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A collection of research and thought fragments on the topic of literature and environment and ecocriticism more broadly.

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The Hunger Games: An Ecocritical Reading

The Hunger Games : An Ecocritical Reading by Janice Bland and Anne Strotmann ABSTRACT: This paper examines how a popular series like Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy can motivate students to improve their language and literacy proficiency by extensive reading. Moving on from there, we argue a thoughtful and collaborative deep reading of The Hunger Games can broaden as well as change perspectives; for without being openly didactic, the series is sufficiently multilayered to provide meaningful booktalk in the classroom and to trigger engaged debate. Recognising that the degradation of non-human nature through human action has become a major theme in education, we argue that the intentionally interdisciplinary approach of ecocriticism towards a literary text can be a contribution to global issues education in the English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. We offer an ecocritical examination of The Hunger Games, not as an i...
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The New Weird: Anthropocene Monsters

Brave New Weird: Anthropocene Monsters in Jeff VanderMeer's The Southern Reach by Gry Ulstein ABSTRACT: This paper investigates and compares language and imagery used by contemporary ecocritics in order to argue that the Anthropocene discourse contains significant parallels to cosmic horror discourse and (new) weird literature. While monsters from the traditional, Lovecraftian weird lend themselves well to Anthropocene allegory due to the coinciding fear affect in both discourses, the new weird genre experiments with ways to move beyond cosmic fear, thereby reimagining the human position in the context of the Anthropocene. Jeff VanderMeer’s trilogy The Southern Reach (2014) presents an alien system of assimilation and ecological mutation into which the characters are launched. It does this in a manner that brings into question human hierarchical coexistence with nonhumans while also exposing the ineffectiveness of current existential norms. This paper argues that new...
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Genetic Engineering: Atwood's Oryx and Crake

Genetic Engineering in the Age of Anthropocene/Capitalocene and Beyond: An Ecocritical Study of Oryx and Crake by Samrat Laskar ABSTRACT: Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (2003), the first novel in the MaddAddam series, is a speculative fiction which presents a dystopian future where few humans survive in a world dominated by genetically engineered posthumans and hybrid animals. This post-pandemic world is presented to us through the experience of one human survivor, Jimmy/Snowman. Jimmy used to be the friend of Crake, the scientist, who planned the pandemic and wiped out almost all of human race. The present paper discusses the practices of genetic engineering funded by corporate houses and tries to place it in the context of Anthropocene and its associated concept Capitalocene. In the pre-pandemic world, experiments in genetics were made with obvious anthropocentric goals combined with the push for profit by the corporate houses. Crake, a kind of idealist scientist, at...
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