1. Ecocriticism

2. What is Ecocriticism?

3. So, what is ecological awareness?
Well, ecology is the study of the relationships between the air, land, water, animals, plants, etc.

4. Which leads us to: ENVIRONMENTALISM

5. Which leads us to consider SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Sustainable development is a pattern of resource use that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but in the indefinite future.

6. Ecological Footprint
Is the world’s premier measure of humanity’s demand on nature

7. Climate Change

8. Green Living / Going Green
To be environmentally sound or beneficial
Preservation of resources and offering environmentally friendly alternatives to traditional methods or products

9. YOU have NO choice if you are not aware!
You have a choice.
Yes, YOU have a choice.
Choice to become aware.
Choice in purchasing.
BUT
YOU have NO choice if you are not aware!

10. Why Ecocriticism?
Most ecocritical work shares a common motivation: the awareness that we have reached the age of environmental limits, a time when human actions are damaging the planet's basic life support systems.
An inconvenient Truth – The Eleventh Hour
“limited capital”

11. Ecocritic work is a direct intervention in current social, political, and economic debates surrounding environmental pollution and preservation.

12. In the words of historian Donald Worster,
“We are facing a global crisis today, not because of how ecosystems function but rather because of how our ethical systems function. Getting through the crisis requires understanding our impact on nature, but even more, it requires understanding those ethical systems and using that understanding to reform them. Historians, along with literary scholars, anthropologists, and philosophers, cannot do the reforming, of course, but they can help with the understanding.”
Who is donald Worster? One of the founders and leading figures in environmental history.

13. Trying to Make a Difference

14. When Did It Emerge?
Ecocriticism is one of the most recent schools literary theory, emerging in the mid-1990’s.

15. Ecocriticism was heralded by the publication of two highly influential works, both published in 1996

16. The Ecocriticism Reader The first work: edited by Cheryll Glotfelty
and Harold Fromm

17. The second work:
The Environmental
Imagination
By: Lawrence Buell

18. Academic Respectability
Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE)

19. Academic Respectability
ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment
ASLE has an official journal –ISLE -- in which the most current scholarship in the rapidly evolving field of ecocriticism can be found.

20. Academic Respectability

21. Ecocentric Perspectives
= paying particular attention to the representation of the natural world
asks if the earth is represented as a commodity or as a partner

22. Ecocentric perspectives give special canonical emphasis to writers who foreground nature as a major part of their subject matter, such as the American Transcendentalists.

23. Ecological Nonfiction
Ecocentric perspectives extend the range of literary-critical practice by placing a new emphasis on relevant nonfiction writing, especially topographical materials such as essays, travel writing, memoirs, and regional literature.

24. Establishing a “Green” Canon
Another focus of ecocritics has been the redefinition of the canon.

25. Ecocentric values emphasize:

26. Ecospirituality

27. Hebrew/Christian Perspective on the Environment
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
-- Genesis 1:28
Add a slide about hierarchy

28. Colours of the Wind
You think I'm an ignorant savage And you've been so many places I guess it must be so But still I cannot see If the savage one is me How can there be so much that you don't know? You don't know You think you own whatever land you land on The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim But I know every rock and tree and creature Has a life, has a spirit, has a name You think the only people who are people Are the people who look and think like you But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger You'll learn things you never knew you never knew Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moonOr asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned? Can you sing with all the voices of the mountains? Can you paint with all the colors of the wind? Come run the hidden pine trails of the forest Come taste the sunsweet berries of the Earth Come roll in all the riches all around you And for once, never wonder what they're worth
The rainstorm and the river are my brothers The heron and the otter are my friends And we are all connected to each other In a circle, in a hoop that never ends How high will the sycamore grow? If you cut it down, then you'll never know And you'll never hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon For whether we are white or copper skinned We need to sing with all the voices of the mountains We need to paint with all the colors of the wind You can own the Earth and still All you'll own is Earth until You can paint with all the colors of the wind

29. Hierarchy’s existence in our world
Man as the owner of the land
Man as the supreme being
Humans as the oppressor and the environment as the oppressed
This view reflects a superiority complex in that humans are above and masters of all other creatures on earth.
Implies that the world is there for our use and consumption

30. Establishing a “Green” Vocabulary
Ecocritics have begun to realize the limitations of existing vocabularies for keeping up with the changes in attitudes, values, beliefs, and ways of conceptualizing Nature that are emerging in ecocriticism.

31. Establishing a “Green” Vocabulary
One task is to add new kinds of words to balance out an ecological vocabulary now dominated by corporate interests.
When we hear, for example, a forester comment that timber harvesting will “sustain the productivity of the land,” we should ask, “Productivity for moles?”

32. Green Advertising a.k.a. Eco-Marketing
Advertising “green”
Many products are now labeled as “environmentally friendly”, “biodegradable” made from “recycled materials”
A new niche market for a variety of products

33. Important Ecocritical Theorists

34. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm
“Ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment. Just as feminist criticism examines literature from a gender- conscious perspective, and Marxist criticism brings an awareness of economic class to its reading of texts, ecocriticism takes an earth-centered approach to literary studies.”
-- The Ecocriticism Reader (1996)

35. Lawrence Buell
“The impression that human affairs are not in fundamental ways subject to regulation by the environment is created by our ostensible success at regulating it. This blindness to the environment produces unintended destabilizing consequences like skin lesions from the ozone hole, owing partly to the products of cooling technologies that have insulated us from confronting the scandal of our environmental dependence.
-- The Environmental Imagination (1996)

36. Scott Slovic (Editor of ISLE)
“Literary scholarship is, on the most fundamental level, associated with human values and attitudes. We should, as critics, consider how literary expression challenges readers to decide what in the world is meaningful/important to them. We can't afford to shy away from the issue of values, and it's one reason why the humanities should be a crucial part of university programs in environmental studies.”
-- Awareness in American Nature Writing (1992)

37. Important Ecocritical Writers

38. Henry David Thoreau
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
-- Walden (1854)

39. Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.”
-- On Nature (1836)

40. Annie Dillard Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974)
A young woman in 20th century Virginia tries to live like Thoreau, with revelatory results: "In nature I find grace tangled in a rapture with violence; I find an intricate landscape whose forms are fringed in death; I find mystery, newness, and a kind of exuberant, spendthrift energy."

41. Norman Maclean A River Runs Through It (1976)
“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.”

42. Gary Snyder I pledge allegiance to the soil of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.
-- For All (1992)

43. Important Ecocritical Terms

44. Shallow Ecology vs Deep Ecology

45. Commodification
The process by which an object or person becomes a commodity.
Capitalist society, which is structured around economic exchange, is seen by many critics to commodify the whole world, including the environment.

46. Ecofeminism
Ecofeminists agree that the domination of women and the domination of nature are fundamentally connected

47. Ecofeminism (cont.)
Central to this liberation is a recognition of the value of the activities traditionally associated with women; childbirth, nurturing and the whole domestic arena.

48. Questions Ecocritics Ask about Literature

49. Ecocritical Questions
What does ‘Nature’ represent in the essay? Can you interpret it within an ecocritical framework?

50. Ecocritical Questions
Which ‘image’ or ‘symbolic representation’ of nature does the author construct?

51. Ecocritical Questions
What role does nature and the landscape play here?

52. Ecocritical Questions
How do nature and human emotion relate to each other in the text? How does nature affect emotion?
How do nature and human values relate to each other?

53. Ecocritical Questions
Are the values expressed in this play consistent with ecological wisdom?
HUMAN_ENV INTERACTION (add slide)

54. Ecocritical Questions
What is the relationship between humans and the environment in this text? Is the environment commodified?

55. Ecocritical Questions
How do our metaphors of the land influence the way we treat it?
i.e. The world is your oyster.

56. Ecocritical Questions
Do men write about nature differently than women do?

57. Ecocritical Questions
How has the concept of wilderness changed over time?

58. Ecocritical Questions
In what ways and to what effect is the environmental crisis seeping into contemporary literature and popular culture?
What is the relationship between humans and the environment?

59. Useful Links

62. Eco Art
Artwork created by artists concerned with the state of our environment and includes:
foreground nature as important subject matter
interpret nature to inform the public about environmental problems
re-envision our relationship to nature and propose new ways to co-exist
reclaim and remediate damaged environments
use environmentally friendly and found products
Lynne Hull, creates sculpture installations as wildlife habitat enhancement which she considers her eco-atonement for our human impact.
She works from the belief that artist creativity can be effectively applied to urgent situations today.

63. Artist: Lynn Hull

64. Applying Ecocriticism to Art
What is the artists message? What statement is the artist trying to make?
How has the use of colour highlighted certain aspects of the piece?
Are certain images fore-grounded? Are certain images hidden or blurred? What is the effect of this?
Are certain images more detailed than others?
What is the relationship between humans and the
environment in the piece?