Seminar: Ecocriticism in East Asia
Leaders: Simon Estok, Sungkyunkwan University, and Xinmin Liu, Washington State University
Meets on the afternoon of Tuesday, June 23
Ecocritical scholarship within East Asia is thriving and is a major and growing interest to scholars outside of the area. Because that area is so vast, both geographically and demographically, there is an exciting diversity of ecocriticisms. Yet, limited by deficient skills of East Asian languages, Western ecocritics have relied on translations and have very rarely indeed read materials in their original languages; on the other hand, the great diversity of Asian ecocriticisms have all, to varying degrees, been influenced by Western (particularly American) thinking in the environmental humanities. Moreover, in response to the disconnectedness within the Asian region itself, efforts to bring isolated scholars to broader audiences have produced good results, among which is the increasing recognition that many of the concerns (thematic, theoretical, social, and so on) of East Asian ecocriticisms are radically different from those in the West. The need for more and deeper recognition of local and situated knowledges is vital, and the West needs not only to listen with good will but to hear with clear understanding some of the very important messages coming out of the East.
This seminar will explore issues that include, but not limited to, the following topical areas:
1. What are some of the problems facing East Asian ecocriticisms going forward?
2. What do people (scholars, activists and others) in the West hope to import from ecocritical work being done in Asia, and why? Alternatively, what do people in the West hope to export to ecocritical work being done in Asia, and why?
3. What do people in Asia hope to import from ecocritical work being done in the West, and why? Alternatively, what do people in Asia hope to export to ecocritical work being done in the West, and why?
4. If scholarship in ecocriticism in Asia has, as often as not, been a matter of summarizing the work done in the West, then how is it possible to address this matter? At what point is such summarizing a kind of what A.A. Phillips has termed “the cultural cringe,” and precisely what is the solution in a world where English remains the main currency?
5. Why has this area become so hot, and, honestly, what are some issues that might arise with this heated growth?
RECOMMENDED READINGS:
Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture, 2nd Edition. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Cronon, William. Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. New York: W W Norton & Company, 1996.
Estok, Simon C. “Partial views: an introduction to East Asian Ecocriticisms.” East Asian Ecocriticisms: A Critical Reader. Eds. Simon C. Estok and Won-Chung Kim. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 1-13. Print.
-----. “Reading Ecoambiguity.” Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment. 4.1 (Spring 2013): 130-8.
Evernden, Neil. The Social Creation of Nature. Baltimore: the Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Glotfelty, Cheryll and & Harold Fromm, eds. Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1996.
Soper, Kate. What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the non-human. Oxford, Blackwell, 1995.
Thornber, Karen Laura. Ecoambiguity: Environmental Crises and East Asian Literature. Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 2012. Print.
Bios:
Dr. Simon C. Estok is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow in the Research Center for Comparative Literature and World Literatures at Shanghai Normal University (2013-2014). Estok is also a Senior Fellow and Full Professor at Sungkyunkwan University where he teaches literary theory, ecocriticism, and Shakespearean literature. His research interests include ecocriticism, early modern European culture, and the relationships between theory and practice. His award-winning book Ecocriticism and Shakespeare: Reading Ecophobia appeared in 2011, and he is co-editor of International Perspectives in Feminist Ecocriticism and East Asian Ecocriticisms, both of which appeared in 2013. Estok has published extensively on ecocriticism and Shakespeare in such journals as PMLA, Configurations, Mosaic, ISLE, English Studies in Canada, FLS, The Journal of Canadian Studies, and others. His 2009 “Theorizing in a Space of Ambivalent Openness: Ecocriticism and Ecophobia” cemented the term “ecophobia” into ecocritical theory. Estok’s current project is a book entitled The Ecophobia Hypothesis, which reviews and expands on work done over the past five years theorizing ecophobia.
Xinmin Liu received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Yale in 1997 and has since taught Chinese language, literature and culture at Trinity College, Wesleyan University, University of Pittsburgh and is currently at Washington State University. His teaching and research are chiefly cross-cultural and interdisciplinary, dealing with society vs. culture, text vs. visuality, and humanity vs. nature. An author of many published journal articles, he has given numerous lectures at academic institutions and professional conferences in the US and overseas. His first book, entitled Signposts of Self-Realization: Evolution, Sociality and Ethics in Chinese Literary Modernism, came out from Brill, Netherlands in March 2014. Currently he is working on his second book Agential Landscapes, Human Conduits: Aspects of China’s Ecocriticism which focuses on the aesthetic, ontological and ethical issues underlying the triangular cluster of land-landscape-human habitats.
Meets on the afternoon of Tuesday, June 23
Ecocritical scholarship within East Asia is thriving and is a major and growing interest to scholars outside of the area. Because that area is so vast, both geographically and demographically, there is an exciting diversity of ecocriticisms. Yet, limited by deficient skills of East Asian languages, Western ecocritics have relied on translations and have very rarely indeed read materials in their original languages; on the other hand, the great diversity of Asian ecocriticisms have all, to varying degrees, been influenced by Western (particularly American) thinking in the environmental humanities. Moreover, in response to the disconnectedness within the Asian region itself, efforts to bring isolated scholars to broader audiences have produced good results, among which is the increasing recognition that many of the concerns (thematic, theoretical, social, and so on) of East Asian ecocriticisms are radically different from those in the West. The need for more and deeper recognition of local and situated knowledges is vital, and the West needs not only to listen with good will but to hear with clear understanding some of the very important messages coming out of the East.
This seminar will explore issues that include, but not limited to, the following topical areas:
1. What are some of the problems facing East Asian ecocriticisms going forward?
2. What do people (scholars, activists and others) in the West hope to import from ecocritical work being done in Asia, and why? Alternatively, what do people in the West hope to export to ecocritical work being done in Asia, and why?
3. What do people in Asia hope to import from ecocritical work being done in the West, and why? Alternatively, what do people in Asia hope to export to ecocritical work being done in the West, and why?
4. If scholarship in ecocriticism in Asia has, as often as not, been a matter of summarizing the work done in the West, then how is it possible to address this matter? At what point is such summarizing a kind of what A.A. Phillips has termed “the cultural cringe,” and precisely what is the solution in a world where English remains the main currency?
5. Why has this area become so hot, and, honestly, what are some issues that might arise with this heated growth?
RECOMMENDED READINGS:
Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture, 2nd Edition. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Cronon, William. Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. New York: W W Norton & Company, 1996.
Estok, Simon C. “Partial views: an introduction to East Asian Ecocriticisms.” East Asian Ecocriticisms: A Critical Reader. Eds. Simon C. Estok and Won-Chung Kim. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 1-13. Print.
-----. “Reading Ecoambiguity.” Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment. 4.1 (Spring 2013): 130-8.
Evernden, Neil. The Social Creation of Nature. Baltimore: the Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Glotfelty, Cheryll and & Harold Fromm, eds. Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1996.
Soper, Kate. What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the non-human. Oxford, Blackwell, 1995.
Thornber, Karen Laura. Ecoambiguity: Environmental Crises and East Asian Literature. Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 2012. Print.
Bios:
Dr. Simon C. Estok is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow in the Research Center for Comparative Literature and World Literatures at Shanghai Normal University (2013-2014). Estok is also a Senior Fellow and Full Professor at Sungkyunkwan University where he teaches literary theory, ecocriticism, and Shakespearean literature. His research interests include ecocriticism, early modern European culture, and the relationships between theory and practice. His award-winning book Ecocriticism and Shakespeare: Reading Ecophobia appeared in 2011, and he is co-editor of International Perspectives in Feminist Ecocriticism and East Asian Ecocriticisms, both of which appeared in 2013. Estok has published extensively on ecocriticism and Shakespeare in such journals as PMLA, Configurations, Mosaic, ISLE, English Studies in Canada, FLS, The Journal of Canadian Studies, and others. His 2009 “Theorizing in a Space of Ambivalent Openness: Ecocriticism and Ecophobia” cemented the term “ecophobia” into ecocritical theory. Estok’s current project is a book entitled The Ecophobia Hypothesis, which reviews and expands on work done over the past five years theorizing ecophobia.
Xinmin Liu received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Yale in 1997 and has since taught Chinese language, literature and culture at Trinity College, Wesleyan University, University of Pittsburgh and is currently at Washington State University. His teaching and research are chiefly cross-cultural and interdisciplinary, dealing with society vs. culture, text vs. visuality, and humanity vs. nature. An author of many published journal articles, he has given numerous lectures at academic institutions and professional conferences in the US and overseas. His first book, entitled Signposts of Self-Realization: Evolution, Sociality and Ethics in Chinese Literary Modernism, came out from Brill, Netherlands in March 2014. Currently he is working on his second book Agential Landscapes, Human Conduits: Aspects of China’s Ecocriticism which focuses on the aesthetic, ontological and ethical issues underlying the triangular cluster of land-landscape-human habitats.
