In literary and cinematic representations, deserts often betoken collapse and dystopia. Reading Aridity in Western American Literature offers readings of literature set in the American Southwest from ecocritical and new materialist perspectives. This book explores the diverse epistemologies, histories, relationships, futures, and possibilities that emerge from the representation of American deserts in fiction, film, and literary art, and traces the social, cultural, economic, and ...

In the American Southwest, Hispano, Indian, and Euro-American cultures display conflicting and competing avenues for legitimacy. Examining literature of the region, The Haunted Southwest makes use of theories of place, space, and haunting to show how memory instills an ethic and orientation tied to embodied knowledge.American modernist ideologies accelerated the erasure of indigenous histories and ways of being-in-the-world. The Haunted Southwest digs under spatia...

Reframing traditional conceptions of ecologyEcologies of Resistance brings together fourteen groundbreaking studies on Latin American and Latinx writing, visual and performing arts, film, and activism that propose alternatives to prevailing colonial and neocolonial conceptions of ecology. The contributors question the artificially imposed separation of the human and nonhuman, human dominance over place, and the concept of progress measured in strictly econ...

In the words of series editor Steven L. Davis, We Are Nature Defending Itself: An Anthology of Women on Bodies, Borders, and Place is “a revelation, a multicultural blend of well-known and emerging writers who come together to give nature a voice in our literature and our lives.” Not least of the many benefits to readers are its contributions from prominent Latina writers, presented here as advocates for the environment. Though this theme has long existed in Chicana literature, it...