Literary Animal Studies and the Climate Crisis

Literary Animal Studies and the Climate Crisis
Author: Sune Borkfelt
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2022-11-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 303111020X

Literary Animal Studies and the Climate Crisis connects insights from the field of literary animal studies with the urgent issues of climate change and environmental degradation, and features considerations of new interventions by literature in relation to these pressing questions and debates. This volume informs academic debates in terms of how nonhuman animals figure in our cultural imagination of topics such as climate change, extinction, animal otherness, the posthuman, and environmental crises. Using a diverse set of methodologies, each chapter presents relevant cases which discuss the various aspects of these interstices. This volume is an intersection between literary animal studies and climate fiction intended as an interdisciplinary intervention that speaks to the global climate debate and is thus relevant across the environmental humanities.

The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment

The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment
Author: Timothy Clark
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2011-01-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 113949516X

The degrading environment of the planet is something that touches everyone. This 2011 book offers an introductory overview of literary and cultural criticism that concerns environmental crisis in some form. Both as a way of reading texts and as a theoretical approach to culture more generally, 'ecocriticism' is a varied and fast-changing set of practices which challenges inherited thinking and practice in the reading of literature and culture. This introduction defines what ecocriticism is, its methods, arguments and concepts, and will enable students to look at texts in a wholly new way. Boxed sections explain key critical terms and contemporary debates in the field with 'hands-on' examples and comparisons. Timothy Clark's thoughtful approach makes this an ideal first encounter with environmental readings of literature.

The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Environment

The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Environment
Author: Louise Westling
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2014
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1107029929

This authoritative collection of rigorous but accessible essays investigates the exciting new interdisciplinary field of environmental literary criticism.

Vegetarianism and Science Fiction

Vegetarianism and Science Fiction
Author: Joshua Bulleid
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2023-11-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3031383478

Vegetarianism and Science Fiction: A History of Utopian Animal Ethics examines how vegetarian ideals promoted within science fiction and utopian literature have had a real-world impact on the awareness and spread of vegetarianism and animal advocacy, as well as how the genres' engagements have been altered to reflect changes in ethical and environmental philosophy. Author Joshua Bulleid examines the representation of vegetarianism in the works of major science fiction authors, including Mary Shelley, H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ernest Callenbach, Marge Piercy, Octavia E. Butler, Kim Stanley Robinson and Margaret Atwood within their evolving social contexts, tracing the development of vegetarian trends and their science fictional representations from the early-nineteenth century to the present day.

The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies

The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies
Author: Linda Kalof
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 641
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199927146

The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies tackles the infamous "animal question" how can humans rethink and reconfigure their relationships with other animals? Over the course of five sections and thirty chapters, the contributors investigate issues and concepts central to understanding our current relationship with other animals and the potential for coexistence in an ecological community of living beings.

Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid

Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid
Author: Thor Hanson
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2021-09-28
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1541672410

*A New York Times Editor's Choice pick *Shortlisted for the 2022 Pacific Northwest Book Awards A beloved natural historian explores how climate change is driving evolution In Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid, biologist Thor Hanson tells the remarkable story of how plants and animals are responding to climate change: adjusting, evolving, and sometimes dying out. Anole lizards have grown larger toe pads, to grip more tightly in frequent hurricanes. Warm waters cause the development of Humboldt squid to alter so dramatically that fishermen mistake them for different species. Brown pelicans move north, and long-spined sea urchins south, to find cooler homes. And when coral reefs sicken, they leave no territory worth fighting for, so aggressive butterfly fish transform instantly into pacifists. A story of hope, resilience, and risk, Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid is natural history for readers of Bernd Heinrich, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and David Haskell. It is also a reminder of how unpredictable climate change is as it interacts with the messy lattice of life.

Vulnerable Earth

Vulnerable Earth
Author: Pramod K. Nayar
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2024-05-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1009496913

Shows how the literature of climate crisis foregrounds a feature that humans and nonhumans, share, differentially, with the planet: vulnerability.

Livestock and Literature

Livestock and Literature
Author: Liza B. Bauer
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2024
Genre: Animals in literature
ISBN: 3031581164

This book explores the past and current traces that cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals used by humans have left in Anglophone literary fiction. In times of accelerated global warming, an acute pandemic, and breakthroughs in bioengineering practices, discussions on how to rethink the relationships to these animals have become as heated as perhaps never before. Livestock and Literature examines what literature has to contribute to these debates. In particular, it draws on counter-narratives to so-called livestock animals’ commodification in selected science- and speculative fiction (SF) works from the twenty-first century. These texts imagine ‘what if’ scenarios where "livestock" practice resistance, transform into biotechnologically modified, postanimal beings, or live in close companionship to humans. Via these three points of access, the study delineates the formal and thematic strategies SF authors apply to challenge anthropocentric and speciesist thought patterns. The aim is to shed light on how these alternative storyworlds expand readers' understanding of the lives of farmed animals; seeking insight into how literature shapes human-animal relationships beyond the page. Liza B. Bauer is Interim Scientific Manager of the Panel on Planetary Thinking and co-speaker of the interdisciplinary research section on Human-Animal Studies at the Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany.

Critical Terms for Animal Studies

Critical Terms for Animal Studies
Author: Lori Gruen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 479
Release: 2018-10-23
Genre: Science
ISBN: 022635556X

Alexandra Horowitz, Peter Singer, Barbara King, Christine Korsgaard, and others explore the core concepts of this interdisciplinary field: “Recommended.” —Choice Animal Studies is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field devoted to examining, understanding, and critically evaluating the complex relationships between humans and other animals. Scholarship in Animal Studies draws on a variety of methodologies to explore these multi-faceted relationships in order to help us understand the ways in which other animals figure in our lives and we in theirs. Bringing together the work of a group of internationally distinguished scholars, Critical Terms for Animal Studies offers distinct voices and diverse perspectives, exploring significant concepts and asking important questions. What do we mean by anthropocentrism, captivity, empathy, sanctuary, and vulnerability, and what work do these and other critical terms do in Animal Studies? How do we take non-human animals seriously, not simply as metaphors for human endeavors, but as subjects themselves? Sure to become an indispensable reference for the field, Critical Terms for Animal Studies not only provides a framework for thinking about animals as subjects of their own experiences, but also serves as a touchstone to help us think differently about our conceptions of what it means to be human, and the impact human activities have on the more than human world. “The subject of animal studies is at a crucial stage, still being mapped out and defining itself, and this volume is very useful, given its conciseness, its all-star cast of contributors, and its breadth in providing a guide to some of the key ideas.” —Colin Jerolmack, New York University