Ecological Restoration and the U.S. Nature and Environmental Writing Tradition A Rewilding of American Letters

About this book

This book presents a critical history of the intersections between American environmental literature and ecological restoration policy and practice. Through a storying-restorying-restoring framework, this book explores how entanglements between writers and places have produced literary interventions in restoration politics. The book considers the ways literary landscapes are politicized by writers themselves, and by conservationists, activists, policymakers, and others, in defense of U.S. public lands and the idea of wilderness. The book profiles five environmental writers and examines how their writings on nature, wildness, wilderness, conservation, preservation, and restoration have variously inspired and been translated into ecological restoration programs and campaigns by environmental organizations. The featured authors are Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) at Walden Pond, John Muir (1838-1914) in Yosemite National Park, Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) at his family's Wisconsin sand farm, Marjory Stoneman Douglas (1890-1998) in the Everglades, and Edward Abbey (1927-1989) in Glen Canyon. This book combines environmental history, literature, biography, philosophy, and politics in a commentary on considering (and developing) environmental literature's place in conversations on restoration ecology, ecological restoration, and rewilding.

Contents

Prologue: A Selected Chronology
Chapter One. A Storying-Restorying-Restoring of the Land: Rethinking Ecological Restoration through Literature
Chapter Two. 'With Walden in Its Midst' Henry David Thoreau, Walden Pond, and the Walden Woods Project
Chapter Three. 'No Holier Temple' John Muir, the Hetch Hetchy Valley, and Restore Hetch Hetchy
Chapter Four. 'On This Sand Farm in Wisconsin' Aldo Leopold, the Leopold Shack, and the Aldo Leopold Foundation
Chapter Five. 'The Superb Monotony of Saw Grass Under the World of Air' Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the Everglades, and Friends of the Everglades
Chapter Six. 'The Canyonlands Did Have a Heart, a Living Heart' Edward Abbey, Glen Canyon, and the Glen Canyon Institute
Chapter Seven: Reflections on Literature, Ecological Restoration, and Activism

Customer Reviews

Biography

Laura Smith is a lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Exeter, U.K. She works across cultural geography and the environmental humanities, with research interests in ecological restoration and rewilding, the history and conservation of U.S. public lands, American literature, and environmental protest and activism.