Ecocritical Aesthetics

This lively collection of essays explores the vital role of beauty in the human experience of place, interactions with other species, and contemplation of our own embodied lives. Devoting attention to themes such as global climate change, animal subjectivity, environmental justice and activism, and human moral responsibility for the environment, these contributions demonstrate that beauty is not only a meaningful dimension of our experience, but also a powerful strategy for inspiring cultural transformation. Taken as a whole, they underscore the ongoing relevance of aesthetics to the ecocritical project and the concern for beauty that motivates effective social and political engagement.

Acknowledgements
Introduction / Peter Quigley

I. The Relevance of Beauty
1. "It is out of fashion to say so": The Language of Nature and the Rhetoric of Beauty in Robinson Jeffers / Tim Hunt
2. Thoreau's Poetics of Nature / Arnold Berleant
3. The Pout's Nest and the Painter's Eye / Frank Stewart
4. "Yet How Beautiful It Is!": Work, Ethics, and Beauty in Stegner's Angle of Repose / Tyler Nickl
5. Renaissance Aesthetics, Picturesque Beauty, the Natural Landscape: An Essay Examining the Rise and Fall of the Impulse toward Beauty / Mark Luccarelli

II. Beauty and Engagement
6. Toward an Ecofeminist Aesthetic of Reconnection / Greta Gaard
7. Beauty and the Body: Towards an Ecofeminist Aesthetic that Includes Loving Our Naked Selves / Janine DeBaise
8. Dystopia and Utopia in a Nuclear Landscape: Emerging Aesthetics in Satoyama / Yuki Masami
9. Know Beauty, Know Justice: Why Beauty Matters in the Classroom / ShaunAnne Tangney

III. Materiality, Transcendence, and Aesthetics
10. Nature's Colors: A Prismatic Materiality in the Natural/Cultural Realms / Serpil Oppermann
11. From the Human to the Divine: Nature in the Writings of the Tamil Poet-Saints / Cynthia J. Miller
12. Beauty as Ideological and Material Transcendence / Werner Bigell
13. Toward Sustainable Aesthetics: The Poetry of Food, Sex, Water, Architecture, and Bicycle-Riding / Scott Slovic

Index