Abstract #1

[Jay Jay]

Johnson, Rochelle and Daniel Patterson.  “Introduction.”  Essays on Nature and Landscape.  By Susan Fenimore Cooper.  Eds. Rochelle Johnson and Daniel Patterson.  Athens: U of Georgia P, 2002.  xiii-xxxii.  Print.

Susan Fenimore Cooper’s literary career spanned fifty years, covering a wide range of genres; however, most of her works represent the genre of nature writing, the most famous being Rural Hours (published in 1850).  Two repeating themes occur in her works: “the idealization of American rural life and advocacy for an environmentally sustainable human society” (xiii).  Cooper’s environmental philosophy and theory of nature writing are developed and matured throughout her fifty year-long writing career.  In Cooper’s only essay on landscape aesthetics, “the ecological health of the land” sustains a comfortable balance between the physical environment and human presence (xiv).  The rural nature writer’s value shifts during Cooper’s lifetime, and she claims “American intellectuals or artists” can better wield influence from rural settings rather than cities (xvii).  Cooper believed nature cannot be properly represented until the artist combines their knowledge with a Christian faith.  “Ostego Leaves” is published twenty-eight years after Rural Hours, and Cooper refers back to her original book as a source of environmental history; the book also functions as literary ornithology, charting the “continued decline of her region’s bird populations” (xxvii).  Despite the fact that Cooper becomes known as an amateur ornithologist, she denies having “scientific expertise,” preferring instead to operate within the “blurred boundary” between literary works and works of science (xxviii).

Rough Draft

[Jay Jay]

“So long and toilsome a Journey:” Sarah Kemble Knight’s Nonhuman and Human Encounters

[Rough Draft]

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, 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?

Literature Review

There is a small body of criticism dedicated to Knight’s journal, and I chose four articles to focus on for the purpose of this exploration.  Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola examines Knight’s relationship with the landscape through the filter of the picaresque genre.  The frontier landscape, according to Derounian-Stodola, becomes “literary, colonized, domesticated, ‘urbanized,’ dangerous, comic, practical, and amoral” (123).  Knight’s descriptions of the landscape challenge the Puritan view of the landscape, rendering Knight’s voice unorthodox.  Additionally, Knight’s landscape is not transformed by the garden metaphor found by Annette Kolodony in other women’s writings; in contrast, Knight often “urbanizes” her landscape, referring frequently to towns rather than the frontier.

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.