Ecocriticism and the Future of Southern Studies: (Southern Literary Studies)

As the planet faces ever-worsening disruptions to global ecosystems, carbon and chemical emissions, depletions of the ozone layer, the loss of biodiversity, rising sea levels, air toxification, and worsening floods and droughts, scholars across academia must examine the cultural effects of this increasingly postnatural world. That task proves especially vital for southern studies, given how often the U.S. South serves as a site for large-scale damming initiatives like the TVA, disasters on the scale of Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon spill, and the extraction of coal, oil, and natural gas. Ecocriticism and the Future of Southern Studies is the first book-length collection of scholarship that applies interdisciplinary environmental humanities research to cultural analyses of the U.S. South. Sixteen essays examine novels, nature writing, films, television, and music that address a broad range of ecological topics related to the region, including climate change, manmade and natural environments, the petroleum industry, food cultures, waterways, natural and human-induced disasters, waste management, and the Anthropocene. Edited by Zackary Vernon, this volume demonstrates how the greening of southern studies, in tandem with the southernization of environmental studies, can catalyze alternative ways of understanding the connections between regional and global cultures and landscapes. By addressing ecological issues central to life throughout the South, Ecocriticism and the Future of Southern Studies considers the confluence between region and environment, while also illustrating the growing need to see environmental issues as matters of social justice.

About the Author :
Zackary Vernon is assistant professor of English at Appalachian State University and the coeditor of Summoning the Dead: Essays on Ron Rash. Jay Watson is the Howry Professor of Faulkner Studies at the University of Mississippi, where he directs the annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference. He is the author of several books, including Reading for the Body: The Recalcitrant Materiality of Southern Fiction, 1893-1985.

Review :
Zackary Vernon has assembled an insightful collection of essays written at the intersection of environmental studies and literary criticism, examining human interaction with the natural world, keenly aware of a southern environmental precariousness, and delivered with a sense of justified urgency. An important step in the direction of the greening of southern studies.--Fred Hobson, Lineberger Distinguished Professor in the Humanities Emeritus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Ecocriticism and the Future of Southern Studies is an edict nailed to the door of southern studies that challenges the field to embrace manmade environmental issues that threaten our region. In his eloquent introduction, Zackary Vernon details the urgency of this moment, and sixteen essays apply the field of environmental studies to southern coal and oil 'hazardscapes, ' roads, farms, and waterways with disturbing power. Together, their voices open the door for the greening of southern studies as they connect the field with environmental studies and reveal a powerful new intellectual terrain. Ecocriticism and the Future of Southern Studies is a landmark study that is essential reading for all who care about the American South.--William Ferris, author of The South in Color: A Visual Journal