Scarecrow Press
Pages: 248
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-0-8108-9197-5 • Hardback • July 2013 • $128.00 • (£98.00)
978-0-8108-9198-2 • eBook • July 2013 • $121.50 • (£94.00)
Karen E. Waldron is Lisa Stewart Professor of Literature and Women’s Studies at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine. She has published articles on multiple American writers, ranging from William Faulkner to Leslie Marmon Silko.
Robert Friedman teaches at the University of Washington Tacoma, where he is director of the Institute of Technology. He is the author of Collaborative Learning Systems: A Case Study (2008) and Hawthorne's Romances: Social Drama and the Metaphor of Geometry (2000).
Editors Karen E. Waldron and Rob Friedman have brought together several authors in this collection of essays on ecocriticism, a rapidly growing field of literary studies. The book is divided into three parts. In part 1, 'Ecological Identities,' three chapters examine American authors and works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Gary Snyder, Sherman Alexie, Simon Ortiz, and Kimberly Blaeser. Part 2, 'Ecological Cityscapes,' examines urban semiotics and geography of two works: Walter Mosley’s Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned and Tei Yamashita’s The Tropic of Orange. In Part 3, 'Ecological Rhetoric,' examines texts such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Virgil’s Georgics, as the authors explore the language and linguistic strategies used to discuss the environment and the cultural history in which it exists. There is an extensive works cited list at the back as well as information about the contributors to this volume. The chapters are well written and include a notes section at the end. This reviewer recommends this title for students interested in ecocriticism in literary studies, particularly for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students who are already well versed in the authors and texts discussed.
— American Reference Books Annual