This book traverses current interdisciplinary discourses of the environmental humanities, American studies, and media studies and argues that both canonical and noncanonical U.S.-centered texts have a deep investment in recalibrating the conversation on ecocriticism, environmental justice, and literature through a specifically materialist lens. The book begins with John Steinbeck’s writing, emblematic of the Great Depression, because it marks the beginning of a new era of government interest in the preservation, development, and mining of nature, and dovetails with the transnational turn in American studies and with emerging concerns of environmental justice. It examines literary and visual manifestations of natural resources and the manner in which national and cultural boundaries are violently mapped onto them. Each chapter considers how U.S. attitudes shape our relationship to the place of the human within U.S. bordersand the impact of humans within the U.S. on those "outside" of it.
This book will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduate students in ecocriticism, American studies, the environmental humanities, postcolonialism, transnational studies, media studies and feminist studies.
