Affective Ecocriticism
Emotion, Embodiment, Environment
Published on 1. November 2018
Book
Hardback
360 pages
978-1-4962-0679-4 (ISBN)
Description
Scholars of ecocriticism have long tried to articulate emotional relationships to environments. Only recently, however, have they begun to draw on the complex interdisciplinary body of research known as affect theory. Affective Ecocriticism takes as its premise that ecocritical scholarship has much to gain from the rich work on affect and emotion happening within social and cultural theory, geography, psychology, philosophy, queer theory, feminist theory, narratology, and neuroscience, among others. This vibrant and important volume imagines a more affective-and consequently more effective-ecocriticism, as well as a more environmentally attuned affect studies.
These interdisciplinary essays model a range of approaches to emotion and affect in considering a variety of primary texts, including short story collections, films, poetry, curricular programs, and contentious geopolitical locales such as Canada's Tar Sands. Several chapters deal skeptically with familiar environmentalist affects like love, hope, resilience, and optimism; others consider what are often understood as negative emotions, such as anxiety, disappointment, and homesickness-all with an eye toward reinvigorating or reconsidering their utility for the environmental humanities and environmentalism. Affective Ecocriticism offers an accessible approach to this theoretical intersection that will speak to readers across multiple disciplinary and geographic locations.
These interdisciplinary essays model a range of approaches to emotion and affect in considering a variety of primary texts, including short story collections, films, poetry, curricular programs, and contentious geopolitical locales such as Canada's Tar Sands. Several chapters deal skeptically with familiar environmentalist affects like love, hope, resilience, and optimism; others consider what are often understood as negative emotions, such as anxiety, disappointment, and homesickness-all with an eye toward reinvigorating or reconsidering their utility for the environmental humanities and environmentalism. Affective Ecocriticism offers an accessible approach to this theoretical intersection that will speak to readers across multiple disciplinary and geographic locations.
Reviews / Votes
"Affective Ecocriticism cements the importance of affect - and not only data or narrative - to understanding current environmental crises and relations. It also posits how affect bears on acting on these crises (or not) and pivoting our relations. That is, the essays here aren't merely descriptive or diagnostic; they also look to possibilities for response."-Heather Houser, associate professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Ecosickness in Contemporary U.S. Fiction: Environment and Affect "Affect theory and ecocriticism are both already vibrant fields of inquiry, but Affective Ecocriticism makes a strong case for their inherent compatibility. This field-defining book demonstrates the deeper ground that both of these approaches might find were they to understand the basic fact of their shared concerns, methods, and aims."-Rachel Greenwald Smith, associate professor of English at Saint Louis University and author of Affect and American Literature in the Age of NeoliberalismMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Lincoln
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
9 photographs, index
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 162 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
673 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4962-0679-4 (9781496206794)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
11/2018
1st Edition
University of Nebraska Press
€36.99
Available for download
E-Book
11/2018
1st Edition
University of Nebraska Press
€42.99
Available for download
Persons
Kyle Bladow is an assistant professor of Native American studies at Northland College. Jennifer Ladino is an associate professor of English at the University of Idaho. She is the author of Reclaiming Nostalgia: Longing for Nature in American Literature.
Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Toward an Affective Ecocriticism: Placing Feeling in the Anthropocene
Kyle Bladow and Jennifer Ladino
Part 1. Theoretical Foundations
1. "what do we do but keep breathing as best we can this / minute atmosphere": Juliana Spahr and Anthropocene Anxiety
Nicole M. Merola
2. From Nostalgic Longing to Solastalgic Distress: A Cognitive Approach to Love in the Anthropocene
Alexa Weik von Mossner
3. A New Gentleness: Affective Ficto-Regionality
Neil Campbell
Part 2. Affective Attachments: Land, Bodies, Justice
4. Feeling the Fires of Climate Change: Land Affect in Canada's Tar Sands
Jobb Arnold
5. Wendell Berry and the Affective Turn
William Major
6. A Hunger for Words: Food Affects and Embodied Ideology
Tom Hertweck
7. Uncanny Homesickness and War: Loss of Affect, Loss of Place, and Reworlding in Redeployment
Ryan Hediger
Part 3. Animality: Feeling Species and Boundaries
8. Desiring Species with Darwin and Freud
Robert Azzarello
9. Tragedy, Ecophobia, and Animality in the Anthropocene
Brian Deyo
10. Futurity without Optimism: Detaching from Anthropocentrism and Grieving Our Fathers in Beasts of the Southern Wild
Allyse Knox-Russell
Part 4. Environmentalist Killjoys: Politics and Pedagogy
11. The Queerness of Environmental Affect
Nicole Seymour
12. Feeling Let Down: Affect, Environmentalism, and the Power of Negative Thinking
Lisa Ottum
13. Feeling Depleted: Ecocinema and the Atmospherics of Affect
Graig Uhlin
14. Coming of Age at the End of the World: The Affective Arc of Undergraduate Environmental Studies Curricula
Sarah Jaquette Ray
List of Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
Toward an Affective Ecocriticism: Placing Feeling in the Anthropocene
Kyle Bladow and Jennifer Ladino
Part 1. Theoretical Foundations
1. "what do we do but keep breathing as best we can this / minute atmosphere": Juliana Spahr and Anthropocene Anxiety
Nicole M. Merola
2. From Nostalgic Longing to Solastalgic Distress: A Cognitive Approach to Love in the Anthropocene
Alexa Weik von Mossner
3. A New Gentleness: Affective Ficto-Regionality
Neil Campbell
Part 2. Affective Attachments: Land, Bodies, Justice
4. Feeling the Fires of Climate Change: Land Affect in Canada's Tar Sands
Jobb Arnold
5. Wendell Berry and the Affective Turn
William Major
6. A Hunger for Words: Food Affects and Embodied Ideology
Tom Hertweck
7. Uncanny Homesickness and War: Loss of Affect, Loss of Place, and Reworlding in Redeployment
Ryan Hediger
Part 3. Animality: Feeling Species and Boundaries
8. Desiring Species with Darwin and Freud
Robert Azzarello
9. Tragedy, Ecophobia, and Animality in the Anthropocene
Brian Deyo
10. Futurity without Optimism: Detaching from Anthropocentrism and Grieving Our Fathers in Beasts of the Southern Wild
Allyse Knox-Russell
Part 4. Environmentalist Killjoys: Politics and Pedagogy
11. The Queerness of Environmental Affect
Nicole Seymour
12. Feeling Let Down: Affect, Environmentalism, and the Power of Negative Thinking
Lisa Ottum
13. Feeling Depleted: Ecocinema and the Atmospherics of Affect
Graig Uhlin
14. Coming of Age at the End of the World: The Affective Arc of Undergraduate Environmental Studies Curricula
Sarah Jaquette Ray
List of Contributors
Index