Environmental Criticism for the Twenty-First Century

Environmental Criticism for the Twenty-First Century showcases the recent explosive expansion of environmental criticism, which is actively transforming three areas of broad interest in contemporary literary and cultural studies: history, scale, and science. With contributors engaging texts from the early Renaissance through the twenty-first century, the collection brings into focus recent ecocritical concern for the long durations through which environmental imaginations have been shaped and for history as an ecological rather than solely human drama. Contributors also address problems of scale, reworking the places of concern in ecocriticism to include institutions and imaginations of the environment that complicate conventional rubrics such as the national, local, and global. Finally, this collection brings together a set of scholars who are interested in drawing on both the sciences and the humanities in order to find more compelling stories and critical languages for engaging ecological processes such as global climate change, peak oil production, nuclear proliferation, and food and water scarcity. Environmental Criticism for the Twenty-First Century offers powerful proof that cultural criticism is itself ecologically resilient, evolving to meet the imaginative challenges of twenty-first-century environmental crises. The volume includes chapters by both new and well-known environmental critics, including Cheryll Glotfelty, Timothy Morton, Paul Outka, Elaine Scarry, Julie Sze, and Robert Watson. Forward by Lawrence Buell.

Ken Hiltner is an Associate Professor at University of California, Santa Barbara.

Stephanie LeMenager is Associate Professor at UC-Santa Barbara.

Teresa Shewry is Assistant Professor of Literature and Environment at University of California, Santa Barbara.