The focus of my research ranges across a variety of seemingly disconnected topics–haiku poetry, Native American literature, Southwestern nature writing, Mexican gray wolves, Australian desert literature, Loren Eiseley–but these diverse topics are unified by my interest in the issues involved in cross-cultural ecocriticism and the closely related field of place-conscious, especially bioregional, approaches to literature.
I have also grown to understand settler colonialism as an important context for analyzing the relationship between literature, culture, and nature in places such as the US West and Australian Outback.
My current major research project compares literature of the American West with literature of the Australian Outback. It blends ecocriticism with settler colonial studies to argue that many of the environmental problems in the West and the Outback are related to the fact that both places are arid and semi-arid regions that have been colonized primarily by English-speaking settler-colonial societies. These recent articles are a part of this project and illustrate some of my thinking:
- “Nothing but land”: Women’s Narratives, Gardens, and the Settler-Colonial Imaginary in the US West and Australian Outback
- Strange Lands: The Lexicon of Settler Colonial Landscapes in Charles Fletcher Lummis’s and Arthur Groom’s Portrayal of the American West and the Australian Outback
- Ecopastoralism: Settler Colonial Pastoral Imaginary in the US West and Australian Outback
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