Description
Book SynopsisOffers a study of literary and cultural responses to global environmental risk in an age of unfolding ecological catastrophe. Taking inspiration from the questions raised by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’s synecdochical “nuclear”, Risk Criticism aims to generate a hybrid form of critical practice that brings “nuclear criticism” into conversation with ecocriticism.
Trade ReviewThis is an important book, one that will be of interest to students of contemporary literature and culture generally and to eco-criticism and eco-theory particularly. It is impressively steeped in eco-critical scholarship and theory, advances knowledge in the environmental humanities, and exposes readers to absorbing, intelligent discussions of a variety of texts.”—Fred Buell, Queen’s College, CUNY
""Risk Criticism makes a significant, original contribution to ecocriticism in showing how we might learn from the juxtaposition and overlap of varied types and sites of risk, including climate change, plastics, and nuclear weapons. This book is valuable in its rich archive, which encompasses canonical and emerging literary works as well as visual art, film, and other materials, and is important for providing ways to engage the unknown in present, past, and future ecological upheaval.”—Teresa Shewry, University of California, Santa Barbara
""With rare skill, Molly Wallace pulls together the imaginative, technological, ethical and political dimensions of environmental risk. Her book offers an impressive mix of conceptual innovation and grounded case studies. Risk Criticism exemplifies the environmental humanities at their eclectic best: consequential, worldly, and infused with an interdisciplinary vitality.”—Rob Nixon, Princeton University
""Here we have a careful and astute reworking of nuclear criticism—brought thoughtfully together with contemporary ecocritical work and sociological theories of risk. The great achievement of this book is that Wallace invents and performs a kind of risk criticism appropriate to life in the twenty-first century; more than fabulously textual, this risk criticism is alive to the speculative, the fictive, the imaginative and the decidedly real predicaments of our second nuclear age.”—Peter van Wyck, Concordia University
