“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Monday, February 7, 2011

Rutgers Eco Conference Details

“Cross-Cultural Ecocriticism(s): Waves and Undertows”
February 25th, 2011
9:00 am. - 5:00 pm.
Teleconference Lecture Hall, Alexander Library, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

Do current environmental crises, politics, and studies compel literary and cultural studies to revisit their usual perspectives on nature? Ecocriticism names the emergence of interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the interactions between humans and physical environments and non-human species in literature and other media. The field calls too for expanding our understanding of the relationship between “texts” and the social/physical networks in which they are inserted. Ecocriticism, however, has been accused of a pronounced tendency towards solipsism and even ethnocentrism in its primary focus on English and American national literary traditions and ecologies.

This conference will focus on leading research in ecocriticism addressing national, ethnic, class, gender, and disciplinary boundaries still permeating this field. Four distinguished scholars who in recent times have opened or advanced new directions will share their research related to the rise of postcolonial ecocriticism, the impact of new varieties of ecofeminisms and popular environmentalisms, the contributions and challenges posed by another emergent field: critical animal studies, and the rethinking of environmental aesthetics and ecological thought in/for the Humanities.

* Rob Nixon. Author of Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (forthcoming Harvard UP, 2011),
* Catriona Sandilands. Editor (with Bruce Erickson) of Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics and Desire (Indiana UP, 2010).
* Timothy Morton. Author of Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics (Harvard UP, 2007), and The Ecological Thought (Harvard UP, 2010).
* Ursula Heise. Author of Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global (Oxford UP, 2008).

For the detailed program of this event, and information on other sponsors, please see the attached flyer.

Directions to Alexander Library, and Rutgers College Ave. Campus


Contact:
Jorge Marcone: jmarcone@rci.rutgers.edu
Administrative Assistant: Marilyn Tankiewicz: MARILYN.TANKIEWICZ@rutgers.edu


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