ASLE + AESS Reading List

Books about the environment, theory, philosophy, and more, timed with the 2023 joint meeting of The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) and The Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS).

ENVIRONMENT AND LITERATURE READING LIST

In time with the joint ASLE + AESS meeting, a collection of literature and nonfiction environmental studies, philosophy, theory, ecocriticism, environmental humanities, botany, catastrophe, books on our planet's climate crisis, and more.

This collection is timed with the joint meeting of The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) and The Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS), "Reclaiming the Commons," July 9–12, 2023, in Portland, Oregon.

Download a flyer: The first English translations of the original Godzilla novellas.

BROWSE COLLECTION:

Revenant Ecologies Defying the Violence of Extinction and Conservation Audra Mitchell 2023 Fall: Engaging a broad spectrum of ecological thought to articulate the ethical scale of global extinction
The Cactus Hunters Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade Jared D. Margulies 2023 Fall: An exploration of the explosive illegal trade in succulents and the passion that drives it
Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again Shigeru Kayama 2023 Fall: The first English translations of the original novellas about the iconic kaijū Godzilla
Nietzsche’s Posthumanism Edgar Landgraf 2023 Fall: A timely and trenchant commentary on the centrality of Nietzsche’s thought for our time
Gramsci at Sea Sharad Chari 2023 Fall: Exploring how the crisis of the world ocean is produced by capitalism and imperialism
Empirical Ecocriticism Environmental Narratives for Social Change Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Alexa Weik von Mossner, Frank Hakemulder and W. P. Malecki, Editors 2023 Fall: A groundbreaking book that combines the environmental humanities and social sciences to study the impact of environmental stories
Nonhuman Humanitarians Animal Interventions in Global Politics Benjamin Meiches 2023 Spring: Examining the appearance of nonhuman animals laboring alongside humans in humanitarian operations
Noah’s Arkive Jeffrey J. Cohen and Julian Yates 2023 Spring: A timely rethinking of the archetypal story of Noah, the great flood, and who was left behind as the waters rose
Lively Cities Reconfiguring Urban Ecology Maan Barua 2023 Spring: A journey through unexplored spaces that foreground new ways of inhabiting the urban
Gut Anthro An Experiment in Thinking with Microbes Amber Benezra 2023 Spring: A fascinating ethnography of microbes that opens up new spaces for anthropological inquiry
Subsurface Karen Pinkus 2023 Spring: A bold new consideration of climate change between narratives of the Earth’s layers and policy of the present
Settling Nature The Conservation Regime in Palestine-Israel 2023 Spring: Studying nature conservation in Palestine-Israel through the lens of settler colonialism
Inside the Spiral The Passions of Robert Smithson Suzaan Boettger 2023 Spring: An expansive and revelatory study of Robert Smithson’s life and the hidden influences on his iconic creations
Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood Permafrost and Extinction in the Russian Arctic Charlotte Wrigley 2023 Spring: Exploring one of the greatest potential contributors to climate change—thawing permafrost—and the anxiety of extinction on an increasingly hostile planet
The Environmental Unconscious Ecological Poetics from Spenser to Milton Steven Swarbrick 2023 Spring: Bringing psychoanalysis to bear on the diagnosis of ecological crisis
Making Sense in Common A Reading of Whitehead in Times of Collapse Isabelle Stengers 2023 Spring: A leading philosopher seeks to recover “common sense” as a meeting place to reconcile science and philosophy
Rubber Boots Methods for the Anthropocene Doing Fieldwork in Multispecies Worlds Nils Bubandt, Astrid Oberborbeck Andersen and Rachel Cypher, Editors 2022 Fall: A methodological follow-up to Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet
Settling the Boom The Sites and Subjects of Bakken Oil Mary E. Thomas and Bruce Braun, Editors 2022 Fall: Examines how settler colonial and sexist infrastructures and narratives order a resource boom
The Lichen Museum A. Laurie Palmer 2023 Spring: A radical proposal for how a tiny organism can transform our understanding of human relations
The Long 2020 Richard Grusin and Maureen Ryan, Editors 2022 Fall: Sharply intelligent, often personal reflections on the global crises of 2020 that are still ongoing
Angry Planet Decolonial Fiction and the American Third World Anne Stewart 2022 Fall: Before the idea of the Anthropocene, there was the angry planet
Citizens of Worlds Open-Air Toolkits for Environmental Struggle Jennifer Gabrys 2022 Fall: An unparalleled how-to guide to citizen-sensing practices that monitor air pollution
Making Love with the Land Essays Joshua Whitehead 2022 Fall: A moving and deeply personal excavation of Indigenous beauty and passion in a suffering world
This Contested Land The Storied Past and Uncertain Future of America’s National Monuments McKenzie Long 2022 Spring: One woman’s enlightening trek through the natural histories, cultural stories, and present perils of thirteen national monuments, from Maine to Hawaii
Endlings Fables for the Anthropocene Lydia Pyne 2023 Spring: Amid the historical decimation of species around the globe, a new way into the language of loss
Rescue Me On Dogs and Their Humans Margret Grebowicz 2023 Spring: What exactly is it we want from dogs today?
Dark Scenes from Damaged Earth The Gothic Anthropocene Justin D. Edwards, Rune Graulund and Johan Höglund, Editors 2022 Spring: An urgent volume of essays engages the Gothic to advance important perspectives on our geological era
Tsuchi Earthy Materials in Contemporary Japanese Art Bert Winther-Tamaki 2022 Spring: An examination of Japanese contemporary art through the lens of ecocriticism and environmental history
Plant Life The Entangled Politics of Afforestation Rosetta S. Elkin 2022 Spring: How afforestation reveals the often-concealed politics between humans and plants
Pipeline Populism Grassroots Environmentalism in the Twenty-First Century Kai Bosworth 2022 Spring: How contemporary environmental struggles and resistance to pipeline development became populist struggles
On the Rural Economy, Sociology, Geography Henri Lefebvre Stuart Elden and Adam David Morton, Editors 2022 Spring: A collection of previously untranslated writings by Henri Lefebvre on rural sociology, situating his research in relation to wider Marxist work
The Owls Are Not What They Seem Artist as Ethologist Arnaud Gerspacher 2022 Fall: Toward a posthumanist art and ethology
Solarities Seeking Energy Justice After Oil Collective Ayesha Vemuri and Darin Barney, Editors 2022 Fall: A collective engages and mirrors the critical need for energy justice and transformation
What If? Twenty-Two Scenarios in Search of Images Vilém Flusser 2022 Spring: An imagination of possibilities, of miscalculations, of futures off-kilter
Does the Earth Care? Indifference, Providence, and Provisional Ecology Mick Smith and Jason Young 2022 Fall: Rethinking our relationship with Earth in a time of environmental emergency
Out of Breath Vulnerability of Air in Contemporary Art Caterina Albano 2022 Fall: Explores the intrinsic relation of life to air, and breathing, through contemporary art
Animal Revolution Ron Broglio 2022 Spring: Why our failure to consider the power of animals is to our deep detriment
Earthworks Rising Mound Building in Native Literature and Arts Chadwick Allen 2022 Spring: A necessary reexamination of Indigenous mounds, demonstrating their sustained vitality and vibrant futurity by centering Native voices
Allotment Stories Indigenous Land Relations under Settler Siege Daniel Heath Justice and Jean M. O’Brien, Editors 2021 Fall: More than two dozen essays of Indigenous resistance to the privatization and allotment of Indigenous lands
Accumulation The Art, Architecture, and Media of Climate Change Nick Axel, Nikolaus Hirsch, Daniel A. Barber and Anton Vidokle, Editors 2022 Spring: Examines how images of accumulation help open up the climate to political mobilization
Eco Soma Pain and Joy in Speculative Performance Encounters Petra Kuppers 2021 Fall: Modeling a disability culture perspective on performance practice toward socially just futures
Insecurity Richard Grusin, Editor 2022 Spring: Investigating insecurity as the predominant logic of life in the present moment
Art and Posthumanism Essays, Encounters, Conversations Cary Wolfe 2021 Fall: A sustained engagement between contemporary art and philosophy relating to our place in, and responsibility to, the nonhuman world
Safety Orange Anna Watkins Fisher 2022 Spring: How fluorescent orange symbolizes the uneven distribution of safety and risk in the neoliberal United States
Life in Plastic Artistic Responses to Petromodernity Caren Irr, Editor 2021 Fall: A vital contribution to environmental humanities that explores artistic responses to the plastic age
The World Is Gone Philosophy in Light of the Pandemic Gregg Lambert 2022 Spring: Exploring the existential implications of the Covid-19 crisis through meditations
Building on Borrowed Time Rising Seas and Failing Infrastructure in Semarang Lukas Ley 2021 Fall: A timely ethnography of how Indonesia’s coastal dwellers inhabit the “chronic present” of a slow-motion natural disaster
Calamity Theory Three Critiques of Existential Risk Joshua Schuster and Derek Woods 2021 Fall: What are the implications of how we talk about apocalypse?
Remembering Our Intimacies Moʻolelo, Aloha ʻĀina, and Ea Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio 2021 Fall: Recovering Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) relationality and belonging in the land, memory, and body of Native Hawai’i
The Three Sustainabilities Energy, Economy, Time Allan Stoekl 2021 Fall: Bringing the word sustainability back from the brink of cliché—to a substantive, truly sustainable future
Assuming the Ecosexual Position The Earth as Lover Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens 2021 Spring: The story of the artistic collaboration between the originators of the ecosex movement, their diverse communities, and the Earth
The Global Shelter Imaginary IKEA Humanitarianism and Rightless Relief Daniel Bertrand Monk and Andrew Herscher 2021 Fall: Examines how the humanitarian order advances a message of moral triumph and care while abandoning the dispossessed
The Dance of the Arabian Babbler Birth of an Ethological Theory Vinciane Despret 2021 Spring: A groundbreaking reflection on the process by which one arrives at an ethological theory
The End of the Village Planning the Urbanization of Rural China Nick R. Smith 2021 Spring: How China’s expansive new era of urbanization threatens to undermine the foundations of rural life
Watershed Attending to Body and Earth in Distress Ranae Lenor Hanson 2021 Spring: A personal health crisis, stories from environmental refugees, and our climate in danger prompt a meditation on intimate connections between the health of the body and the health of the ecosystem
Saving Animals Multispecies Ecologies of Rescue and Care Elan Abrell 2021 Spring: A fascinating and unprecedented ethnography of animal sanctuaries in the United States
The Dispossessed Karl Marx's Debates on Wood Theft and the Right of the Poor Daniel Bensaïd 2021 Spring: Excavating Marx’s early writings to rethink the rights of the poor and the idea of the commons in an era of unprecedented privatization
Training for Catastrophe Fictions of National Security after 9/11 Lindsay Thomas 2021 Spring: A timely, politically savvy examination of how impossible disasters shape the very real possibilities of our world
Molecular Capture The Animation of Biology Adam Nocek 2021 Spring: How computer animation technologies became vital visualization tools in the life sciences
Timescales Thinking across Ecological Temporalities Bethany Wiggin, Carolyn Fornoff and Patricia Eunji Kim, Editors 2020 Fall: Humanists, scientists, and artists collaborate to address the disjunctive temporalities of ecological crisis
As We Have Always Done Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance Leanne Betasamosake Simpson 2021 Spring: How to build Indigenous resistance movements that refuse the destructive thinking of settler colonialism
Grounded Perpetual Flight . . . and Then the Pandemic Christopher Schaberg 2021 Spring: As commercial flight is changing dramatically and its future remains unclear, a look at how we got here
Shaving the Beasts Wild Horses and Ritual in Spain John Hartigan Jr. 2020 Fall: A vivid first-person study of a notorious equine ritual—from the perspective of the wild horses who are its targets
Drawing the Sea Near Satoumi and Coral Reef Conservation in Okinawa C. Anne Claus 2020 Fall: How Japanese coastal residents and transnational conservationists collaborated to foster relationships between humans and sea life
The Probiotic Planet Using Life to Manage Life Jamie Lorimer 2020 Fall: Assesses a promising new approach to restoring the health of our bodies and our planet
Radioactive Ghosts Gabriele Schwab 2020 Fall: A pioneering examination of nuclear trauma, the continuing and new nuclear peril, and the subjectivities they generate
Infrastructures of Apocalypse American Literature and the Nuclear Complex Jessica Hurley 2020 Fall: A new approach to the vast nuclear infrastructure and the apocalypses it produces, focusing on Black, queer, Indigenous, and Asian American literatures
Wolf Island Discovering the Secrets of a Mythic Animal L. David Mech 2020 Fall: The world’s leading wolf expert describes the first years of a major study that transformed our understanding of one of nature’s most iconic creatures
Gaian Systems Lynn Margulis, Neocybernetics, and the End of the Anthropocene Bruce Clarke 2020 Fall: A groundbreaking look at Gaia theory’s intersections with neocybernetic systems theory
Invoking Hope Theory and Utopia in Dark Times Phillip E. Wegner 2020 Spring: An appeal for the importance of theory, utopia, and close consideration of our contemporary dark times
Thinking Plant Animal Human Encounters with Communities of Difference David Wood 2020 Spring: Collected essays by a leading philosopher situating the question of the animal in the broader context of a relational ontology
Red Gold The Managed Extinction of the Giant Bluefin Tuna Jennifer E. Telesca 2020 Spring: Illuminating the conditions for global governance to have precipitated the devastating decline of one of the ocean’s most majestic creatures
Bleak Joys Aesthetics of Ecology and Impossibility Matthew Fuller and Olga Goriunova 2019 Fall: A philosophical and cultural distillation of the bleak joys in today’s ambivalent ecologies and patterns of life
An Ecotopian Lexicon Matthew Schneider-Mayerson and Brent Ryan Bellamy, Editors 2019 Fall: Presents thirty novel terms that do not yet exist in English to envision ways of responding to the environmental challenges of our generation
Homesickness Of Trauma and the Longing for Place in a Changing Environment Ryan Hediger 2019 Fall: Introducing a posthumanist concept of nostalgia to analyze steadily widening themes of animality, home, travel, slavery, shopping, and war in U.S. literature after 1945
Standing with Standing Rock Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement Nick Estes and Jaskiran Dhillon, Editors 2019 Spring: Dispatches of radical political engagement from people taking a stand against the Dakota Access Pipeline
How to Do Things with Sensors Jennifer Gabrys 2019 Fall: An investigation of how-to guides for sensor technologies
Break Up the Anthropocene Steve Mentz 2019 Fall: Takes the singular eco-catastrophic “Age of Man” and redefines this epoch