Environmental Justice in Contemporary US Narratives examines post-1929 US artistic interrogations of environmental disruption. Tracing themes of pollution, marine life, and agricultural production in the work of a number of historically significant writers including John Steinbeck, Ruth Ozeki, and Cherríe Moraga, this book outlines a series of incisive dialogues on transnational flows of capital and environmental justice. Texts ranging from The Grapes of Wrath (1939) to Body Toxic (2001) represent the body as vulnerable to a host of environmental risks. They identify "natural disasters" not just as environmental hazards and catastrophes, but also as events intertwined with socioeconomic issues. With careful textual analysis, Athanassakis shows how twentieth- and twenty-first-century US writers have sought to rethink traditional understandings of how the human being relates to ecological phenomena. Their work, and this study, offer new modes of creative engagement with environmental degradation – engagement that is proactive, ambivalent, and even playful. This book contributes to vital discussions about the importance of literature for social justice movements, food studies, ecocriticism, and the environmental humanities. The core argument of the book is that artistically imaginative narratives of environmental disturbance can help humans contend with ostensibly uncontrollable, drastic planetary changes.

A collection of essays on the environmental justice movement, examining the various ways that teaching, art, and political action affect change in environmental awareness and policies.

Introduction -- "Fear of a black planet" : ecotopia and eugenics in climate narratives -- Ghosts and reparations -- Mapping and memory -- "Bodies tell stories" : mourning and hospitality after Katrina -- Round dance and resistance -- "Slow insurrection" : dissent, collective voice, and social care -- Cannibal spirits and sacred seeds -- Epilogue: "Everyday micro-utopias".

Why is ecofeminism still needed to address the environmental emergencies and challenges of our times? Ecofeminism has a chequered history in terms of its popularity and its perceived value in conceptualizing the relationship between gender and nature as well as feeding forms of activism that aim to confront the environmental challenges of the moment. This book provides a much-needed comprehensive overview of the relevance and value of using eco-feminist theories. It gives a broad coverage of traditional and emerging eco-feminist theories and explores, across a range of chapters, their various contributions and uniquely spans various strands of ecofeminist thinking. The origins of influential eco-feminist theories are discussed including key themes and some of its leading figures (contributors include Erika Cudworth, Greta Gaard, Trish Glazebrook and Niamh Moore), and outlines its influence on how scholars might come to a more generative understanding of the natural environment. The book examines eco-feminism’s potential contribution for advancing current discussions and research on the relationships between the humans and more than humans that share our world. This timely volume makes a distinctive scholarly contribution and is a valuable resources for students and academics in the fields of environmentalism, political ecology, sustainability and nature resource management.

This volume approaches the history of slave testimony in three ways: by prioritising the broad tradition over individual authors; by representing inter-disciplinary approaches to slave narratives; and by highlighting emerging scholarship on slave narratives, concerning both established debates over concerns of authorship and agency, for example, and developing concerns like eco-critical readings of slave narratives.

The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Justice presents an extensive and cutting-edge introduction to the diverse, rapidly growing body of research on pressing issues of environmental justice and injustice. With wide-ranging discussion of current debates, controversies, and questions in the history, theory, and methods of environmental justice research, contributed by over 90 leading social scientists, natural scientists, humanists, and scholars from professional disciplines from six continents, it is an essential resource both for newcomers to this research and for experienced scholars and practitioners. The chapters of this volume examine the roots of environmental justice activism, lay out and assess key theories and approaches, and consider the many different substantive issues that have been the subject of activism, empirical research, and policy development throughout the world. The Handbook features critical reviews of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodological approaches and explicitly addresses interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and engaged research. Instead of adopting a narrow regional focus, it tackles substantive issues and presents perspectives from political and cultural systems across the world, as well as addressing activism for environmental justice at the global scale. Its chapters do not simply review the state of the art, but also propose new conceptual frameworks and directions for research, policy, and practice. Providing detailed but accessible overviews of the complex, varied dimensions of environmental justice and injustice, the Handbook is an essential guide and reference not only for researchers engaged with environmental justice, but also for undergraduate and graduate teaching and for policymakers and activists.

Environmental and global outlooks are currently at the center of the most lively and urgent international scholarship. This volume serves to overcome the self-referentiality of American studies by intersecting the study of American literature and history with the questions and concerns raised by these perspectives. It re-conceptualizes the mutual and shifting positions of center(s) and margin(s), and subject(s) and object(s) in terms of relation and an inclusive structure of relations based on an ecological ethics. The contributions here explore many methodological hypotheses, ranging from Christa Greve-Vollp’s work on eco-cosmopolitanism to Peter Bardaglio’s report on US climate activism, as well as the ecocritical and ecofeminist viewpoints of Scott Slovic and Greta Gaard respectively. In addition to contributing to academic discourse, the essays—written by both young and established international scholars, and coherently arranged into four thematic sections—explore topics that are of interest to the broader public. The issues discussed here include identity and new forms of belonging; migration and the environment; ecolanguage, ecopoetry and ecopoetics; translation and multilingualism; animal studies; environmental activism; shifting geographies; and ecofeminism.

International in scope, this volume brings together leading and emerging voices working at the intersection of contemporary art, visual culture, activism, and climate change, and addresses key questions, such as: why and how do art and visual culture, and their ethics and values, matter with regard to a world increasingly shaped by climate breakdown? Foregrounding a decolonial and climate-justice-based approach, this book joins efforts within the environmental humanities in seeking to widen considerations of climate change as it intersects with social, political, and cultural realms. It simultaneously expands the nascent branches of ecocritical art history and visual culture, and builds toward the advancement of a robust and critical interdisciplinarity appropriate to the complex entanglements of climate change. This book will be of special interest to scholars and practitioners of contemporary art and visual culture, environmental studies, cultural geography, and political ecology.

In one of the contributions to this edited volume an interviewee argues that "English is power". For researchers in the field of English Studies this raises the questions of where the power of English resides and which types and practices of power are implied in the uses of English. Linguists, scholars of literature and culture, and language educators address aspects of these questions in a wide range of contributions. The book shows that the power of English can oscillate between empowerment and subjection, on the one hand enabling humans to develop manifold capabilities and on the other constraining their scope of action and reflection. In this edited volume, a case is made for self-critical English Studies to be dialogic, empowering and power-critical in approach.

This collection of essays presents a key idea or event in the making of modern Mexico through the lenses of art and history--Provided by publisher.