For this seminar Teresa Pepe will lead a discussion about some key theoretical concepts within Environmental Humanities and ecocritical literature, namely ‘crisis’, ‘resistance’ and ‘care’. The discussion will be based on two texts: the first is the introduction to Serenella Iovino’s book: Ecocriticism and Italy. Ecology, Resistance, and Liberation (2016), in which the author presents her approach and methodology inspired by material ecocriticism. The second is Tom van Dooren’s article on “Care” for the Living Lexicon of Environmental Humanities (2014).
How can literary texts help us to understand ecological struggles? Can they offer a form of resistance? How is care conceptualized in response to an “ecological crisis”?
Pepe will start the discussion by showing how she applies these concepts in her analysis of Arabic ecocritical literature, and there will be plenty of time to discuss the relevance of these theories for the Eco-Emotions project.
If you want to read more about material ecocriticism as a method, see Iovino and Opperman’s introduction to their book Material Ecocriticism (2016); if you want to know more about Puig de La Bellacasa’s take on ‘care’, see the introduction to her book Matters of Care Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds (2017).