Monday, July 25, 2011

Research Abstract: Searching for Sustainability in Early American Literature

[Blake's Abstract # 5]

Philippon, Daniel J. “Is Early American Environmental Writing Sustainable? A Response to Timothy Sweet.” Early American Literature 45.2 (2010): 417-23. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 30 June 2011.

Daniel J. Philippon says issues which Timothy Sweet raises in his article “Projecting Early American Environmental Writing” and his book American Georgics: Economy and Environment in Early American Literature deserve more critical attention because exploring ways in which humans and nonhumans can work together towards a sustainable future is increasingly relevant.  Critical studies of nonhuman nature is now accepted and expected among academics addressing cultural concerns.  Also, addressing environmental concerns from an academic perspective is relevant because a lack of sustainable living practices damages the environment and prospects for human and nonhuman survival.

Philipon identifies Sweet’s central concerns as determining what early American literature can add to ecocriticism and discovering how early American paradigms can help the ecocritical cause today.  Philippon argues that the humanities—including studies of early American literature—are as important to the ecocritical cause as the sciences because human behavior and beliefs are at the root of the damage to the environment; therefore, to truly find solutions to our environmental problems we must examine ourselves, our definition of “human,” and ultimately change our behaviors.  Looking back at early American writing is valuable to ecocritics because they can study trends in human behavior towards the environment and beliefs about nature over time and across the space of geography. 

Philipon notes that Sweet purposes a georgic focus, as opposed to a pastoral focus, for ecocritical analysis of early American texts in order to expose the fact that our economic system relies on ecological capabilities for its success.  However, Philipon cautions against prioritizing the economic oriented environment because it creates a hierarchy, which reduces the importance of noneconomic nature.  In this light, a georgic orientation seems reductive because all elements of sustainability must be addressed; in addition to economic concerns, social and ecological ones must be addressed as well.  For example, asking who are the labors working on the land and who else is affected by this labor can be one way of investigating economic justice perspectives.  Asking what role religious arguments for sustainability have in the ecocritical cause further necessarily complicate the georgic perspective by engaging with Puritan and Quaker philosophy. 

 While Sweet says that exploring the reoccurrence of beliefs about nature throughout history is important, Philipon adds that addressing the changing context in which these similar ideas are presented in is vital.  For example, technology is a contextual factor that must be taken into account when examining attitudes about nature because it not only transmits these beliefs but shapes them.  Technology is even valuable to the ecocritical because it can aid in the transmission of solutions for sustainable living.  In conclusion, Philipon admits that if Americans do still operate from a colonial paradigm, like Sweet believes, then ecocritical analysis of early American texts can reveal much about our current eco-economic relationships.  

Research Abstract: Early American Environmental Writing

[Blake's Abstract #4]

Sweet, Timothy. “Projecting Early American Environmental Writing.” American Literary History 22.2 (2010): 419-31. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 1 July 2011.


Timothy Sweet makes a case for how studying early American environmental writing can contribute to the current ecocritical cause. 

Sweet identifies the contrastive model of early American environmental studies, which examines discontinuities in beliefs about the environment.  Thoreau is considered the inventor of the nature essay, which signals the official shift from anthropocentric thinking to a concern for nature and the impact of technological advancements on undeveloped nature.  Early American environmental genres identified in the pre-Thoreau period include promotional, travel, scientific, historical, and even religious documents.  Early American ecofeminists also acknowledge a shift to more eco-conscious writing around the same time; however, they generally concentrate on fiction, beginning in colonial America that attempts to domesticate nature or pursue a nondomestic space in nature.    

In contrast with the discontinuity model, the American origins model of studying environmental writing is primarily concerned with studying continuity in attitudes about the environment and identifying the beginnings of the attitudes in colonial texts.  An example is the denial that our eco-economy is based on limited natural resources; the origin of this belief can be tracked from the separation of scientific texts from common literature; to the specialization of economics, which denied the existence of an environmental foundation; and ultimately to the pastoralization of nature, which only considers non-economic environments “nature.” Therefore, because the American ecological economy is still viewed with a colonial attitude, studying the colonial origins of this eco-economic paradigm will help Americans acknowledge that an eco-economy based on imagining inexhaustible production capabilities is impossible and unethical.  A georgic perspective denies the human/nature separation and urges humans to acknowledge that we do not live outside nature—nature is not separate from economic environments.  In contrast, the pastoral glorifies the escape from urban life to non-economic nature and acknowledges human alienation from nature because of our development. 

A biogeographical approach examines both discontinuities and continuities in American environmental thought but it contextualizes these beliefs with a global perspective.  A biogeographical approach also studies the effect people have on human and nonhumans in regional ecosystems as they move throughout the globe.  From this paradigm, the concept of American wilderness is invalid and American nature was never “pure” because before European colonization because it was occupied by Native Americans who hunted and farmed the land.  

Sweet calls for an expansion of the American nature writing canon to include nonliterary genres because environmental writing often took these forms in early America.  He also proposes that a survey class of colonial nature writing can be used to expose a concern with environmental issues, which disappears in later American writings. Sweet concludes that early American nature writing holds much potential for the contemporary ecocritical cause in examining sustainability can be achieved with consideration for humans and nonhumans. 

Research Abstract: Ecocriticism and "Real" Nature

[Blake's Abstract #3]

Phillips, Dana. “Ecocriticism, Literary Theory, and the Truth of Ecology.” New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation 30.3 (1999): 577-602. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 30 June 2011.


Dana Phillips explores how an ecocritical approach which focuses on real nature as opposed to representational nature is actually unproductive.  Simply focusing on real nature results in a dismissal of the fact that nature is inextricably tangled with culture and that culture is inextricably tangled with nature.

Some scholars praise ecocriticism for abandoning abstract theory and focusing on actual, physical nature and activism.  However, Phillips states that excluding theory from the realm of ecocriticism, because poststructuralism argues that nature is a construction of culture, is unproductive. This dismissal of theory misses many ways that it could be used to aid the ecocritical cause, for example destabilizing the canon.  Instead of research and an understanding of criticism, this dismissal of theory is based upon the unfounded claim that theory is destructive to society.  Phillips also charges some ecocritics with being too ignorant of recent developments in the science of ecology.  He says ecocritics who cite the orderly, unified ecosystem a justification for their moral values ignore the new ecological theory that nature should be viewed as separate patches, which are constantly changing and reacting to stimuli.  Phillips notes that when viewing ecology in light of this new paradigm it actually has similarities with poststructuralist theories.

Specifically, Phillips examines Laurence Buell’s Ecocritical Imagination in order to reveal some problems with an antitheoretical ecocritical approach.  Buell engages with theory only to dismiss the idea that nature in literature is simply a product of ideology.  He argues that nature in literature can connect the reader with “real,” non-simulated, non-ideological nature, which allows the ecocritic to make a positive environmental impact by working with literature. 

Phillips disagrees with Buell that nature can be free from ideology; he asserts that theory should be used as a resource to further the ecocritical cause.  The weakness in Buell’s argument is that he ignores that nature an culture are intertwined when he attempts to only look at “actual” nature in texts.  A critical obsession with the realistic portrayal of nature in literature leaves ecocritics acting as mere judges of accurate representation. 

Buell attempts to claim that because A Field Guide to the Birds can put readers in contact with real nature literary representation of nature function in the same manner.  Phillips says that Buell does not support his claim and doubts the ability of the images of birds in field guide to connect humans with actual nature.  He explains that the guide acknowledges that the drawings of the birds are reduced and stylized for identifying purposes; the images are not the only aid used to identify a bird; the guide was developed with the assistance of birdwatchers for functionality, while literature is not written by readers; the guide may not allow positive identification of a bird. In short, instead of using theory to support his claims Buell relies on the argument that literary devices work to enhance a reader’s engagement with real nature, an argument that Phillips is able to weaken and make a case for using theory in all ecocriticism.  

Research Abstract: 18th Century British Ecocriticism

[Blake's Abstract #2]

Hitt, Christopher. “Ecocriticism and the Long Eighteenth Century.” College Literature. 31.3 (2004): 123-47. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 30 June 2011.

 Christopher Hitt argues that ecocriticism provides a new perspective from which to examine British literature from the long eighteenth century because many current views about nature evolved during this period.  He also sets up a guide for performing ecocritical readings of texts written before the modern evolution of ecocritical theory; his primary concern is to illustrate how to avoid incorrectly associating eighteenth century attitudes towards nature with twenty first century views.

Ecocriticism is defined in a specific manner: it is not simply writing with nature as its central concern.  Hitt suggests that ecocritical writing should feature a political message about human responsibility for and ethical treatment of nonhuman nature.  He also declares that it must include an engagement with complexity.  Reductive thinking prevents the critic from fully acknowledging the paradoxical relationship between humans and nature, as reflected eighteenth century texts.  Problems can occur when critics attempt to directly graft present views of nature onto those in eighteenth century texts, only examine select parts of a text, or read the text literally without considering its context.      

Critics must look past the surface of seemingly proto-environmental rhetoric of eighteenth century writing and instead investigate the contradictory views of nature in the texts because they may serve as predecessors to current attitudes about nature.  Hitt says that dealing with only pastoral elements in a text, can lead to a simplified analysis.  However, the sublime, which presents nature as a simultaneously terrifying and pleasing force that often transports the human beyond actual nature, is significant to investigate because a similar paradoxical relationship exists today.  Hitt explains how the sublime is a result of the eighteenth century influence of scientific thinking on authors trying to accurately describe nature while acknowledging that language is an insufficient tool for the task. Critics may also explore the picturesque, in which man looks at nature but does not allow nature a reciprocal look.  Again, the picturesque is prominent in contemporary culture. 

Finally, critics should not simply dismiss linguistic representations of actual nature because of their inaccuracy but instead address their instability and origins in Newtonian and Lockean philosophies.  Examining how authors struggle to accurately describe nature will reveal more about the text than simply dismissing it because non-literal language is employed. Ecocritical readings must explore contradictions, acknowledge complexity, and be wary that a romantic view of nature can mask abuse of nature.

Research Abstract: Colonial Botany

[Blake's Abstract #1]

Andrew J. Lewis.  “Gathering for the Republic: Botany in Early Republic America.”  Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World. Eds. Londa L. Schiebinger, and Claudia Swan. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2005. 66-80. Print.


 Andrew J. Lewis explains how correspondence between early American naturalists and aspiring entrepreneurs reveals an ideological shift in colonial botanical thought and practices from an imperialistic paradigm to a capitalist, democratic philosophy.

After the American Revolution, botanists such as Benjamin Smith Barton envisioned their new role as assisting the new nation in classifying and categorizing its natural resources, which would serve as the economic base for America.  To achieve this end, naturalists recruited armature specimen collectors with advertisements in many forms of print media, including books magazines and newspapers.  America was advertised as a land of endless diversity; recognition and rewards were offered for discoveries of new and valuable plant species or other specimens.  The promises of monetary rewards were not always honored.  Though, discoveries of items such as mastodon skeletons were highly publicized and the individuals were treated like celebrities.

 One area of conflict for promulgators of the new capitalist, democratic botanical ideology was with locals who argued against the naturalists’ authority.  With local economies and folk medicine promoting different practices from botanists, early Americas had to choose to support the old ways or those espoused by the newly emerging capitalist economy and scientific community.

 Early American naturalists saw themselves as collectors of facts that when examined as a whole could lead to discoveries about the world and natural laws.  They also believed they had a special duty to research anything that might help America thrive economically.  In an effort to discover unknown species or uses for plants, botanists recruited every citizen to collect specimens.  Then they confirmed or dismissed these reports, and defined the resources available using Linnaean classifications in an effort to replace any folk definitions.  Next, they educated the public about these resources through printed texts, which stressed that knowledge of natural resources was a patriotic duty. Finally, naturalists explained to the public how these resources could be used to generate financial profit and economic independence for the fledgling nation.  In this effort to collect knowledge of “American” national resources, reports of Native American medicinal uses of local plants were disregarded.    Though early American botanists sought to remake their ideological foundations, they still accepted the European separation of emotions from rational, scientific enquiry. Therefore, although they were solicited, reports from citizens with no scientific training were mostly dismissed by naturalists for their non-intellectual nature.    

Though early American naturalists never succeeded in cataloging all of America’s resources, they made the most progress studying ores, coal, and gold.  As a result of the emerging early republic’s economy and subsequent value of specimens, botanical sciences allied itself with a democratic, economic ideology, which replaced the colonial paradigm.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Weekly Reading Response # 8 (Examining Interspecies Knots)

This week Jay Jay and I read Donna Haraway’s When Species Meet.  When we planned our course readings, we hoped that this book would discuss human animal and non-human animal relations in a manner that we could apply to our individual projects.  

The book focuses on companion species; Haraway defines these as not simply cats, dogs and gold fish, but also lab rats, feral cats, and farmed chickens.  In fact, she says that she views companion species not as a definitive term but as “a pointer to an ‘ongoing with,’ to be a much richer web to inhabit than any of the posthumanisms on display after (or in reference to) the ever-deferred demise of man” (16-17).

 Her primary project in this text is to explore the ways in which humans and companion species intertwine to shape each other.  Each chapter is not only an exploration of these endless points of contact but Haraway also considers the impact of contemporary technology.  She describes how mice used in breast cancer research will one day be connected to the women whose lives are saved by the relationship between the technology, the mice and the woman; how both dogs and laptops belong in the human lap; and even how feral cats captured, neutered, barcoded, and released to be barn cats reflect our present complicated place in the history of these points of human-animal, animal, and technological entanglements. 

She says that true respect of our nonhuman counterparts is only fully possible when we look back at our history of how we are intermeshed with them and how they are entangled with us: “We are in a knot of species coshaping one another in layers of reciprocating complexity all the way down.  Response and respect are possible only in those knots, with actual animals and people looking back at each other, sticky with all their muddled histories” (42).     

 As the wild animals that Bartram encounters do not normally live in a companion relationship with humans, the main concern of Haraway’s book not seem directly relevant to my project.  Actually, on second thought, Bartram is a scientist and he does look at the animals.  I cannot recall if he stops to reflect on the animals looking at him and respond to them.  Could it be that Bartram gives the animals he sees human eyes because it his time only humans had the power to look at, examine?  Is he empowering them with the ability to look back when he gives them human faces?  

Though, I do think that Jay Jay could use Haraways’ theories from this book in her project.  If I remember correctly, horses are the main mode of transportation in Madame Knight’s Journal.  I remember being struck by the mechanical and abusive manner in which the horses are treated—like they are merely tools.  I wonder what the failure to recognize her entanglement with the horse means?


An interspecies-technological knot:
After leaving my lap and stepping on the laptop in his usual fashion Gary the house cat settles down in his favorite nap spot, the compartment over our cable box where the wood is warmed by the energy traveling into the device.  Gary also carries a small microchip under his skin, which can be scanned to identify him if he is ever lost.  I adopted Gary when I lived in Japan and he traveled half a world in a small dark box in the cargo area of an airplane to live with me now. Now, thanks to this blog, my digital camera, and love for photography, Gary and his cable box exist on the internet as another connection and assemblage of human, cat, and technology.

His company makes my work peaceful; he wakes me up at the same time every morning before my alarm; and he greets me at the door when I come home by rolling on the floor.  I hope that in turn I amuse him, comfort him, and clam him.  His purring, playful, romps and curious gentle pawing at my face when I do not want to get up in the morning and realize that cats don’t have snooze buttons, assure me that we are each other’s companions.  

But what about the other animals . . . the ones who enter our homes on our plates, as “pests,” and as our clothes?  Who will reflect upon and respect them?
As I type, my cat Gary is rubbing his chin on my laptop and my face.  He is marking it and me with his scent glands which makes us familiar and comfortable smelling to him.  He is licking my fingers as I type and also licking the keyboard because of its close proximity (it might also taste like the ham sandwich I ate while doing my homework the other day).  When I bring my computer to class, I inevitability carry Gary’s black hairs in between the keys of my keyboard.  Well, the typing noise as annoyed Gary as usual and he has left my lap.  

Haraway says that we need to not only appreciate the complexity of these relationships but we need to go further.  I think she is asking us not just to appreciate but to understand and meditate upon these “sticky” encounters; to not just look at but to learn to look back at animals.  I am sure better ways to interact with animals and technology (Haraway discusses animal experiments, dog breeding, and chicken farming among other topics) will be imagined if more people learn to see these relationships and respect animals as more than something Other but as inevitably intermeshed in our being.  
~Blake and Gary the cat

Conference Proposal

[Blake]

Examining the Ecofeminist Elements of Bartram’s Anthropomorphosis Figures in Travels
 
        In the introduction to Chapter Three of William Bartram, the Search for Nature's Design: Selected Art, Letters, and Unpublished Writings, Laurel Ode-Schneider analyzes Bartram’s views on the relationship between human and nonhuman nature as presented in two previously unpublished letters.  She finds that Bartram’s anthropomorphosis figures in these letters are used to reverse the human/animal hierarchy in order to illustrate its unbalanced nature.  Ode-Schneider remarks that the anthropomorphosis figures found in Travels fail to function in a similar manner as the ones in his letters; she states that they operate only as unserious metaphors.

 I disagree with Ode-Schneider that the anthropomorphosis figures in Travels are insignificant.  Instead, I agree with Charles H. Adams who proposes that Bartram’s anthropocentric metaphors work to illustrate the interrelatedness of humans and animals and remind his readers that they should observe themselves in nature because nature is essential to humans.  I expand upon Adam’s ecological argument, and find that when examined with an ecofeminist lens the anthropomorphosis figures reveal Bartram’s recognition of (an)other in nature, human and nonhuman interdependence, and the necessity for diversity instead of domination.  Therefore, an ecofeminist analysis proves that Bartram’s anthropomorphosis figures in Travels function to expose the false nature of patriarchal Enlightenment ideology, which espouses that man is superior to animals. 

Because Adams demonstrated that Bartram’s anthropocentric literary devices are used in a liberating instead of oppressive manner, I believe the term “anthropomorphosis” is more appropriate because the metaphors are not employed to show that humans are central to the universe, but they are a means to oppose the Enlightenment idea that “a mere mechanical impulse” drives nonhuman animals instead of reason and emotion.             

I will examine three specific anthropomorphosis figures in Travels to illustrate my claim: a bear cub that Bartram describes as crying like a child after hunters kill its mother, which shows that animals are not something Other than human, but instead are Another being with their own families and emotions; a spider that he imagines is a Native American hunting prey demonstrates that animals and humans are similarly interdependent on the web of life for sustenance; also, by painting a group crayfish as soldiers fighting a school of fish, he demonstrates a need to acknowledge that the diversity of biota expands beyond narrow categories of Linnaean classification and includes diversity in characteristics such as temperament, intelligence, strategy, building ability. 

Bartram’s expression of ecofeminist-like philosophical beliefs through his anthropomorphosis figures proves that they are not merely “whimsical,” like Ode-Schneider says, but that they function to reject patriarchal ideology.  It is essential to recognize these figures in Travels as one of Bartram’s devices to express his opposition to the Enlightenment man/nature hierarchy because it further clarifies how Bartram was resistant to colonial ideology of his time.  Future exploration of the relationship between the anthropomorphosis figures in Travels and the metaphors in his subsequent letters might show that the letters reveal views that Bartram had always held but did not feel they could be blatantly stressed in a published text because his primary audience was Enlightenment America.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Conference Paper Proposal

[Jay Jay]

Conference Paper Proposal:
Madam Knight’s Journey: Bad Rivers, Spangled Skies & Terrifying Darkness

This paper will function as an exploration of Sarah Kemble Knight’s The Private Journal of a Journey from Boston to New York through an ecofeminist lens by examining the representation of human and nonhuman in the text.  Specifically, I will investigate the relationships forged by Knight between human and nonhuman entities through her use of language and metaphor, which has the power to render the entity as subject or object.  Vivid descriptions of urban and rural landscapes are provided by Knight, as well as numerous interactions with people she encounters during her five day journey between Boston and New Haven.  I am interested in whether or not the binary of human and nonhuman remains static, or changes with each encounter during the journey.  A sense of fluidity could indicate Knight’s willingness to view her relationship with the landscape as subject-to-subject, rather than subject-to-object.  

Ecofeminism explores the connection between the degradation of nature and the domination of women, and the consequences of patriarchy artificially linking the two entities.  By examining the manner in which Knight represents human (particularly other women, Native Americans, and African American slaves) and the nonhuman environment, I hope to locate moments of resistance to patriarchal ideology by Knight.  However, I suspect I will find Knight more often than not upholding, and even participating in, the degradation of both nature and the domination of people of color based on their economic, class, and racial status.  If certain humans are described as objects rather than subjects, can a connection be found to landscape as subject too?

While this paper utilizes ecofeminist literary criticism, which is a branch of ecofeminism, it still adheres to the call to action inherent in ecofeminism.  By applying ecofeminism to an early American text that has secured its place in the canon, I am arguing that it can withstand multiple interpretational lenses.  If Knight’s journal can provide critics and readers with another scholarly perspective not previously explored, then perhaps other texts from the same time period can do the same.  Additionally, Knight’s journal is available in a scholarly anthology, making it easily available (and affordable) for the college classroom.

My intervention in the current scholarly discourse about Knight’s journal does not disagree or contradict previous scholarship; on the contrary, borrowing a phrase from Annette Kolodny, it is a turning of the lens that can only add, not detract, to the conversation.  Scholarship regarding Knight’s journal does not yet include the landscape or the environment as an entity in its own right, nor does it explore the connections between women and nature.  Ecological literary criticism and ecofeminist criticism are growing fields, and this paper is an experiment to see how well an early American text withstands an ecofeminist reading without falling into the trap of ascribing feminist or ecological motivations to Knight.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Preliminary Bibliography

[Blake's Working Bibliography]


Examining the Ecofeminist Elements of Bartram’s Anthropocentric Figures in Travels


Primary Source:


Harper, Francis, ed. The Travels of William Bartram, Naturalist’s Edition. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1998. Print. 


I have chosen to use this scholarly edition of Bartram’s Travels, because it is the most commonly cited version in academic articles.  The editor’s notes state that Travels was reproduced “with practically the same exactness as if it were the 1791 edition,” even indicating the original pagination (vii).  I have confirmed this after reviewing a microfilm copy of the 1791 version and comparing the two.




Secondary Sources Used to Formulate My Claim:


Adams, Charles H. “Reading Ecologically: Language and Play in Bartram's Travels.” The Southern Quarterly: A Journal of the Arts in the South 32.4 (1994): 65-74. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 14 June 2011.


In this journal article, Adams demonstrates how with an ecological lens Bartram’s metaphorical language, along with other devices, function as a way for him to explain the interrelationships and diversity that he observes in nonhuman nature (67-69).  Adams proposes that Bartram’s anthropocentric metaphors—such as a laughing trout—work to illustrate the interrelatedness of humans and animals and remind his readers “to find [their] reflection in nature” because nature is essential to humans (73).  I agree with Adams, and plan to use his article to support my claim that the anthropocentric metaphors in Travels are significant because they express Bartram’s theory about human and nonhuman nature.  I will suggest that in addition to reading his anthropocentric figures ecologically, reading them with an ecofeminist paradigm yields the additional insight into the metaphors—that they also express Bartram’s opposition to a conception of the man/nature hierarchy as expressed in patriarchal Enlightenment ideology.




Magee, Judith. The Art and Science of William Bartram. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State UP, 2007. Print.


This book provides me with information essential to understanding the context of Bartram’s views of nature including an explanation of his non-traditional Quaker background, the Enlightenment ideas that he would have been exposed to, and how his philosophy regarding nonhuman nature differed from the Chain of Being theory, which espoused a hierarchical relationship of organisms (151).  Magee states that Bartram related animals and plants to humans in order to reduce the “gradation” of separation expressed in the Chain of Being theory.  However, I claim that by applying an ecofeminist lens to examine the anthropocentric figures it becomes evident that Bartram used them to oppose the patriarchal ideology of the Enlightenment.  I purpose a more confident stance than Magee, stating that scholars can now understand Bartram’s view of nature as not just “more egalitarian than the standard hierarchical structure” but as a heterarchical relationship between human and nonhuman nature (151).




Murphy, Patrick D. Literature, Nature, and Other: Ecofeminist Critiques. Albany: State U of New York P, 1995. Print.


This book provides me with my ecofeminist theoretical foundation which I will apply to Bartram’s Travels to prove that his use of anthropocentric metaphors work to oppose patriarchal ideology; for example, I will use Murphy’s concept of “anotherness” to examine the manner in which Bartram raises the nonhuman to a status that is equal with humans through his metaphors, ultimately illustrating that he acknowledges the interdependence of all life, which is contrary to the dominant Enlightenment beliefs of his time.    




Ode-Schneider, Laurel.  “Chapter Three: ‘The Dignity of Human Nature’ William Bartram and the Great Chain of Being.” Introduction. William Bartram, the Search for Nature's Design: Selected Art, Letters, and Unpublished Writings. Eds. Thomas Hallock, Nancy E. Hoffmann, and Joel T. Fry. Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 2010. 340-46. Print. 


I formulated my thesis in opposition to an idea presented in this book chapter introduction.  Ode-Schneider analyzes Bartram’s views on the relationship between human and nonhuman nature as presented in two previously unpublished letters.  She finds that Bartram’s anthropocentric figures in these letters are used to reverse the human/animal hierarchy in order to illustrate its unbalanced nature, thereby exposing the false ideology.  Ode-Schneider remarks that the anthropocentric figures found in Travels are used “merely as a lighthearted troupe” (341).


I disagree with Ode-Schneider that the anthropocentric figures in Travels are insignificant; I find that when examined with an ecofeminist lens, they reveal Bartram’s recognition of (an)other in nature, human and nonhuman interdependence, and the necessity for diversity instead of domination.  Bartram’s expression of these philosophical beliefs through his anthropocentric figures proves that they are not merely “whimsical,” but that they also function to reject Enlightenment patriarchal ideology, which claims nonhuman nature is inferior to man, should be divided into static categories and classifications, and valued as a commodity for man to dominate and use.




Other Sources Consulted: 


Arner, Robert D. “Pastoral Patterns in William Bartram's Travels.” Tennessee Studies in Literature 18 (1973): 133-145. Print.


Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge: Belknap P, 1995. Print.


Cox, John D. “Representing America: The American as Traveler in the Work of J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur and William Bartram.” Traveling South: Travel Narratives and the Construction of American Identity. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2005. 19-62. Print.


Hallock, Thomas. “On the Boarders of a New World: William Bartram’s Travels.” From the Fallen tree: Frontier Narratives, Environmental Politics, and the Roots of a National Pastoral, 1749-1826. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2003. 149-173. Print. 


Kolodny, Annette. The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1975. Print.


Kornegay, Burt. “Nature, Man, and God.” Kathryn E. Holland Braund, and Charlotte M. Porter, eds. Fields of Vision: Essays on the Travels of William Bartram. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2010. 81-90. Print.


Ralston, Ramona. “Signs of Science and the Sublime in Bartram’s Travels: Subverting the Colonialist Agenda.” Semiotics 1998. 290-298. New York: Lang, 1999. Print.


Schiebinger, Londa L., and Claudia Swan. Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2005. Print.


Slaughter, Thomas P., ed.  Travels and Other Writings. By William Bartram. 1791.  New York: Literary Classics US, 1996. Print.


Terrie, Philip G. “Tempests & Alligators: The Ambiguous Wilderness of William Bartram.” North Dakota Quarterly 59.2 (1991): 17-32. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 12 June 2011.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Preliminary Bibliography

[Jay Jay]


My primary source:
Knight, Sarah Kemble.  “The Journal of Madam Knight.”  Journeys in New Worlds: Early American Women’s Narratives.  Ed. William L. Andrews.  Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1990.  85-116.  Print.

Secondary sources that can provide a framework for my project:
Fenimore Cooper, Susan.  Essays on Nature and Landscape.  Eds. Rochelle Johnson and Daniel Patterson.  Athens: U of Georgia P, 2002.  Print.

Milne, Anne.  “Lactilla Tends her Fav’rite Cow”: Ecocritical Readings of Animals and Women in Eighteenth-Century British Labouring-Class Women’s Poetry.  Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 2008.  Print.

My secondary sources:
Bush, Jr., Sargent.  “Introduction: The Journal of Madam Knight.”  Journeys in New Worlds: Early American Women’s Narratives.  Ed. William L. Andrews.  Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1990.  67-83.  Print.

Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle.  “The New England Frontier and the Picaresque in Sarah Kemble Knight's Journal.”  Early American Literature and Culture: Essays Honoring Harrison T. Meserole.  Eds. Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola and J.A. Leo Lemay.  122-31.  Newark: U of Delaware P, 1992.  Print.

Gaard, Greta.  “Strategies for a Cross-Cultural Ecofeminist Ethics: Interrogating Tradition, Preserving Nature.”  New Essays in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism.  Ed. Glynis Carr.  Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 2000.  82-101.  Print.

Gifford, Terry.  “Post-Pastoral as a Tool for Ecocriticism.”  Pastoral and the Humanities: Arcadia Re-Inscribed.  Eds. Mathilde Skoie and Sonia Bjørnstad Velázquez.  Exeter: Bristol Phoenix, 2006.  14-24.  Print.

Gifford, Terry.  “Recent Critiques of Ecocriticism.”  New Formations: A Journal of Culture/Theory/Politics. 64 (2008): 15-24. MLA International Bibliography.  Web.  23 June 2011.

Grewe-Volpp, Christa.  “Nature ‘Out There’ and as ‘A Social Player’: Some Basic Consequences for a Literary Ecocritical Analysis.”  Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies: Transatlantic Conversations on Ecocriticism.  Eds. Catrin Gersdorf and Sylvia Mayer.  Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006.  71-86.  Print.

Hitt, Christopher.  “Ecocriticism and the Long Eighteenth Century.”  College Literature.  31.3 (2004): 123-47.  MLA International Bibliography.  Web.  23 June 2011.

Howarth, William.  “Ego or Eco Criticism? Looking for Common Ground.”  Reading the Earth: New Directions in the Study of Literature and Environment.  Eds. Michael P. Branch, Rochelle Johnson, Daniel Patterson, and Scott Slovic.  Moscow: U of Idaho P, 1998.  3-8.  Print.

Johnson, Rochelle, and Daniel Patterson.  “Writing about Nature in Early America: From Discovery to 1850.”  Literature of Nature: An International Sourcebook.  Ed. Patrick D. Murphy.  Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998.  3-12. Print.

Kratzke, Peter.  “Sarah Kemble Knight's Polemical Landscape.”  CEA Critic: An Official Journal of the College English Association.  65.3 (2003): 43-9.  MLA International Bibliography.  Web.  6 July 2011.

Lindholdt, Paul.  “Early American Natural Histories.”  Literature of Nature: An International Sourcebook.  Ed. Patrick D. Murphy.  Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998.  13-17. Print.

Margolies, Alan.  “The Editing and Publication of The Journal of Madam Knight.”  Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America.  58 (1964): 25-32.  MLA International Bibliography. Web.  6 July 2011.

Myer Valenti, JoAnn.  “North American Women in the Wilderness.”  Literature of Nature: An International Sourcebook.  Ed. Patrick D. Murphy.  Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998.  126-29. Print.

Philippon, Daniel J.  “Is Early American Environmental Writing Sustainable? A Response to Timothy Sweet.”  Early American Literature.  45.2 (2010): 417-23.  MLA International Bibliography.  Web.  23 June 2011.

Phillips, Dana.  “Ecocriticism, Literary Theory, and the Truth of Ecology.” New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation. 30.3 (1999): 577-602.  MLA International Bibliography.  Web.  23 June 2011.

Rawlinson, Jo.  “Ecocriticism: An Annotated Bibliography.”  The Environmental Tradition in English Literature.  Ed. John Parham.  211-25.  Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002.  Print.

Stephens, Robert O.  “The Odyssey of Sarah Kemble Knight.”  College Language Association Journal.  7 (1964): 247-255.  MLA International Bibliography.  Web.  6 July 2011.

Sweet, Timothy.  “Projecting Early American Environmental Writing.”  Early American Literature.  45.2 (2010): 403-16.  MLA International Bibliography.  Web.  23 June 2011.

Todd Smith, Eric.  “Dropping the Subject: Reflections on the Motives for an Ecological Criticism.”  Reading the Earth: New Directions in the Study of Literature and Environment.  Eds. Michael P. Branch, Rochelle Johnson, Daniel Patterson, and Scott Slovic.  Moscow: U of Idaho P, 1998.  29-39.  Print.

Weekly Reading Response #7

[Jay Jay]

Murphy, Patrick D.  Literature, Nature, and Other: Ecofeminist Critiques.  Albany: State U of New York P, 1995.  Print.

Chapters Read:

  • “Let the Survivors of Contact Speak: In the Canon and in the Classroom”
  • “The Present Is to Nature as the Past Is to Culture as the Future Is to Agency”
  • “Simply Uncontrollable, Or Steaming Open the Envelope of Ideology”


I sincerely enjoyed reading the chapter “Let the Survivors of Contact Speak: In the Canon and in the Classroom” because of its call to action: include rather than exclude Native American voices in both the nature writing canon and the American literature canon, especially women Native American writers.  This call to action fits in perfectly with the transformation aspect of ecofeminism, as inclusion of Native American women’s voices could transform the canon in beneficial ways.  In an earlier chapter, Murphy examined the failure of the anthology The Norton Book of Nature Writing (1990) to capture a diversity of writers.  This chapter extends that criticism to two other anthologies: On Nature (1987) and This Incomperable Lande (1991), and also includes The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology (1991).  I want to include a quote from Murphy that I found exhilarating:

The effect of The Idea of Wilderness and This Incomperable Lande is to create the impression that Indians have nothing to say on their own, except in ‘mythic narratives,’ and that they are saying and writing nothing today, literary or otherwise, and this I would label literary genocide. (127)

Exciting, right?  I thought so, because it’s true.  To systematically silence, degrade, and exclude an entire culture simply because the academy and its editors don’t agree with the culture’s approach to writing, style, genres, etc. is inexcusable.  It’s wrong, and frankly, it’s nausea inducing.  I expect better from the academy, and so should you all.

Murphy mentions The Native American Authors Distribution Project, which is available online here: nativeauthors.com.  On the front page of their site is an important idea: “Don’t just learn about Native Americans, learn from them!”  I have to admit I’ve been exposed to very little Native American poetry, fiction, non-fiction, etc. in the classroom as an undergraduate, but my graduate experience has been more positive.  Still, there is room for improvement.


Listening to the Nonhuman Voices

This morning, as I mix my used coffee grounds into the soil of my potted plants to serve as a fertilizer,I find that I am more conscience of my behavior in relation to the nonhuman world after thinking about this week’s reading.


Gary inspecting the broccolli on the porch.


 As I write this post, I am on my porch watching my cat, Gary, go through his morning ritual of inspecting the plants in my small vegetable garden.  He sniffs them, visually inspects each plant, listens to the bugs in the soil, and then chooses one to sit behind and watch the events in parking lot unfold.  His ears perk when birds fly overhead calling to each other, when the bullfrogs croak to announce the sunset, and when people walk by telling their dogs to “go potty”.  I realize that we can all learn from him, because Gary listens when “another” species speaks. 


Baby Basil that grew on its own amongst the other Basil plants.
I realize that even my small garden has spoken to me. The basil plants certainly enjoy the spot I have placed them because they have produced tiny offspring (a personal gardening victory), which I will soon move to their own pot. The broccoli plants emit a distinct sweet smell, informing me that they will flower; and the jalapeno plant lets me know that it enjoys the hot weather by producing equally “hot” peppers. Finally, the baby spiders now living on the heads of broccoli seem to be doing quite well eating the black flies and tiny white bugs that were munching on the broccoli. I am thankful for the spiders, and will relocate some of them to my habanero plant because aphids have moved into its leaves.  
As I imagine that the parking lot underneath my balcony is actually a community garden where I could plant the potted plants on my porch, I really do see how important it is to abandon the patriarchal ideology of domination over nature, and embrace a heterarchical view of nature and a bioregional cooperation with nature that allows local sustainability.  Because humans and nonhumans are all connected, I now understand that every step in the direction of volitional interdependence will have positive effects.  
~Blake and Gary =^.^=       

Weekly Reading Response #7 (Part 2): The Pieces Fall into Place

This week Jay Jay and I finished reading:

 Murphy, Patrick D. Literature, Nature, and Other: Ecofeminist Critiques. Albany: State U of New York P, 1995. Print.   
This book in particular has helped me conceptualize ecofeminism and understand how the theory opposes the current patriarchal ideology in favor of a heterarchical view of the world where all humans and nonhumans are acknowledged and treated respectfully according to their interdependent state.  
In the chapter “Let the Survivors of Contact Speak: in the Canon and in the Classroom,” Murphy declares that trying to codify and define nature writing leaves out women and minority voices (125).  This is especially unfortunate because Native American women writers, who are left out because they do not “fit” the category of nature writing, are a valuable resource  because they have experienced living outside of the current patriarchal structures (131-33).  Studying Native American women writers will help contemporary students see themselves as immigrants to America, and therefore, help them recognize the necessity to learn about how to live in/with the environment from the indigenous inhabitants (133).

“The Present is to nature as the Past is to Culture as the Future is to Agency”

This chapter explains how the American ideal of independence is merely a false construct that denies the actual interconnectedness of the human and nonhuman (143).  We ignore the natural past (changing environments, species, evolution) and pretend that nature is static and that culture is evolving toward some “advanced” state (144-45).  With Enlightenment came the firm belief in the mind/body dichotomy, which allowed nature to be used as a commodity.  Currently, we accept that the mind and body are separate, which allows us to be indifferent to the destruction of the physical world (145). 
This passage in particular helped me understand how people could sit by passively as farmers in Florida poured chemical rich fertilizer onto the land and not expect/or care about the environmental consequences.  In a (I believe it was Discovery Channel) special I saw how a decade of sludge farming changed the composition of the waters in one of Florida’s largest lakes, which resulted in scores of brain-damaged alligators that could not maintain their balance in the water and ultimately drowned.  Once the researchers discovered the cause of the gators’ deaths, they began a project to strip the harmful chemicals from the soil and the gators eventually stopped drowning.  The false belief that the mind is separate from the physical seems to partly explain why the farmers were alright with putting dangerous chemicals in the soil: in their minds it was the way to increase crops and profit; they must not have worried about the effects in the physical world. 

As a solution to the current human alienation from the nonhuman world, Murphy purposes “a human culture that functions on the basis of harmonizing human and nonhuman interaction, rather than on the basis of maximizing human action on the nonhuman” (150).  He describes the necessity of volitional interdependence, of seeing how the elements of our own bioregions need each other, and how all of our actions have consequences that will be felt one way or another because of the inherent interdependence of the web of all life (151).  He provides his definition of (an)otherness in relation to otherness, that I would like to quote:

“Anotherness proceeds from a heterarchical sense of difference, recognizing that we are not ever only one for ourselves but are also always another for others (in the U.S. being one for oneself remains an ideal for men, while being another for others, with no regard for self, remains the operative definition for mother).  Otherness isolated from anotherness  suppresses knowledge of the ecological processes of interdependency—the ways in which humans and other entities survive, change, and learn by continuously mutually influencing each other—and denies any ethics of reciprocity” (152).

Acknowledging anotherness and volitional interdependence are essential to the success of bioregional communities that foster human acceptance, education, and living with the local natural diversity in a relationship of “sustainable cohabitation” (155).    

 “Simply Uncontrollable, Or Steaming Open the Envelope of Ideology”

Murphy explains that destruction such as the colonization of the Americas and eradication of Native American civilizations was a product of ideology, which sold these events as fostering order.  He points out that similar ideology is at work today, “in altered but accelerated forms” (157).  After describing various women activists who fight against patriarchal domination to ensure the respect of women and nature, he says that men should learn to listen to women’s voices because their cause is one that concerns everyone because “as women recover the wilderness within” they will also “reinvent the nature of female-male relationships and the nature of human participation on the world” (159-160). 

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Weekly Reading Response #7 (Part 1: Meditating on Interanimation)

Even though my response ran long last week, I still left out some important points from the reading that I wanted to record to clarify my understanding of ecofeminist theory.

In the chapter “Reconceiving the Relations Women and Nature, Nature and Culture,” Patrick D. Murphy explains how the ecologists’ and feminists’ causes are linked because they are both opposed to the same dominant patriarchal ideology (48).  He also states that one of the basic tenets of ecofeminism is to understand that seeing other humans and nonhumans as “non-alien” is vital to “perceiving and conceptualizing of interanimation, the mutual co-creation of selves and others” (48-50).  The danger of viewing women and nature as below men in a hierarchal relationship is that it denies the mutually interdependent relationship between all human and nonhumans that is essential for our survival (50).

In the next chapter, “Sex-typing the Planet: Gaia Imagery and the Problem of Subverting Patriarchy,” Murphy examines whether or not Gaia imagery reinforces the patriarchal ideology that various philosophers want to subvert (59).  Murphy concludes that Gaia imagery “does the planet no good.  Sex-typing a gender-free entity invokes and reinscribes not a natural, heterarchical duality of bio-gender whose identity through integration “completes one” but a cultural dualism that hierarchically divides” (67). 

This chapter was of particular interest to me because in the text I am exploring for my project the author, William Bartram, does not sex-type the entire planet but instead imagines both male and female metaphors for various nonhuman life forms.  Though Bartram’s metaphors reinforce an anthropocentric world view—by imagining nature in human terms—he uses them in a manner that recognizes a kinship with and an interdependence between human and nonhuman nature.  His variety of metaphors also points to his recognition of the need for bio-diversity.  
I believe the manner in which he describes nature, as different men and women, was to stress that he sees nonhuman forms as having an interanimation that manifests differently but is equal to that of humans.  Essentially, the metaphors seem to raise non-human nature so that it is equal with humans.  I am also currently looking into the Quaker relationships between men and women, which I believe is more heterarchical than hierarchal.  If this is true, then I will have a more solid foundation to claim that the metaphors present in Bartram’s text are not meant to reinforce the man/nature hierarchy but are actually designed to explain the equal importance of humans and nonhumans. 
Basically, if Bartram viewed women and men as equal and women and nature as equal, then these metaphors do not function in a reductive fashion.  However, this still does not solve the problem that the metaphors are anthropocentric in nature, but this does not prevent the text from expressing a heterarchical relationship between humans and non-humans, which would mean that it contains what today we would consider ecofeminist characteristics. 

Because my initial project proposal was too ambitious, I have narrowed my focus down to discuss how Bartram’s anthropocentric metaphors function in the text.  I believe that with Bartram’s introduction, where he describes his nature philosophy by saying that nature and man are equally important because they are interdependent, I can demonstrate that the metaphors are not completely detrimental (in the way that the woman-as-land, or Gaia as earth metaphors harm the perception of women and nature) but that the metaphors actually articulate an interanimation in nature and man because they are employed to show that all beings are enlivened with the same spark and have the same origin.    

On a side note, I have found that the technique of meditating by observing nonhuman beings (discussed in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism) and trying to imagine the way they see the world is relaxing.  I have yet to have any epiphanies staring into the eyes of my large black cat but it is relaxing to imagine communicating without human words.  I also found that the lizards on the sidewalk outside of my apartment take notice when I walk by and the bold ones even rise up on their legs and execute swift push-up like movements as if to tell me that this is their home.

Still pondering interanimation . . .

~Blake