Indian Feminist Ecocriticism

Indian Feminist Ecocriticism surveys literature through an ecofeminist lens by Indian scholars, which places contemporary literary analysis through a sampling of its diverse languages and in the context of millennia-old mythic traditions of India, exploring intersectionality, queerness, and surveillance as they apply to feminist ecocriticism.

Following Françoise d’Eaubonne’s creation of the term “ecofeminism” in 1974, scholars around the world have explored ways that the degradation of the environment and the subjugation of women are linked. In the nearly three decades since the publication of the classical work Ecofeminism by Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva in 1993, several collections have appeared that apply ecofeminism to literary criticism, also known as feminist ecocriticism. The most recent of these include anthologies that emphasize international perspectives, furthering the comparative task launched by Mies and Shiva. To date, however, there have been no books devoted to gaining a broad-based understanding of feminist ecocriticism in India, understood in its own terms. Our new volume Indian Feminist Ecocriticism offers a survey of literature as seen through an ecofeminist lens by Indian scholars, which places contemporary literary analysis through a sampling of its diverse languages and in the context of millennia-old mythic traditions of India.

Introduction

Nicole Anae and Douglas A. Vakoch

Part 1. Ecofeminist Literature across India

Chapter 1. Reading Ecofeminist Approaches: Postcolonial Women’s Writing in Hindi Literature

Prachi Priyanka

Chapter 2. Ecofeminist Consciousness in Select Folktales of the Dungri Garasiya Bhils

Pronami Bhattacharyya

Chapter 3. Spiritual Ecology: An Ecofeminist Study of the Jhumur Songs of Tribal Bengal

Anindita Chatterjee

Part 2. North East Indian Perspectives

Chapter 4. Ecofeminism in Assamese Literature

Nibedita Mukherjee

Chapter 5. Violence in the Literature of North East India: An Ecofeminist Perspective

Shibani Phukan and Triveni Goswami Vernal

Chapter 6. Indigenous Ecofeminism and Contemporary North East Indian Literature: Lessons in Eco-Swaraj

Panchali Bhattacharya

Chapter 7. Ecofeminism and Bodo Folktales and Folksongs

Esther Daimari and Ivy Daimary

Chapter 8. Women and Natural Resource Management in Naga Folktales and Peoplestories: Situating Easterine Kire’s Fiction

Nilanjana Chatterjee

Part 3. South Indian Perspectives

Chapter 9. Tinai and Representations of Nature and Women in Tamil Cankam Literature

N Depak Saravanan and A. Edwin Jeevaraj

Chapter 10. Ecofeminism and Its Impasses: Women Writing Nature in Malayalam Literature

Shalini M

Chapter 11. Postcolonial Women’s Writing in Malayalam Literature and Ecofeminism

Anupama Nayar CV

Chapter 12. Magic, Environment, and Malayalam Literature: Narrating the Slow Death of Aathi and Kasargod

Rahul V and Nagendra Kumar

Part 4. Intersectionality, Queerness, and Surveillance

Chapter 13. The Intersectional Spectrum and the Critical Legacy of the Novelists of the Indian Green

Ananya Chatterjee and Debajyoti Sarkar

Chapter 14. Conceptualizing a Queer Ecopoetics: The Politics of Intersectionality in the Postcolonial Era

Meghna Prabir and Shreyashi Sarkar

Chapter 15. Ecofeminism in Two Indian Dystopian Novels

Jayjit Sarkar and Anik Sarkar

About the Contributors