophy, where it is often considered to be the root cause of problems created by human action within the ecosphere. However, many proponents of anthropocentrism state that this is not necessarily the case: they argue that a sound long-term view acknowledges that the global environment mus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Raymond Williams
Raymond Henry Williams (31 August 1921 – 26 January 1988) was a Welsh socialist writer, academic, novelist and critic influential within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the media and literature contributed to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts. Some 750,000 copies of his books were sold in UK editions alone, and there are many translations available. His work laid foundations for the field of cultural studies and cultural materialism. Life Early life Born in Pandy, just north of Llanfihangel Crucorney, near Abergavenny, Wales, Williams was the son of a railway worker in a village where all of the railwaymen voted Labour, while the local small farmers mostly voted Liberal. It was not a Welsh-speaking area: he described it as "Anglicised in the 1840s". There was, nevertheless, a strong Welsh identity. "There is the joke that someone says his family came over with the Normans and we reply: 'Are you liking it here?'" William ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Silent Spring
''Silent Spring'' is an environmental science book by Rachel Carson. Published on September 27, 1962, the book documented the environmental harm caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides. Carson accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation, and public officials of accepting the industry's marketing claims unquestioningly. In the late 1950s, Carson began to work on environmental conservation, especially environmental problems that she believed were caused by synthetic pesticides. The result of her research was ''Silent Spring'', which brought environmental concerns to the American public. The book was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, but it swayed public opinion and led to a reversal in U.S. pesticide policy, a nationwide ban on DDT for agricultural uses, and an environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.Paull, John (2013"The Rachel Carson Letters and the Making of Silent Spring", Sage Open, 3 ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pastoral
A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music (pastorale) that depicts such life in an idealized manner, typically for urban audiences. A ''pastoral'' is a work of this genre, also known as bucolic, from the Greek , from , meaning a cowherd. Literature Pastoral literature in general Pastoral is a mode of literature in which the author employs various techniques to place the complex life into a simple one. Paul Alpers distinguishes pastoral as a mode rather than a genre, and he bases this distinction on the recurring attitude of power; that is to say that pastoral literature holds a humble perspective toward nature. Thus, pastoral as a mode occurs in many types of literature (poetry, drama, etc.) as well as genres (most notably the pastoral elegy). Terry Gifford, a prominent literary theorist, define ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marxist Literary Criticism
Marxism was introduced by Karl Marx. Most Marxist critics who were writing in what could chronologically be specified as the early period of Marxist literary criticism, subscribed to what has come to be called " vulgar Marxism." In this thinking of the structure of societies, literary texts are one register of the '' superstructure'', which is determined by the economic ''base'' of any given society. Therefore, literary texts are a reflection of the economic base rather than "the social institutions from which they originate" for all social institutions, or more precisely human–social relationships, are in the final analysis determined by the economic base. According to Marxists, even literature itself is a social institution and has a specific ideological function, based on the background and ideology of the author. The English literary critic and cultural theorist Terry Eagleton defines Marxist criticism this way: "Marxist criticism is not merely a 'sociology of literature', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Collom
John Aldridge "Jack" Collom (November 8, 1931 – July 2, 2017) was an American poet, essayist, and creative writing pedagogue. Included among the twenty-five books he published during his lifetime were ''Red Car Goes By: Selected Poems 1955–2000''; ''Poetry Everywhere: Teaching Poetry Writing in School and in the Community''; and ''Second Nature'', which won the 2013 Colorado Book Award for Poetry. In the fields of education and creative writing, he was involved in eco-literature, ecopoetics, and writing instruction for children. Life and work Jack Collom was born John Aldridge Collom in Chicago on November 8, 1931. He and his sister Jane Wodening grew up in the small town of Western Springs, Illinois, spent much of his time birdwatching, and over the years became an inveterate bird-watcher. Collom moved to Fraser, Colorado in 1947. He studied forestry at Colorado A&M College where he earned a B.S. in 1952. Afterwards, he spent four years in the U.S. Air Force and he starte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Country And The City
''The Country and the City'' is a book of cultural analysis by Raymond Williams which was first published in 1973. Origins Coming from the Welsh border, a village in the Black Mountains, Raymond Williams found that the images of rural life taught at the University of Cambridge did not match what he had seen. As an academic at Cambridge, he studied and examined the contradiction, along with the contrasting idea of the city, which in the United Kingdom has never been separate from the countryside. Rural life without cities had existed in other parts of the world, but not for a very long time in Britain. Chapter 2, ''A Problem of Perspective'', examines the idea that an ancient continuous rural life has recently ended. Authors generally remember this timeless order existing in their own childhood. But look at writers from the time of their childhood, and they consider that the timeless order has already vanished, having still existed in the older writer's childhood. He gives a c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Literature Association
The Western Literature Association (WLA) is a non-profit, scholarly association that promotes the study of the diverse literature and cultures of the North American West, past and present. Since its founding, the WLA has served to publish scholarship and promote work in the field; it has gathered together scholars, artists, environmentalists, and community leaders who value the West's literary and cultural contributions to American and world cultures; it has recognized those who have made a major contribution to western literature and western studies; and it has fostered student learning and career advancement in education. The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) was founded in 1992 at a special session of the Western Literature Association conference in Reno, Nevada, for the purpose of "sharing of facts, ideas, and texts concerning the study of literature and the environment." The Association publishes ''Western American Literature: A Journal of Liter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
