Material Ecocriticism offers new ways to analyze language and reality, human and nonhuman life, mind and matter, without falling into well-worn paths of thinking. Bringing ecocriticism closer to the material turn, the contributions to this landmark volume focus on material forces and substances, the agency of things, processes, narratives and stories, and making meaning out of the world. This broad-ranging reflection on contemporary human experience and expression provokes new understandings of the planet to which we are intimately connected.
Serenella Iovino is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Turin, Italy. Serpil Oppermann is Professor of English at Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey.
Foreword: Storied Matter Jeffrey Jerome Cohen Introduction: Stories Come to Matter Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann Part I. Material Ecocriticism: Theories and Relations 1. From Ecological Postmodernism to Material Ecocriticism: Creative Materiality and Narrative Agency Serpil Oppermann 2. On the Limits of Agency: Notes on the Material Turn from a Systems-Theoretical Perspective Hannes Bergthaller 3. Creative Matter and Creative Mind: Cultural Ecology and Literary Creativity Hubert Zapf 4. Natural Play, Natural Metaphor and Natural Stories: Biosemiotic Realism Wendy Wheeler 5. The Ecology of Color: Goethe's Materialist Optics and Ecological Posthumanism Heather Sullivan Part II. Narratives of Matter 6. Bodies of Naples: Stories, Matter, and the Landscapes of Porosity Serenella Iovino 7. When It Rains Lowell Duckert 8. Painful Material Realities, Avoidance, Ecophobia Simon C. Estok 9. Semiotization of Matter: A Hybrid Zone between Biosemiotics and Material Ecocriticism Timo Maran Part III. Politics of Matter 10. Pro/Polis: Three Forays into the Political Lives of Bees Catriona Sandilands 11. Excremental Ecocriticism and the Global Sanitation Crisis Dana Phillips 12. Oceanic Origins, Plastic Activism, and New Materialism at Sea Stacy Alaimo 13. Meditations on Natural Worlds, Disabled Bodies, and a Politics of Cure Eli Clare Part IV. Poetics of Matter 14. Corporeal Fieldwork and Risky Art: Peter Goin and the Making of Nuclear Landscapes Cheryll Glotfelty 15. Of Material Sympathies, Paracelsus, and Whitman Jane Bennett 16. Source of Life: Avatar, Amazonia, and an Ecology of Selves Joni Adamson 17. The Liminal Space between Things: Epiphany and the Physical Timothy Morton Coda: Open Closure A Diptych on Material Spirituality 18. Spirits that Matter: Pathways towards a Rematerialization of Religion and Spirituality Kate Rigby 19. Mindful New Materialisms: Buddhist Roots for Material Ecocriticism's Flourishing Greta Gaard Afterword: The Commonwealth of Breath David Abram Works Cited List of Contributors Index
"References and engages with the major works and writers on the new materialism with its focus on material entanglements and material agency... The quality of the essays ensures that this will be a useful volume for both undergraduate and graduate courses." - Anne Elvey, Monash University "The contributions to this collection are consistently well-written, balancing technical language, poetic vividness, and accessibility. Of interest to literary scholars and readers throughout the environmental humanities and theoretical sciences." - Scott Slovic, Idaho State University
