I am (finally) teaching a seminar this spring on Ecofeminisms and Queer Ecologies. While these are two very different topics, they intersect in interesting ways that are relevant to my current research project on normative conceptions of nature. I’ve been planning this seminar for some time now and over the years have collected a working bibliography that I’d like to share. Admittedly, it is still partial and unbalanced in many ways. This is a reflection, in part, of my particular interest in the topic, but also, in part, to my ignorance of the full scope of these topics. I am thrilled to have the chance to sit down and deeply reflect on these readings with a group of advanced undergrad and grad students.

In part, we’ll be tracing the rise and fall of various ‘ecofeminisms’, and question the relevance of the term today. For many reasons—some very good reasons—the term has fallen out of fashion and has been replaced by ‘feminist ecology’, ‘ecological feminism’, or even the broader ‘gender and the environment’. I chose to include the word ‘ecofeminism’ in the course title partly because the history of this dialogue is what interests me. For instance, in its first wave, ecofeminism was saturated with many essentialist assumptions. Its turn from and critique of these assumptions is aided in part by a dialogue with queer ecology, which I reserve for the last third of the semester. Furthermore, ecofeminism was never a monolithic mode of analysis. Many scholars under its banner challenged essentialism in interesting and prescient ways that aided the development of environmental feminist and queer theory as its practiced today.

The reading list that I’ve comprise for the seminar follows the full bibliography. Note there are some duplicates in the full bibliography – I list multiple works in edited collections where I wanted to draw particular attention to those articles, most likely because I intended to put them on my course schedule at some point.

I especially want to thank Whitney Bauman, Lisabeth During, Benjamin Johnson, and Anne Portman for pointing out readings, commenting on the syllabus, and talking through the topics with me. I’m posting this because many other people have asked to see the final product. I hope it will be useful for further research.

 

Working Bibliography

Adams, Carol J. 2015. The Sexual Politics of Meat. Bloomsbury Academic Press.

Anderson, Jill et al. 2012. “Queer ecology: A roundtable discussion” in European Journal of Ecopsychology 3: 82–103.

Alaimo, Stacy. 2010. “Eluding Capture: The Science, Culture, and Pleasure of ‘Queer’ Animals.” In Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire, edited by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson, 51–72. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Alaimo, Stacy and Susan Hekman. 2008. Material Feminisms. Bloomington: IN, Indiana University Press.

Bagemihl, Bruce. 2000. Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. St. Martin’s Press.

Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press.

Bauman, Whitney, Richard Bohannon, and Kevin J. O’Brien, eds. 2017. Grounding Religion. New York: Routledge.

Bauman, Whitney A., ed. 2018. Meaningful Flesh: Reflections on Religion and Nature for a Queer Planet. Santa Barbara, CA: Punctum Books.

Bauman, Whitney A., and Heather Eaton. 2017. “Gender and Queer Studies.” In Grounding Religion, edited by Whitney A. Bauman, Richard Bohannon, and Kevin J. O’Brien, 56–71. New York: Routledge.

Bikeland, Janis. 1993. “Ecofeminism: Linking Theory and Practice” in Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature, ed. Greta Gaard, 13-59. Temple University Press.

Birkmann, Joern et al. 2014. “Emergent Risks and Key Vulnerabilities” in Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. C. B. Field et al., 1066-80. Cambridge University Press.

Chemhuru, Munamato. 2018. “Interpreting Ecofeminist Environmentalism in African Communitarian Philosophy and Ubuntu: An Alternative to Anthropocentrism.” Philosophical Papers 0 (0): 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2018.1450643.

Cudworth, E. 2005. Developing Ecofeminist Theory: The Complexity of Difference. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Donovan, Josephine. 1993. “Animal Rights and Ecofeminist Theory” in Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature, ed. Greta Gaard, 167-94. Temple University Press.

Gaard, Greta, ed. 1993. Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature. Temple University Press.

———. 1993. “Ecofeminism and Native American Cultures: Pushing the Limits of Cultural Imperialism?” in Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature, ed. Greta Gaard, 295-314. Temple University Press.

———. 1997. “Toward a Queer Ecofeminism.” Hypatia 12 (1): 114–37. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.1997.tb00174.x.

———. 2002. “Vegetarian Ecofeminism: A Review Essay.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 23, No. 3: 117-146.

———. 2011. “Ecofeminism Revisited: Rejecting Essentialism and Re-Placing Species in a Material Feminist Environmentalism” in Feminist Formations 23: 26–53.

———. 2011. “Green, Pink, and Lavender: Banishing Ecophobia Through Queer Ecologies.” Ethics and the Environment 16 (2): 115–126.

———. 2015. “Ecofeminism and Climate Change.” Women’s Studies International Forum 49 (March): 20–33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2015.02.004.

Garrard, Greg. 2010. “How Queer Is Green?” Configurations 18 (1): 73–96. https://doi.org/10.1353/con.2010.0009.

Geraldine, Terry. 2009. “No Climate Justice without Gender Justice: An Overview of the Issues,” in Gender & Development 17.1: 5–18.

Glazebrook, T., 2001, “Heidegger and Ecofeminism”, in Re-Reading the Canon: Feminist Interpretations of Martin Heidegger, N. Holland and P. Huntington (eds.), University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 221–251.

———. 2008, Eco-Logic: Erotics of Nature. An Ecofeminist Phenomenology, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Gosine, Andil. 2010. “Non-White Reproduction and Same-Sex Eroticism: Queer Acts against Nature.” In Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire, edited by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson, 149–72. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Green, Cathy, Susan Joekes, and Melissa Leach. 1998. “Questionable Links: Approaches to Gender in the Environmental Research and Policy” in Feminist Visions of Development: Gender Analysis and Policy, ed. Cecile Jackson and Ruth Pearson, 259-280. Routledge.

Griffin, Susan. 2000. “Book One: Matter, How Man Regards and Makes Use of Women and Nature” in Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her. Counterpoint.

Gruen, Lori. 1993. “Dismantling Oppression: An Analysis of the Connection Between Women and Animals” in Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature, ed. Greta Gaard, 60-90. Temple University Press.

Heckert, Jamie, ed. 2012. “Queer Ecology: A Roundtable Discussion.” European Journal of Ecophyschology 3: 82–103.

Hird, Myra J. 2016. Queering the Non/Human. New York: Routledge.

Huggan, Graham and Helen Tiffin. 2010. Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment. Routledge.

Haraway, Donna. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University.

———. 1991. “A Cyborg Manifesto” in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, 7-42. Free Association Books.

Harcourt, Wendy and Ingrid L. Nelson (eds.). 2015. Practicing Feminist Political Ecologies: Moving Beyond the ‘Green Economy’. Zed Books.

Harris, Melanie. 2017. Ecowomanism: African American Women and Earth-Honoring Faiths. Orbis Books.

Heckert, Jamie Vishwam. 2014. “Planning for Abundance: Permaculture and Radical Transformation.” Theory in Action 17(4).

Johnson, Alex. n.d. “How to Queer Ecology: One Goose at a Time.” Orion Magazine. n.d. https://orionmagazine.org/article/how-to-queer-ecology-once-goose-at-a-time/.

Kings, A.E. 2017. “Intersectionality and the Changing Face of Ecofeminism.” Ethics and the Environment 22 (1): 63–87. https://doi.org/10.2979/ethicsenviro.22.1.04.

Langston, Nancy. 2011. Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES. Yale University Press.

Li, Huey-li. 1993. “A Cross-Cultural Critique of Ecofeminism” in Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature, ed. Greta Gaard, 272-94. Temple University Press.

Lloyd, Genevieve. The Man of Reason: “Male” and “Female” in Western Philosophy. Routledge, 1993.

Lorde, Audre. 1979. “An Open Letter to Mary Daly.” http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/lordeopenlettertomarydaly.html.

MacGregor, Sherilyn. “A Stranger Silence Still: The Need for Feminist Social Research on Climate Change,” in The Sociological Review 57 (2009): 124-40.

Mallory, Chaone. 2018. “What’s in a Name? In Defense of Ecofeminism (Not Ecological Feminisms, Feminist Ecology, or Gender and the Environment): Or ‘Why Ecofeminism Need Not Be Ecofeminine—But So What If It Is?’” Ethics and the Environment 23 (2): 11–35. https://doi.org/doi.org/10.1002/9781444367072.wbiee037.

Mellor, Mary. 1998. Feminism and Ecology: An Introduction. New York: NYU Press.

Merchant, Carolyn. 1990. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. Reprint edition. New York: HarperOne.

Mies, Maria and Vandana Shiva, eds. 2014. Ecofeminism (Critique, Influence, Change). Zed Book.

Mortimer-Sandilands, Catriona, and Bruce Erickson, eds. 2010a. Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Mortimer-Sandilands, Catriona, and Bruce Erickson. 2010b. “Introduction: A Genealogy of Queer Ecologies.” In Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire, edited by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson, 1–42. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Morton, Timothy. 2010. “Queer Ecology.” PMLA 125 (2): 273–82. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2010.125.2.273.

Nayak, Nalini. 2009. “Development for Some is Violence for Others” in Eco-Sufficiency and Global Justice: Women Write Political Ecology, ed. Ariel Salleh, 109-20. Pluto Press.

O’Loughlin, Ellen. 1993. “Questioning Sour Grapes: Ecofeminism and the United Farm Worker’s Grape Boycott” in Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature, ed. Greta Gaard, 146-66. Temple University Press.

Olsson, Lennart et al. 2014. “Livelihoods and Poverty” in Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. C. B. Field et al., 803-13. Cambridge University Press.

Plumwood, Val. 1993. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge.

———. 1997. “Androcentrism and Anthropocentrism: Parallels and Politics” in Ecofeminism: Woman, Culture, and Nature, ed. Karen Warren, 327-55. Indianan University Press.

———. 2001. Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason. 1 edition. London: Routledge.

Portman, Anne. 2018. “Food Sovereignty and Gender Justice.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 31 (4): 455–466.

Ruether, Rosemary Radford. 1995. New Woman New Earth: Sexist Ideologies and Human Liberation. Beacon Press.

Salleh, Ariel. 2017. Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx, and the Postmodern. Zed Books.

Sheldon, Mary V. 2012. “So What Happened to Ecofeminism?” KJAS 2 (2): 166–75.

Shiva, Vandana. “Women and the Gendered Politics of Food” in Philosophical Topics 37 (2009):17-32.

———. 2016. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development. North Atlantic Books.

Smith, Andrea. 1997. “Ecofeminism through an Anticolonial Framework” in Ecofeminism: Woman, Culture, and Nature, ed. Karen Warren, 21-37. Indianan University Press.

Spretnak, Charlene. 1997. “Radical Nonduality in Ecofeminist Philosophy” in Ecofeminism: Woman, Culture, and Nature, ed. Karen Warren, 425-35. Indianan University Press.

Stenmark, Lisa and Whitney Bauman (eds). 2018. Unsettling Science and Religion: Contributions and Questions from Queer Studies. Lexington Books.

Sturgeon, Noël. 2010. “Penguin Family Values: The Nature of Planetary Environmental Reproductive Justice.” In Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire, edited by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson, 102–33. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Taylor, Dorceta E. 1997. “Women of Color, Environmental Justice, and Ecofeminism.” In Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature, edited by Karen Warren, 38–81. Indiana Univ Press.

Warren, Karen, ed. 1997. Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature. Bloomington, IN: Indiana Univ Press.

Whitworth, Lauran. “Goodbye Gauley Mountain, hello eco-camp: Queer environmentalism in the Anthropocene.” Feminist Theory. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700118788684

 

 

Seminar Reading Schedule

No.	Day	Date	Title/Topic	Author/Citation
1	M	1/14	Introduction to course	No readings
2	W	1/16	“Ecofeminism and Climate Change”	(Gaard 2015)
	M	1/21	No Class	Martin Luther King Jr. Day
3	W	1/23	“Introduction” & “Women and the Environment”	(Mellor 1998, 1–22)
4	M	1/28	“Women and the Environment”	(Mellor 1998, 22–43)
5	W	1/30	“Ecofeminist Thought”	(Mellor 1998, 44–70)
6	M	2/4	“What is in a Name? In Defense of Ecofeminism (Not Ecological Feminisms, Feminist Ecology, or Gender and the Environment): Or ‘Why Ecofeminism Need Not Be Ecofeminine—But So What If It Is?”	(Mallory 2018)
7	W	2/6	Catch-up Day	No Reading, review and overview; contribution to building a map of the field
8	M	2/11	“Dualism: The Logic of Colonialism”	(Plumwood 1993, 41–69)
9	W	2/13	“Plato and the Philosophy of Death”	(Plumwood 1993, 69–104)
10	M	2/18	Guest Lecture: subject librarian on conducting research	Meet in library, 614A with laptops
11	W	2/20	“Descartes and the Dream of Power”	(Plumwood 1993, 104–19)
12	M	2/25	“Mechanism and Mind/Nature Dualism”	(Plumwood 1993, 120–40)
13	W	2/27	Midterm proposal due
14	M	3/4	“Introduction” and “Nature as Female”	(Merchant 1990, xix–20)
15	W	3/6	“Nature as Female”	(Merchant 1990, 21–41)
	M	3/11	No Class
	W	3/13	No Class
16	M	3/18	Midterm essays due	Presentations of Work
17	W	3/20	“Intersectionality and the Changing Face of Ecofeminism” & “Open Letter to Mary Daly”	(Kings 2017) (Lorde 1979)
18	M	3/25	“Women of Color, Environmental Justice, and Ecofeminism”	(Taylor 1997)
19	W	3/27	“Interpreting Ecofeminist Environmentalism in African Communitarian Philosophy and Ubuntu: An Alternative to Anthropocentrism”	(Chemhuru 2018)
20	M	4/1	“Inequality and Ecological Rationality”	(Plumwood 2001, 81–96)
21	W	4/3	“Queer Ecology” “Gender and Queer Studies”	(Morton 2010) (Bauman and Eaton 2017)
22	M	4/8	“A Genealogy of Queer Ecologies”	(Mortimer-Sandilands and Erickson 2010b, 1–21)
23	W	4/10	“A Genealogy of Queer Ecologies”	(Mortimer-Sandilands and Erickson 2010b, 22–42)
24	M	4/15	“How Queer is Green?”	(Garrard 2010)
25	W	4/17	“Toward a Queer Ecofeminism”	(Gaard 1997)
26	M	4/22	“Eluding Capture: The Science, Culture, and Pleasure of ‘Queer Animals’”	(Alaimo 2010)
27	W	4/24	“Penguin Family Values: The Nature of Planetary Environmental Reproductive Justice”	(Sturgeon 2010)
28	M	4/29	“Non-white Reproduction and Same-Sex Eroticism: Queer Acts Against Nature”	(Gosine 2010)
29	W	5/1	presentations
30	M	5/6	presentations