Hi Greg,

I think the application of modern ecofeminist theory and ecocritical theory to older texts is a newer and upcoming trend in scholarship, and quite frankly, I'm quite excited about it.  I don't know if you've taken any classes with Dr. Patrick D. Murphy here at UCF, but he is a pretty big deal in the arena of ecocritical theory.  I'm lucky enough that he agreed to supervise an independent study for myself and my classmate Blake this summer that centers around American EcoFeminism, and we'll be attempting to apply ecocritical theories to early American texts, specifically women's writings.  Dr. Lisa M. Logan, also here at UCF, is studying ecofeminist approaches to early American texts.

And yes, access is a huge problem, especially if you're looking at non-traditional texts such as diaries, letters, commonplace books, pamphlets, etc.  You have to work with that is in the digital archives, or physically travel to libraries and special collections.  And of course, there are texts on microfilm and microfiche that have not yet been converted to digital files.

-Jay Jay

Jay Jay, I find it exciting that you are exploring earlier texts from an ecocritical and feminist perspective—Kilcup’s abstract makes a good point that most of the nature-writing we look to is of more recent vintage. I will be very interested to see what you discover in your course this summer. Is there a specific time period you want to look at, and do you have any authors in mind yet? Dr. Murphy assigned Mary Austin’s Land of Little Rain when I took his course, but that falls into the twentieth century (1903). Her writing is reminiscent of John Burroughs' journaling, although she provides a more intimate connection with the natural world.

Marcy,

Thank you for recommending Mary Austin's Land of Little Rain, I will be checking that out soon. Blake and I will actually be blogging our findings for the summer course, which can be found here:

http://twoecofeminists.blogspot.com

We are attempting to cover a wide range of ecocritical and ecofeminist theory, and then we'll be attempting to apply these theories to a primary text from the early American time period. We haven't decided on which primary texts we'll be using, but I'll keep you updated.

-Jay Jay

PS: I tried several times to get the link to insert, but it just wouldn't work properly.  I don't know if it is because I use Google Chrome, but it would break up the link in weird spots or put the link in between the word following the link.  You'll just have to copy and paste the URL into another window, sorry about that!