Gendered Ecologies

Reviews'A wonderful addition to the field of environmental humanities that will undoubtedly appeal to human geographers, social ecologists, literary scholars, and philosophers of science... The editors have gathered a scholarship that will forge fruitful bridges between literature and science and incite readers to revisit their favorite novels with new awareness and sensitivity that are very timely.'
Hélène B. Ducros, EuropeNow
'A fresh and invigorating contribution to the field of environmental humanities... The ‘diversity’ of the collection allows for a picture to emerge here of the many, complex and fascinating engagements with natural history made by women writers during the long nineteenth century.'
Penny Bradshaw, Green Letters
'This collection is very impressive, offering insightful new readings of British and American women authors from the perspective of new materialism... these essays expand the conception of what constitutes scientific writing in the long nineteenth century and recognizes the contributions of these women writers for the first time.'
Ronald D. Morrison, Pacific Coast Philology
'Writing about nature and the environment is a growing area, paving the way for fruitful scholarly work on women’s writing about the environment. The long nineteenth century is a conflicted and productive site for this examination: women’s lives and work were, then as now, enmeshed in the confining ecosystem of a patriarchal culture which failed to take their work—both creative and scientific—seriously, and so it is promising to see books such as Dewey W. Hall and Jillmarie Murphy’s Gendered Ecologies [...] breaking new ground. As the introduction makes clear, this collection of essays is intentionally diverse and pleasingly intersectional, negotiating complex boundaries not only across genders, but also between the human and nonhuman, and additionally between women’s bodies and their material environments. In the process the essays offer some exciting new ways of reading women writers.'
Serena Trowbridge, Victorian Studies

'The essays in this collection consider the interrelationships between humans, nonhumans, objects, and environments... There is much to gain from this collection for literary researchers, ecocritics, and feminists... Gendered Ecologies provides an evocative look at the materiality and ecofeminist underpinnings of canonical and lesser-discussed texts written by women in the nineteenth century.'
Melinda Backer, Victorian Studies

‘The essays in Gendered Ecologies explore an array of spaces, such as gardens, medieval towers, and ancient Greece, where readers will find exhumed skulls, chlorinated lime, and Charlotte Brontë’s fern collection, among other entities... With its stirring, theoretically robust, and accessible analyses, this collection also illustrates the value of nineteenth-century women’s writing to posthumanists, New Materialists, and ecocritics.’ Abby L. Goode, Legacy