This volume gathers nineteen of the most representative and defining essays from the journal ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment over the course of its first ten years.
Following an introduction that traces the stages of ecocriticism's development, The ISLE Reader is organized into three sections, each of which reflects one of the general goals the journal has sought to accomplish. The section titled "Re-evaluations" provides new readings of familiar environmental writers and new environmental perspectives on authors or literary traditions not usually considered from a green perspective. The writings in "Reaching Out to Other Disciplines" promote cross-pollination among various disciplines and methodologies in the environmental arts and humanities. The writings in the final section, "New Theoretical and Practical Paradigms," are especially significant for the conceptual and methodological terrain they map.
The ISLE Reader documents the state of research in ecocriticism and related interdisciplinary fields, provides a survey of the field, and points to new methodologies and possibilities for the future.
HAROLD FROMM lives in Tucson and is University Associate in English at the University of Arizona as well as a member of the university’s Institute of the Environment. He is the author of The Nature of Being Human: From Environmentalism to Consciousness and Academic Capitalism and Literary Value. His writings have appeared in a wide range of journals and he is a regular contributor to the Hudson Review.
IAN MARSHALL is professor of English and environmental studies at Penn State Altoona. He is the author, most recently, of Peak Experiences: Walking Meditations on Literature, Nature, and Need and the coeditor of Coming into Contact: Essays in Ecocritical Theory and Practice (Georgia).
JOHN TALLMADGE is Core Professor of Literature and Environmental Studies at the Graduate College of Union Institute and University in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is the author of Meeting the Tree of Life, and his work has appeared in such publications as Audubon and Orion.
MICHAEL P. BRANCH, associate professor of literature and environment at the University of Nevada, Reno, is cofounder and past president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) and book review editor of the journal ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. The author of numerous articles and reviews, he is also editor of John Muir's Last Journey: South to the Amazon and East to Africa and co-editor of The Height of Our Mountains: Nature Writing from Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah Valley, Reading the Earth: New Directions in the Study of Literature and Environment, and The ISLE Reader (Georgia).