Tim Morton, Author of Ecology Without Nature and The Ecological Thought, maintains a blog on eco-criticism. Recent posts have focused on drama including thoughts about plays, and drama as an ecological form.
He also podcasts an evolving lecture Hyperobjects, and has excellent links to other writers on eco-criticism.
Waves and Undertows – a major conference taking place at Rutgers, NJ, on 25th Feb seeks to highlight key strands in contemporary ecocriticism framed by the following statement:
The Conference will reflect on the gains and shortcomings of the so-called “third wave ecocriticism,” or the current rise of approaches which transcends national and ethnic boundaries and compares the cultural aspects of the human-nature interaction across cultures. More specifically, the conference will focus on the rise of postcolonial ecocriticism, the impact of new varieties of ecofeminisms and popular environmentalisms (including the environmental justice movement) throughout the world in literature and film; and the contributions and challenges posed by another emergent field: critical animal studies. As ecocriticism spreads across cultural traditions, it is restating the need for expanding further its object of study to new forms of textuality and discourse in different media. Overall, therefore, the conference will explore too current rethinking of environmental aesthetics and ecological thought in the Humanities.
CrossCulturalEcocriticismsConferenceFeb2011.pdf (application/pdf Object).
Adrian Ivakhiv has assembled a short list of the top 60 books of the past ten years on ecocultural theory. Fantastic reading list – his personal top ten are:
1. William E. Connolly, Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed (University of Minnesota Press, 2002)
2. Arturo Escobar, Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes (Duke University Press, 2008)
3. Graham Harman, Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics (re.press, 2009)
4. Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Duke University Press, 2007)
5. Joachim Radkau, Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment (Cambridge University Press, 2008; orig. German text 2002)
6. Evan Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2007)
7. Manuel Delanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (Continuum, 2002)
8. David Skrbina, Panpsychism in the West (MIT Press, 2005)
9. Stefan Helmreich, Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas (University of California Press, 2009)
10. (tie) Michael M. J. Fischer, Anthropological Futures (Duke University Press, 2009)
(tie) Teresa Brennan, The Transmission of Affect (Cornell University Press, 2004)
The UK Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) published the results of research which says that “eight out of ten people think everyone should be able to experience beauty on a regular basis.” CABE also commissioned a series of essays from seven public figures (Diana Athill, Bonnie Greer, Irena Bauman, Hasan Bakhshi, etc.) to tackle the questions raised in the research.
Diana Athill’s essay starts by recounting the following anecdote,
“I was recently given a glimpse of how this matters when I heard the following incident described: a man was at his desk in a room with a French window that opened on to a garden, fresh and fragrant on a sunny May morning. His 11-year-old daughter came running into the room and across to the window. Without realising her father was present, she paused, drew in a deep breath, and exclaimed: “Oh, how I love life!” The garden that beheld the child’s eye suddenly seemed so beautiful to her that she was jolted into uttering an exact description of the experience; seeing something as beautiful gave her a shot of life-love.”
The difficulty is that we are entering the realm of truisms, and this is dangerous.
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