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A vital contribution to environmental humanities that explores artistic responses to the plastic age

 

Since at least the 1960s, plastics have been a defining feature of contemporary life. They are undeniably utopian—wondrously innovative, cheap, malleable, durable, and convenient. Yet our proliferating use of plastics has also triggered catastrophic environmental consequences. Plastics are piling up in landfills, floating in oceans, and contributing to climate change and cancer clusters. They are derived from petrochemicals and enmeshed with the global oil economy, and they permeate our consumer goods and their packaging, our clothing and buildings, our bodies and minds. Plastic reshapes our cultural and social imaginaries. 

With impressive breadth and compelling urgency, the essays in Life in Plastic examine the arts and literature of the plastic age. Focusing mainly on post-1960s North America, the collection spans a wide variety of genres, including graphic novels, superhero comics, utopic and dystopic science fiction, poetry, and satirical prose, as well as vinyl records and visual arts. Essays by a remarkable lineup of cultural theorists interrogate how plastic—as material and concept—has affected human sensibilities and expression. The collection reveals the place of plastic in reshaping how we perceive, relate to, represent, and re-imagine bodies, senses, environment, scale, mortality, and collective well-being.

Ultimately, the contributors to Life in Plastic think through plastic with an eye to imagining our way out of plastic, moving toward a postplastic future.

Contributors: Crystal Bartolovich, Syracuse U; Maurizia Boscagli, U of California, Santa Barbara; Christopher Breu, Illinois State U; Loren Glass, U of Iowa; Sean Grattan, U of Kent; Nayoung Kim, Brandeis U; Jane Kuenz, U of Southern Maine; Paul Morrison, Brandeis U; W. Dana Phillips, Towson U in Maryland and Rhodes U in Grahamstown, South Africa; Margaret Ronda, UC-Davis; Lisa Swanstrom, U of Utah; Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor, Pennsylvania State U; Phillip E. Wegner, U of Florida; Daniel Worden, Rochester Institute of Technology. 

The Life of Aesop the Philosopher, an anonymous Greek literary work, presents one version of the novelistic biography of Aesop, which dates to the fourth to fifth century CE. In this volume, Grammatiki A. Karla offers an extended introduction to the Life of Aesop in general, the history of the textual tradition, and the MORN manuscript family and its relationship to other versions and papyrus fragments. She then presents a new edition of the late antique version (MORN) alongside David Konstan’s English translation. A commentary addresses editorial choices and focuses on words and phrases that are of interest for the history of the Greek language.

The essential collection of African American voices that shaped the struggle for freedom, equality, and citizenship.

Lift Every Voice is a completely revised, updated, and expanded version of Philip Foner's 1972 classic Voice of Black America, which Library Journal hailed as "indispensable.""This well-edited and
richly inclusive work," wrote Benjamin Quarles, "unveils the full sweep of Black expression as found in platform addresses" by "men and women who join eloquence with reason in articulating their
grievances and their aspirations and in arousing their listeners with their ringing and prophetic challenges." This new collection includes over 60 additional texts and revised and expanded introductory essays that provide historical, biographical, and critical information for each speech.

For Americans of the 19th century, as W. E. B. Du Bois observed, eloquent speeches were 'the shining lights of civilization' that both expressed and sought to improve the lives and communities from which they sprang. Through political speeches, sermons, lectures, oral testimonies, and ceremonial addresses, African Americans offered diverse responses to the issues and events of their times, including not only slavery and racial equality but also women's rights, education, religion, immigration, socialism, war, Indian policy, and labor organization, among others. The speeches in this
collection are among the most powerful expressions of African American opinions on these issues and were delivered on occasions and before audiences where the speakers believed their words might be transformative.

Containing more than 150 speeches, this anthology represents the most extensive and diverse collection of African American oratory of the 18th and 19th centuries ever published. Lift Every Voice makes readily accessible not only the classic orations of such well-known figures as Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Booker T. Washington but also dozens of lesser-known but important speeches deserving greater recognition and study. Many of these speeches are previously unpublished, uncollected, or long out of print.

The full extent of Plutarch’s moral educational program remains largely understudied, at least in those aspects pertaining to women and the gendered other. As a result, scholarship on his views on women have differed significantly in their conclusions, with some scholars suggesting that he is overwhelmingly positive towards women and marriage and perhaps even a “precursor to feminism,”  and others arguing that he was rather negative on the issue. Like a Captive Bird: Gender and Virtue in Plutarch is an examination of these educational methods employed in Plutarch’s work to regulate the expression of gender identity in women and men. In six chapters, author Lunette Warren analyzes Plutarch’s ideas about women and gender in Moralia and Lives. The book examines the divergences between real and ideal, the aims and methods of moral philosophy and psychagogic practice as they relate to identity formation, and Plutarch’s theoretical philosophy and metaphysics. 

Warren argues that gender is a flexible mode of being that expresses a relation between body and soul, and that gender and virtue are inextricably entwined. Plutarch’s expression of gender is also an expression of a moral condition that signifies relationships of power, Warren claims, especially power relationships between the husband and wife. Uncovered in these texts is evidence of a redistribution of power, which allows some women to dominate other women and, in rare cases, men too. Like a Captive Bird offers a unique and fresh interpretation of Plutarch’s metaphysics which centers gender as one of the organizational principles of nature. It is aimed at scholars of Plutarch, ancient philosophy, and ancient gender studies, especially those who are interested in feminist studies of antiquity.

Winner, 2022 Society of Midland Authors award for Biography/Memoir

Evan S. Connell (1924–2013) emerged from the American Midwest determined to become a writer. He eventually made his mark with attention-getting fiction and deep explorations into history. His linked novels Mrs. Bridge (1959) and Mr. Bridge (1969) paint a devastating portrait of the lives of a prosperous suburban family not unlike his own that, more than a half century later, continue to haunt readers with their minimalist elegance and muted satire. As an essayist and historian, Connell produced a wide range of work, including a sumptuous body of travel writing, a bestselling epic account of Custer at the Little Bighorn, and a singular series of meditations on history and the human tragedy.
 
This first portrait and appraisal of an under-recognized American writer is based on personal accounts by friends, relatives, writers, and others who knew him; extensive correspondence in library archives; and insightful literary and cultural analysis of Connell’s work and its context. It also illuminates aspects of American publishing, Hollywood, male anxieties, and the power of place.

In the nineteenth century, the Cuban economy rested on the twin pillars of sugar and slaves. Slavery was abolished in 1886, but, one hundred years later, Cuban authors were still writing antislavery narratives. William Luis explores this seeming paradox in his groundbreaking study Literary Bondage, asking why this literary genre has remained a viable means of expression.

Applying Foucault's theory of counter-discourse to a vast body of antislavery literature, Luis shows how these narratives have always served to undermine the foundations of slavery, to protest the marginalized status of blacks in Cuban society, and to rewrite the canon of "acceptable" history and literature. He finds that emancipation did not end the need for such counter-discourse and reveals how the antislavery narrative continues to provide a forum for voices that have been silenced by the dominant culture.

In addition to such well-known works as Cecilia Valdés, The Kingdom of This World, and The Autobiography of a Runaway Slave, Luis draws on many literary works outside the familiar canon, including Romualdo, uno de tantos, Aponte, SofíaLa familia Unzúazu, El negrero, and Los guerrilleros negros. This comprehensive coverage raises important questions about the process of canon-formation and brings to light Cuba's rich heritage of Afro-Latin literature and culture.

This innovative collection challenges the traditional focus on solitary genius by examining the rich diversity of literary couplings and collaborations from the early modern to the postmodern period. Literary Couplings explores some of the best-known literary partnerships—from the Sidneys to Boswell and Johnson to Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes—and also includes lesser-known collaborators such as Daphne Marlatt and Betsy Warland. The essays place famous authors such as Samuel Coleridge, Oscar Wilde, and William Butler Yeats in new contexts; reassess overlooked members of writing partnerships; and throw new light on texts that have been marginalized due to their collaborative nature. By integrating historical studies with authorship theory, Literary Couplings goes beyond static notions of the writing "couple" to explore literary couplings created by readers, critics, historians, and publishers as well as by writers themselves, thus expanding our understanding of authorship.

Disease—real or imagined, physical or mental—is a common theme in Western literature and is often a symbol of modern alienation. In Literary Diseases, a comprehensive analysis of the metaphorical and symbolic force of disease in modern Italian literature, Gian-Paolo Biasin expands the geography of the discussion of this important theme. Using as a backdrop the perspective of European experiences of the previous hundred years, Biasin analyzes the theme of disease as a reflection of certain sociological and historical phenomena in modern European novels, as a metaphor for the world visions of selected Italian novelists, and especially as a vehicle for understanding the nature and function of fiction itself.

The core of Biasin’s study is found in his discussion of the works of four major Italian writers. In his criticism of the novels of Giovanni Verga, who stood at the center of many complex developments in the nineteenth century, he examines the antecedents of modern Italian prose. He then scrutinizes the works of Italo Svevo and Luigi Pirandello, who together inaugurated the modern novel in Italy. Of particular interest is his exploration of their critical use of psychoanalysis and madness climaxed by apocalyptic visions. He then discusses the prose of Carlo Emilio Gadda, which epitomizes the problems of the avant-garde in its experimentalism and expressionism.

Biasin utilizes a broad spectrum of critical approaches—from sociology, psychoanalysis, and different trends in modern French, American, and Italian literary criticism—in shaping his own methodology, which is a thematic and structural symbolism. He concludes that disease in literature should be considered as a metaphor for writing (écriture) and as a cognitive instrument that calls into question the anthropocentric values of Western culture. The book, with its textual comparisons and unusual supporting examples, constitutes a significant methodological contribution as well as a major survey of modern Italian prose, and will allow the reader to see traditional landmarks in European fiction in a new light.

A bold rethinking of genre as both form and philosophical problem. 

Why do we have literary genres, and what problems do they solve? In this original engagement with the ancient problem of literary genres, Enzo Melandri begins by asking why literary genres exist in the first place. His investigation extends beyond literary history, as important as it is, to become a philosophical inquiry into the limits of language and the strategies language must employ to register the impossibility of fully grasping its relation to the world. In this light, tragedy, comedy, epic, elegy, and so on emerge as the musical and emotional traces language bears from its encounter with its own limits.

Proponents and practitioners of narrative literary journalism have sought to assert its distinctiveness as both a literary form and a type of journalism. In Literary Journalism and the Aesthetics of Experience, John C. Hartsock argues that this often neglected kind of journalism—exemplified by such renowned works as John Hersey's Hiroshima, James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem—has emerged as an important genre of its own, not just a hybrid of the techniques of fiction and the conventions of traditional journalism.

Hartsock situates narrative literary journalism within the broader histories of the American tradition of “objective” journalism and the standard novel. While all embrace the value of narrative, or storytelling, literary journalism offers a particular “aesthetics of experience” lacking in both the others. Not only does literary journalism disrupt the myths sustained by conventional journalism and the novel, but its rich details and attention to everyday life question readers' cultural assumptions. Drawing on the critical theories of Nietzsche, Bakhtin, Benjamin, and others, Hartsock argues that the aesthetics of experience challenge the shibboleths that often obscure the realities the other two forms seek to convey.

At a time when print media appear in decline, Hartsock offers a thoughtful response to those who ask, “What place if any is there for a narrative literary journalism in a rapidly changing media world?”

Available for the first time in paperback, this book is a succinct distillation of the work and thought of William Charvat, a pioneer in the study of the history of the American book. This burgeoning field of inquiry investigates the social and cultural context of the act of literary creation by relating it to the modes of its production and distribution. This new edition of Literary Publishing in America contains an afterword by Michael Winship that discusses scholarship in the field since publication of Charvat's groundbreaking work.