Cities are often thought to be separate from nature, but recent
trends in ecocriticism demand that we consider them as part of the
total environment. This new collection of essays sharpens the focus
on the nature of cities by exploring the facets of an urban
ecocriticism, by reminding city dwellers of their place in
ecosystems, and by emphasizing the importance of this connection in
understanding urban life and culture. The editors--both raised in
small towns but now living in major urban areas--are especially
concerned with the sociopolitical construction of all environments,
both natural and manmade. Following an opening interview with
Andrew Ross exploring the general parameters of urban ecocriticism,
they present essays that explore urban nature writing, city parks,
urban "wilderness," ecofeminism and the city, and urban space. The
volume includes contributions on topics as wide-ranging as the
urban poetry of English writers from Donne to Gay, the manufactured
wildness of a gambling casino, and the marketing of cosmetics to
urban women by idealizing Third World "naturalness." These essays
seek to reconceive nature and its cultural representations in ways
that contribute to understanding the contemporary cityscape. They
explore the theoretical issues that arise when one attempts to
adopt and adapt an environmental perspective for analyzing urban
life. "The Nature of Cities" offers the ecological component often
missing from cultural analyses of the city and the urban
perspective often lacking in environmental approaches to
contemporary culture. By bridging the historical gap between
environmentalism, cultural studies, and urban experience, the book
makes a statement of lasting importance to the development of the
ecocritical movement. CONTENTS
Part 1--The Nature of Cities
1. Urban Ecocriticism: An Introduction, Michael Bennett & David
Teague
2. The Social Claim on Urban Ecology, Andrew Ross (interviewed by
Michael Bennett)
Part 2--Urban Nature Writing
3. London Here and Now: Walking, Streets, and Urban Environments in
English Poetry from Donne to Gay, Gary Roberts
4. "All Things Natural Are Strange": Audre Lorde, Urban Nature, and
Cultural Place, Kathleen R. Wallace
5. Inculcating Wildness: Ecocomposition, Nature Writing, and the
Regreening of the American Suburb, Terrell Dixon
Part 3--City Parks
6. Writers and Dilettantes: Central Park and the Literary Origins
of Antebellum Urban Nature, Adam W. Sweeting
7. Postindustrial Park or Bourgeois Playground? Preservation and
Urban Restructuring at Seattle's Gas Works Park, Richard
Heyman
Part 4--Urban "Wilderness"
8. Boyz in the Woods: Urban Wilderness in American Cinema, Andrew
Light
9. Central High and the Suburban Landscape: The Ecology of White
Flight, David Teague
10. Manufacturing the Ghetto: Anti-urbanism and the Spatialization
of Race, Michael Bennett
Part 5--Ecofeminism and the City
11. An Ecofeminist Perspective on the Urban Environment, Catherine
Villanueva Gardner
12. "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman": The Political Economy
of Contemporary Cosmetics Discourse, Laura L. Sullivan
Part 6--Theorizing Urban Space
13. Darwin's City, or Life Underground: Evolution, Progress, and
the Shapes of Things to Come, Joanne Gottlieb
14. Nature in the Apartment: Humans, Pets, and the Value of
Incommensurability, David R. Shumway
15. Cosmology in the Casino: Simulacra of Nature in the
Interiorized Wilderness, Michael P. Branch
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