Cli-Fi and Class
Socioeconomic Justice in Contemporary American Climate Fiction
Published on 18. October 2023
Book
Hardback
262 pages
978-0-8139-5024-2 (ISBN)
Description
Since its emergence in the late twentieth century, climate fiction--or cli-fi--has concerned itself as much with economic injustice and popular revolt as with rising seas and soaring temperatures. Indeed, with its insistent focus on redressing social disparities, cli-fi might reasonably be classified as a form of protest literature. As environmental crises escalate and inequality intensifies, literary writers and scholars alike have increasingly scrutinized the dual exploitations of the earth's ecosystems and the socioeconomically disadvantaged.
Cli-Fi and Class focuses on the representation of class dynamics in climate-change narratives. With fifteen essays on the intersection of the economic and the ecological--addressing works ranging from the novels of Joseph Conrad, Cormac McCarthy, and Octavia Butler to the film Black Panther and the Broadway musical Hadestown--this collection unpacks the complex ways economic exploitation impacts planetary well-being, and the ways climatic change shapes those inequities in turn.
Cli-Fi and Class focuses on the representation of class dynamics in climate-change narratives. With fifteen essays on the intersection of the economic and the ecological--addressing works ranging from the novels of Joseph Conrad, Cormac McCarthy, and Octavia Butler to the film Black Panther and the Broadway musical Hadestown--this collection unpacks the complex ways economic exploitation impacts planetary well-being, and the ways climatic change shapes those inequities in turn.
Reviews / Votes
"This collection fills an important gap and helps to reorient the debate about the climate crisis by underlining the fast and slow violence of structural poverty as well as catastrophic weather. Offering thought-provoking analyses of contemporary writers such as Lauren Groff, Octavia Butler, and Barbara Kingsolver, the contributors demonstrate that the cultural debate on the Anthropocene and on climate justice needs to include an ecopoverty lens and they further explain how climate narratives can help us to articulate new environmentalisms of the poor and of the eroding middle class. A timely, original, and valuable contribution." - Ben De Bruyn, UCLouvain, author of The Novel and the Multispecies SoundscapeMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Charlottesville
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
600 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8139-5024-2 (9780813950242)
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
Debra J. Rosenthal | Jason de Lara Molesky
Cli-Fi and Class
Socioeconomic Justice in Contemporary American Climate Fiction
E-Book
10/2023
1st Edition
Naval Institute Press
from
€84.99
Available for download
Persons
Debra J. Rosenthal is Professor of English at John Carroll University and the author of Performatively Speaking: Speech and Action in Antebellum American Literature. Jason de Lara Molesky is a postdoctoral fellow at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University.
Content
Introduction
Hadestown and Other Myths for the Anthropocene: Company Towns and Proletarian Traditions in US Climate Fiction
Burnout: Cli-Fi and Exhaustion
Resource Utopia and Dystopia: Excavating Class in Afrofuturist Cli-Fi Film
Dreaming a Decolonized Climate: Indigenous Technologies and Relations of Class and Kinship in Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves
Climate-Change Fiction and Poverty Studies: Kingsolver's Flight Behavior, Diaz's "Monstro," and Bacigalupi's "The Tamarisk Hunter"
Learning to Survive: Place-Based Education in Strange as This Weather Has Been and Parable of the Sower
Settler Apocalypses: Race, Class, and the Erasure of Indigenous Resilience in Alaskan Cli-Fi
Black: A Speculative Almanac for the End of the World
Class and Revolution in the Climate Fictions of Kim Stanley Robinson: Transitions to Postcapitalism
Heartland of Darkness: Nostalgia and Class in the Climate Fiction of Paolo Bacigalupi
Whose Odds? The Absence of Climate Justice in American Climate Fiction of the 2000s and 2010s
Cli-Fi and the Crisis of the Middle Class
Homelessness in Lauren Groff's Florida Fiction: Climate Change and Displacement
Epilogue: What has Changed Since Anthropocene Fictions?
Contents
Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors
Index
Hadestown and Other Myths for the Anthropocene: Company Towns and Proletarian Traditions in US Climate Fiction
Burnout: Cli-Fi and Exhaustion
Resource Utopia and Dystopia: Excavating Class in Afrofuturist Cli-Fi Film
Dreaming a Decolonized Climate: Indigenous Technologies and Relations of Class and Kinship in Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves
Climate-Change Fiction and Poverty Studies: Kingsolver's Flight Behavior, Diaz's "Monstro," and Bacigalupi's "The Tamarisk Hunter"
Learning to Survive: Place-Based Education in Strange as This Weather Has Been and Parable of the Sower
Settler Apocalypses: Race, Class, and the Erasure of Indigenous Resilience in Alaskan Cli-Fi
Black: A Speculative Almanac for the End of the World
Class and Revolution in the Climate Fictions of Kim Stanley Robinson: Transitions to Postcapitalism
Heartland of Darkness: Nostalgia and Class in the Climate Fiction of Paolo Bacigalupi
Whose Odds? The Absence of Climate Justice in American Climate Fiction of the 2000s and 2010s
Cli-Fi and the Crisis of the Middle Class
Homelessness in Lauren Groff's Florida Fiction: Climate Change and Displacement
Epilogue: What has Changed Since Anthropocene Fictions?
Contents
Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors
Index