Writing and the Environment Research Centre
The Writing and Environment Research Centre at Bath Spa University is devoted to supporting research and publication into ecocriticism, environmental and nature writing, and the environmental humanities broadly conceived. We are also interested in taking this work into interdisciplinary collaboration with scholars in geography, environmental sciences and other subject-areas. The Centres members are:
- Jude Allen
- Natasha Rivett-Carnac
- Lucy Christopher (PhD student)
- Sue Edney
- Paul Edwards
- Paul Evans
- Carrie Etter
- Hayden Gabriel
- Greg Garrard
- Richard Kerridge
- Jonathan Neale
- Tim Middleton
The Centre currently supports the publication of Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism and is sponsoring a symposium in June/July 2010 on Culture and Climate Change. It is also offering support to the joint conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (UK) and the European Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment at the University of Bath, September 2010.
Aims of the Centre
- To support research into environmental literature and culture, ecocriticism and discourses of culture and landscape.
- To disseminate such research through publications in books and academic journals, and through participation in international conferences.
- To organise events such as symposia and conferences that will demonstrate the engagement of Bath Spa University researchers in the field, and foster their engagement with leading scholars from other institutions.
- To provide a forum in which to develop collaborative and interdisciplinary research activities.
- To provide support for postgraduate students and early career researchers in this field.
- To raise the profile of Bath Spa in the environmental humanities nationally and internationally.
Recent and Forthcoming Publications
Greg Garrard is the Chair of ASLE-UK and Managing Editor of Green Letters. He is editing The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism and Teaching Ecocriticism and Green Cultural Studies (Palgrave), and working on a monograph on Bioliterary Theory. He recently completed the first annual review of ecocriticism for The Years Work in Critical and Cultural Theory.
Richard Kerridge co-edited Writing the Environment (Zed Books, 1998), the first collection of ecocritical essays to be published in Britain, and introduced an undergraduate module in ecocriticism in 1992; possibly the first in the country, it has run almost uninterruptedly since then. He was the first Chair of ASLE-UK (1999-2004) and an elected member of the ASLE Executive Council (2006-2009). Beginning Ecocriticism will appear from Manchester University Press in 2011. He has published ecocritical essays on numerous topics in the fields of contemporary fiction, contemporary poetry, contemporary nature writing, ecocritical theory and Thomas Hardy studies. Essays are forthcoming on climate change in contemporary fiction and an ecocritical reading of Shakespeare. He has twice won the BBC Wildlife Award for Nature Writing.
Jonathan Neale tries to combine activism and writing. He is the author of seven nonfiction books, four novels and ten plays, and hs been international secretary of the Campaign against Climate Change since 2005. In 2008 Jonathan published Stop Global Warming: Change the World, and in 2009 he edited a report One Million Climate Jobs Now for an alliance of British unions. He is now editing a book length report for the unions on green jobs.