Overview

Ecodisaster Imaginaries in India: Essays in Critical Perspectives is a volume of critical essays that discuss and debate the literary and cultural representations of ecological/environmental disaster in India from the perspectives that are integral to postcolonial disaster studies and the environmental humanities. The essays offer theoretically informed readings of environmental fiction, nonfiction, and poetry among other contemporary literary genres that open our eyes to today’s burning issues of global warming, climate change, pollution of air and water bodies, deforestation, and species extinction. The volume addresses the staunch ecological consciousness reflected in Rabindranath Tagore’s writings from the early twentieth century, indigenous responses to ecodisaster, and the portrayal of ecodisaster in selected Indian movies which raise questions of human rights violations in the face of manmade disaster and environmental crisis.

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9781666936414

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"Tightly focused on Indian literary and filmic production, this wide-ranging volume explores the concept of ""ecodisaster imaginaries"" through its varied and complex nuances. Touching some of major theoretical cornerstones in contemporary environmental humanities--cli-fi, narratives of ""slow violence,"" the Anthropocene, studies of toxic hazardscapes, ecocritical analyses, geocriticism and multispecies studies--this trendsetting volume opens new conversations about literature, cultural production and literary criticism in the Indian context. More fundamentally, a central concern of this volume is with storytelling and narrative. What kind of stories give shape to human and nonhuman experiences in this era of accelerating climate change and ecological disasters? How are these stories told? How do they impact and create an affective connection with audiences both in India and beyond? The fifteen well-researched and lucidly written essays in this volume address these questions from multiple angles. A very valuable and important contribution to the environmental humanities in and about India. --Amit R. Baishya, University of Oklahoma Ecodisaster Imaginaries in India: Essays in Critical Perspectives is an accessible and original volume that contributes significantly to the transnational praxis of ecocriticism. This volume contains fifteen essays that draw on diverse theoretical perspectives from the domains of literature and popular media to highlight the theme of ecoprecarity in a country where the burden of anthropogenic disasters are increasingly felt by all and largely borne by the poor and marginalized. These essays engage with a wide spectrum of themes namely cyclone disasters, landslides and flooding, climate justice, displacement of indigenous communities from ancestral lands, toxicity and slow violence among others. In addition to foregrounding the Indian environmental ethos, the essays in this volume convey a strong sense of place and contribute to global conversations in the field. --Swarnalatha Rangarajan, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras"

Author Information

Scott Slovic is professor of environmental humanities at the University of Idaho. Joyjit Ghosh is professor in the English Department at Vidyasagar University. Samit Kumar Maiti is professor in the English Department at Seva Bharati Mahavidyalaya.

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