I have no previous knowledge of American Environmental Literature but I'm excited to learn and unpack the readings that are centralized on this topic of environment. I've heard of literary criticism but never of Ecocriticism. Reading the writings assigned to us last week, I sort of came up with an idea of what ecocriticism is and I think it's almost like literary criticism where you analyze a literature piece but it's literary criticism with an environmental focus. In the reading "Literature & Environmental", they wrote that ecocriticism is "environmentally oriented study of literature and (less commonly) other expressive media..." (Buell et al. 418). With that reading, I was able to understand the aspects of environmental writing.
In connection to using resources to fix environmental issues (not fixing it entirely), social media is booming and many platforms are being used to spread awareness of environmental issues. People can communicate and post on issues to raise awareness and gain help in solving issues as stated in these readings. I think if we were to all use our media to do this people will be attentive and aware.
The reading "American Earth" Introduction by Bill McKibben talks about the selected writings and explains their importance in literature. "Solving for Pattern" by Wendell Berry discusses the problems in agriculture and solutions that people have come up with to resolve them. Berry criticizes these solutions and proposes ideas of solutions that can work to fix issues in agriculture.
"Literature & Environment" by Lawrence Buell, Ursula K. Heise, and Karen Thornber defines ecocriticism and talks about the history of environmental literature while applying it to central points such as imagination of place, literature, science, environment, gender, (post) colonialism, indigeneity, imagining nonhumans, and animal studies. I was mostly intrigued by Gender and its relation to Ecocriticism.
Ecofeminism is a term that I had never heard and it intrigued me. I've become interested in this topic of the relationship between feminism and the environment. This section of "Literature & Environment" talks about "environmental feminism" (Buell et al. 424). The words "neocolonialism" meaning using economic, political, cultural, or other pressures to control other countries (Oxford Learner's Dictionaries, 2021). and "acculturation" meaning to learn to live successfully in a different culture (Oxford Learner's Dictionaries, 2021) stood out to me concerning the topic of gender.
Women as part of a large population in our environment are belittled and frowned upon. "Ecofeminism also argues that the battle for ecological survival is intrinsically intertwined with the struggles for women's liberation and other forms of social justice" (Buell et al. 424) this passage paints a bigger picture of injustice in gender that ultimately impacts the environment (causing issues) both socially and physically. Females are damaged/oppressed like the environment and that is the connection this section of the reading is trying to make known. I most definitely agree with the argument that "It is women, they believe, who will "green" society and improve the environment..." (Buell et. al 425).
"It is women, they believe, who will "green" society and improve the environment..."
Do you agree with this argument? If so why? If not why? and What solutions would you propose to fix environmental issues you are interested in?
References:
Berry, W. (2009). The gift of good land: Further essays cultural and agricultural.
McKibben, Bill (2008). American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau.
Citations
"acculturation,v ” Oxford Learner's Dictionaries Online, 2021, / OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com Accessed 7 September 2021.
Buell, Lawrence, Heise Ursula K., Thornber, Karen. “Literature and the Environment” Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts, 01, Aug. 2011.
"neocolonialism, n ” Oxford Learner's Dictionaries Online, 2021, / OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com Accessed 7 September 2021.
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