Women and Nature? Beyond Dualism in Gender, Body, and Environment Routledge Environmental Humanities Series

Women and Nature? Beyond Dualism in Gender, Body, and Environment provides a historical context for understanding the contested relationships between women and nature, and it articulates strategies for moving beyond the dualistic theories and practices that often frame those relationships.

In 1974, Françoise d?Eaubonne coined the term "ecofeminism" to raise awareness about interconnections between women?s oppression and nature?s domination in an attempt to liberate women and nature from subordination. Since then, ecofeminism has attracted scholars and activists from various disciplines and positions to assess the relationship between the cultural human and the natural non-human through gender reconsiderations. The contributors to this volume present critical and constructive perspectives on ecofeminism throughout its history, from the beginnings of ecofeminism in the 1970s through to contemporary and emerging developments in the field, drawing on animal studies, postcolonialism, film studies, transgender studies, and political ecology.

This interdisciplinary and international collection of essays demonstrates the ongoing relevance of ecofeminism as a way of understanding and responding to the complex interactions between genders, bodies, and the natural environment. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of ecofeminism as well as those involved in environmental studies and gender studies more broadly.

Acknowledgments

Notes on Contributors

Editor’s Foreword

Sam Mickey

Part I: Overview

Introduction Karen Ya-Chu Yang

1. Françoise d’Eaubonne and Ecofeminism: Rediscovering the Link between Women and Nature Luca Valera

Part II: Rethinking Animality

2. A Retreat on the "River Bank": Perpetuating Patriarchal Myths in Animal Stories Anja Höing

3. Visual Patriarchy:PETA Advertising and the Commodification of Sexualized Bodies
Stephanie Baran

4. Ethical Transfeminism: Transgender Individuals’ Narratives as Contributions to Ethics of Vegetarian Ecofeminisms Anja Koletnik

Part III: Constructing Connections

5. The Women-Nature Connection as a Key Element in the Social Construction of Western Contemporary Motherhood Adriana Teodorescu

6. The Relationship of Women’s Body Image and Experience in Nature Denise Mitten and Chiara D’Amore

7. Writing Women into Back-to-the-Land: Feminism, Appropriation, and Identity in the 1970s Feminist Magazine Country WomenValerie Padilla Carroll

Part IV: Mediating Practices

8. Bilha Givon as Sartre’s "Third Party" in Environmental Dialogues
Shlomit Tamari

9. "Yo soy mujer" ¿yo soy ecologista? Feminist and Ecological Consciousness at the Women’s Intercultural Center Christina Holmes

10. The Politics of Land, Water, and Toxins: Reading the Life-narratives of Three Women Oikos-carers from Kerala R. Sreejith Varma and Swarnalatha Rangarajan

11. Ecofeminism and the Telegenics of Celebrity in Documentary Film: The Case of Aradhana Seth’s Dam/Age (2003) and the Narmada Bachao Andolan Reena Dube

12. AfterwordIzabel F. O. Brandão

Douglas A. Vakoch is President of METI International, a nonprofit research and educational organization devoted to Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI) and supporting the sustainability of human culture on multigenerational timescales, which is essential for long-term METI research.

Sam Mickey is Adjunct Professor in the Theology and Religious Studies Department at the University of San Francisco, U.S.