Gendered Ecologies New Materialist Interpretations of Women Writers in the Long Nineteenth Century (Clemson University Press, 2020) Edited by Dewey W. Hall and Jillmarie Murphy

This looks like a great collection. Unfortunately, its only in $120 hardback right now.

Gendered Ecologies: New Materialist Interpretations of Women Writers in the Long Nineteenth Century considers the value of interrelationships that exist among human, nonhuman species, and inanimate objects as part of the environment, and features observations by women writers as recorded in nature diaries, poetry, bildungsroman, sensational fiction, philosophical fiction, and folklore. In addition, the edition aims to present a case for transnational women writers who have been involved in participating in the discourse of natural philosophy from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries. The collection engages with current paradigms of thought influencing the field of ecocriticism and, more specifically, ecofeminism. Various theories are featured, informing interpretation of literary and non-literary material, which include Anthropocene feminism, feminist geography, neo-materialism, object-oriented ontology, panarchy, and trans-corporeality. In particular, neo-materialism and trans-corporeality are guiding principles of the collection, providing theoretical coherence. Neo-materialism becomes a means by which to examine literary and non-literary content by women writers with attention to the materiality of objects as the aim of inquiry. Regarding trans-corporeality, contributors provide evidence of the interrelations between the body-as-matter and animate beings along with inanimate entities. Together, neo-materialism and trans-corporeality drive the edition, as contributors contemplate the significance of interactions among human, nonhuman, organic, and inanimate objects.

• Seeks to reconsider ecofeminism as a discursive field that is rooted in ecology as derived from natural history and natural philosophy by emphasizing the materiality of nature, which has been anthropomorphized as well as organized through ecosystems and biomes as part of the biosphere

• Seeks to move beyond the binaries, perhaps false dichotomies, by delving into the intersections, interstices (i.e., intervening space, OED), and cross-currents.

• Features essays that theorize about the term ecofeminism along a different set of lines involving the transhistorical, transatlantic, and especially trans-corporeal – a term coined by Stacy Alaimo

• Aims to focus on the significance of matter often entangled in a network of relationships – whether human-to-human, human-to-nonhuman, human-to-inanimate objects, etc. – inter- and intra-relating to each other, even at a quantum level

• Examines the contributions of nineteenth-century women writers observing, studying, and reasoning about the value of matter – the interrelatedness between subjects and objects – as recorded in their literary and non-literary discourses