Recommend a book

There are two kinds of ecocritics. Some critics only live in the textual world, and avoiding essentialism is their doctrine. Others concern about texts too, but they also look for connections with the secular world. We touched this issue in Field Methods class when we talked about the relationship between ecocriticism and environment on Tuesday.

Now I would like to recommend this book:

Slovic, Scott. Going Away to Think: Engagement, Retreat, and Ecocritical Responsibility. Reno: U of Nevada P, 2008.

This book is an “ecological” edition of Edward Said’s “Secular Criticism” in which Prof. Slovic argues that ecocritics, instead of limiting themselves in the textual boundary, they “need contact not just with literature and not just with each other, but with the physical world” (30). The author uses an understandable language to explain what ecocriticism is to the ordinary readers. I think this book gives ecocriticism a dynamic new look.

I write this blog for a reason. Since we are taking different courses, and we will be required to read various books/essays. (Or you can recommend your favorite extracurricular works.) Maybe we can select some environmental related readings, write very short introductions, and then put the publication entries and the introductions on our EH blog. Guess what? We will have our own annotated bibliography for EH students! I’m not sure if this suggestion will work or not, but we can try it.

Ecocriticsim

We are going to discuss ecocriticism in Field Methods class this week. This recent-emergent literary discourse is new to most of us. The assigned readings provide us an outline that helps us understand this new discipline. Here I would like offer you some extra information about ecocriticism to give you a concrete picture about the discipline.

1. The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE): An academic association of ecocriticism. If you want to know what scholars are doing in this discipline, you can check their conference program archive (http://www.asle.org/site/conferences/biennial/archives/). I think it is a good way to understand a discipline.

2. Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE): an academic journal published by ASLE. With an emphasis of literary and cultural studies, it explores the human-nature relation. It is a very useful resource if you aim to take environmental literature as your professional goal. Here is their website: http://www.oxfordjournals.com/our_journals/isle/about.html

3. International scope: Well, one of my former department’s research focuses is ecocriticsim. We have biennial international conferences on ecological discourse. You can download our conference proceedings at http://www2.tku.edu.tw/~tfex/e/index.htm to understand what people are interested in outside the U.S. We had a conference last year and the greatest contribution of the conference was the birth of ASLE Taiwan, Republic of China!

If you have any comments of ecocriticism or if you have any additional information about the discipline, you are welcome to add your fellow-up discussions.