Table Of ContentTHE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO THE
ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES
The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities provides a comprehensive,
transnational, and interdisciplinary map to the field, offering a broad overview of its found-
ing principles while providing insight into exciting new directions for future scholarship.
Articulating the significance of humanistic perspectives for our collective social engagement
with ecological crises, the volume explores the potential of the environmental humanities
for organizing humanistic research, opening up new forms of interdisciplinarity, and shaping
public debate and policies on environmental issues.
Parts cover:
• The Anthropocene and the domestication of Earth
• Posthumanism and multispecies communities
• Inequality and environmental justice
• Decline and resilience: environmental narratives, history, and memory
• Environmental arts, media, and technologies
• The state of the environmental humanities
The first of its kind, this Companion covers essential issues and themes, necessarily crossing
disciplines within the humanities and with the social and natural sciences. Exploring how
the environmental humanities contribute to policy and action concerning some of the key
intellectual, social, and environmental challenges of our times, the chapters offer an ideal
guide to this rapidly developing field.
Ursula K. Heise is the Marcia H. Howard Chair in Literary Studies at the Department
of English and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of
California, Los Angeles, USA.
Jon Christensen is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Institute of the Environment and
Sustainability, the Department of History, and the Center for Digital Humanities at the
University of California, Los Angeles, USA.
Michelle Niemann is an independent scholar, writing consultant, and editor, and was
a Postdoctoral Fellow in Environmental Humanities and English at the University of
California, Los Angeles, USA from 2014 to 2016.
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The Routledge Companion to World Literature
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THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION
TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL
HUMANITIES
Edited by
Ursula K. Heise, Jon Christensen,
and Michelle Niemann
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 selection and editorial matter Ursula K. Heise, Jon Christensen, and
Michelle Niemann; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Ursula K. Heise, Jon Christensen, and Michelle Niemann to be
identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Heise, Ursula K., editor. | Christensen, Jon (Environmental histsorian),
editor. | Niemann, Michelle, editor.
Title: The Routledge companion to the environmental humanities / edited by
Ursula K. Heise, Jon Christensen, and Michelle Niemann.
Other titles: Companion to the environmental humanities
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2016. | Includes
bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016021347| ISBN 9781138786745 (hardback: alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781317660194 (web pdf) | ISBN 9781317660187 (epub) |
ISBN 9781317660170 (mobipocket/kindle)
Subjects: LCSH: Environmental sciences—Social aspects. | Science and the
humanities. | Human ecology. | Nature—Affect of human beings on.
Classification: LCC GE105 .R68 2016 | DDC 304.2—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016021347
ISBN: 978-1-138-78674-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-76635-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Goudy Std
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
CONTENTS
List of illustrations x
List of contributors xii
Acknowledgments xvi
Introduction: planet, species, justice—and the stories
we tell about them 1
URSULA K. HEISE
PART I
The Anthropocene and the domestication of Earth 11
1 The Anthropocene: love it or leave it 13
DALE JAMIESON
2 Domestication, domesticated landscapes, and tropical natures 21
SUSANNA B. HECHT
3 “They carry life in their hair”: domestication and
the African diaspora 35
JUDITH A. CARNEY
4 Domestication in a post-industrial world 46
LIBBY ROBIN
5 Meals in the age of toxic environments 56
YUKI MASAMI
6 Hybrid aversion: wolves, dogs, and the humans who love
to keep them apart 64
EMMA MARRIS
v
CONTENTS
7 Techno-conservation in the Anthropocene: what does it mean
to save a species? 72
RONALD SANDLER
8 Coloring climates: imagining a geoengineered world 82
BRONISLAW SZERSZYNSKI
9 Utopia’s afterlife in the Anthropocene 91
ANAHID NERSESSIAN
PART II
Posthumanism and multispecies communities 101
10 Renaissance selfhood and Shakespeare’s comedy
of the commons 103
ROBERT N. WATSON
11 Multispecies epidemiology and the viral subject 112
GENESE MARIE SODIKOFF
12 Encountering a more-than-human world: ethos and
the arts of witness 120
DEBORAH BIRD ROSE AND THOM VAN DOOREN
13 Loving the native: invasive species and the cultural politics
of flourishing 129
JESSICA R. CATTELINO
14 Artifacts and habitats 138
DOLLY JØRGENSEN
15 Interspecies diplomacy in Anthropocenic waters: performing
an ocean-oriented ontology 144
UNA CHAUDHURI
16 The Anthropocene at sea: temporality, paradox, compression 153
STACY ALAIMO
vi
CONTENTS
PART III
Inequality and environmental justice 163
17 Turning over a new leaf: Fanonian humanism and
environmental justice 165
JENNIFER WENZEL
18 Action-research and environmental justice: lessons
from Guatemala’s Chixoy Dam 174
BARBARA ROSE JOHNSTON
19 Farming as speculative activity: the ecological basis of farmers’
suicides in India 185
AKHIL GUPTA
20 Ecological security for whom? The politics of flood alleviation
and urban environmental justice in Jakarta, Indonesia 194
HELGA LEITNER, EMMA COLVEN,
AND ERIC SHEPPARD
21 Our ancestors’ dystopia now: indigenous conservation and
the Anthropocene 206
KYLE POWYS WHYTE
22 Collected things with names like Mother Corn: Native
North American speculative fiction and film 216
JONI ADAMSON
23 The stone guests: Buen Vivir and popular environmentalisms
in the Andes and Amazonia 227
JORGE MARCONE
PART IV
Decline and resilience: environmental narratives, history, and memory 237
24 Play it again, Sam: decline and finishing in environmental narratives 239
RICHARD WHITE
vii
CONTENTS
25 Hubris and humility in environmental thought 247
MICHELLE NIEMANN
26 Losing primeval forests: degradation narratives in South Asia 258
KATHLEEN D. MORRISON
27 Multidirectional eco-memory in an era of extinction: colonial
whaling and indigenous dispossession in Kim Scott’s
That Deadman Dance 268
ROSANNE KENNEDY
28 The Caribbean’s agonizing seashores: tourism resorts, art,
and the future of the region’s coastlines 278
LIZABETH PARAVISINI-GEBERT
29 Bear down: resilience and multispecies ethology 289
BRETT BUCHANAN
PART V
Environmental arts, media, and technologies 299
30 Contemporary environmental art 301
JAMES NISBET
31 Slow food, low tech: environmental narratives of agribusiness
and its alternatives 313
ALLISON CARRUTH
32 Mattress story: on thing power, waste management rhetoric,
and Francisco de Pájaro’s trash art 323
MAITE ZUBIAURRE
33 Touching the senses: environments and technologies at the movies 337
ALEXA WEIK VON MOSSNER
34 Climate, design, and the status of the human: obstacles and
opportunities for architectural scholarship in the
environmental humanities 346
DANIEL A. BARBER
viii
CONTENTS
35 Climate visualizations: making data experiential 358
HEATHER HOUSER
36 Digital? Environmental: Humanities 369
STÉFAN SINCLAIR AND STEPHANIE POSTHUMUS
37 From The Xenotext 379
CHRISTIAN BÖK
PART VI
The state of the environmental humanities 401
38 The body and environmental history in the Anthropocene 403
LINDA NASH
39 Material ecocriticism and the petro-text 414
HEATHER I. SULLIVAN
40 Fossil freedoms: the politics of emancipation and the end of oil 424
HANNES BERGTHALLER
41 Scaling the planetary humanities: environmental globalization
and the Arctic 433
SVERKER SÖRLIN
42 Some “F” words for the environmental humanities: feralities,
feminisms, futurities 443
CATRIONA SANDILANDS
43 Biocities: urban ecology and the cultural imagination 452
JON CHRISTENSEN AND URSULA K. HEISE
44 Environmental humanities: notes towards a summary
for policymakers 462
GREG GARRARD
45 The humanities after the Anthropocene 473
STEPHANIE LEMENAGER
Index 482
ix
