Ecocriticism

	Ecocriticism, Rhetoric, and Environmental Discourse
	That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics. That land yields a cultural harvest is a fact long known, but latterly often forgotten. --Aldo Leopold
	Literary and rhetorical scholars are beginning to remember and examine their ties to the land, the links between human culture and (human and nonhuman) nature. Like other critical perspectives grounded in the nexus of material circumstances and cultural representations--new historicism, feminist criticism, and Marxist criticism, to name a few--ecocriticism challenges us not only to analyze the interrelationships of signified and signifier (or lack thereof) but also to ask what difference symbolic representations and critical discourse make in the encompassing world. As one introduction to the field puts it, "Ecocriticism takes as its subject the interconnections between nature and culture, specifically the cultural artifacts of language and literature. As a critical stance, it has one foot in literature and the other on land; as a theoretical discourse, it negotiates between the human and the nonhuman" (Glotfelty and Fromm, Ecocriticism Reader).
	Starting Places The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) "Defining Ecocritical Theory and Practice" (Western Literature Association, October 1994) PMLA Forum on Ecocrticism (October 1999) The "Problem Space" of Ecocriticism A brief photo essay, accompanied by passages from nature writers, concerning the art of seeing.
	Recent Courses English 876, Studies in Criticism: Ecocriticism (SU 2000; SU 1996) English 575, Forms and Themes in Literature Comparative Studies 367.02, Values, Science, and Technology in American Culture (WI 2000)

Starting Places

Recent Courses