26643: Benson: (review) FW: Caribbean Literature and the Environment (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Legrace Benson <lgbenson@cbs.ucsb.edu>

Note that this book includes a chapter on Haitian Art and the Haitian
environment. The front cover, by arrangement with the Museum of Haitian Art
of the College of St.-Pierre in Port-au-Prince, is the great Earthly
Paradise painting of Wilson Bigaud.


-----Original Message-----
From: H-Net Network on Caribbean Studies [mailto:H-CARIBBEAN@H-NET.MSU.EDU]
On Behalf Of Matthew Smith University of the West Indies
Sent: Monday, November 14, 2005 3:40 PM
To: H-CARIBBEAN@H-NET.MSU.EDU
Subject: Caribbean Literature and the Environment

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 Contact: Emily K. Grandstaff
 434.982.2932 / emilyg@virginia.edu

 Caribbean Literature and the Environment
 Between Nature and Culture
 Edited by Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey, Renée K. Gosson, and George B.
Handley

 "Presenting a considerable range of island and mainland perspectives,
 Caribbean Literature and the Environment advances the understanding that

 there is a complexly intertwined human and natural history in that part
of
 the world. The topic of this new collection is urgent, absolutely
necessary,  and the execution of the project is first-rate, from the
articulate,
 synthesizing introduction to the precise demonstrations offered in the
collected articles." ?Scott Slovic, co-editor of What's Nature Worth?
 Narrative Expressions of Environmental Values

 The first volume to examine the literatures of the Caribbean from an
 ecocritical perspective in all language areas of the region, Caribbean
 Literature and the Environment gathers eighteen essays that consider the

relationship between human and natural history. Focusing on the dialectic

 between ?nature and ?culture,? this collection examines four overlapping

 themes: how Caribbean texts inscribe the environmental impact of colonial

 and plantation economies; how colonial myths of edenic and natural
origins
 are revisioned; what the connections are between histories of biotic and

 cultural creolization; and how a Caribbean aesthetics might usefully
 articulate a means to preserve sustainability in the context of tourism
and
 globalization.

 Including an extensive introduction by the editors and essays by Antonio

 Benítez-Rojo, Derek Walcott, Cyril Dabydeen, and Lizabeth
Paravisini-Gebert,
 among others, as well as interviews with Walcott and Raphaël Confiant,
this
 book will appeal to all those interested in Caribbean, literary, and
 ecocritical studies.

 Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey is Assistant Professor of English at Cornell
 University. Renée K. Gosson is Assistant Professor of French and
Francophone
 Studies at Bucknell University. George B. Handley is Associate Professor
of
 the Humanities at Brigham Young University and author of Postslavery
 Literatures in the Americas: Family Portraits in Black and White
(Virginia).

 A volume in the series New World Studies
 PUBLICATION DATE: December 20, 2005
 320 pages 6 x 9
 $59.50 cloth ISBN 0-8139-2373-5
 $22.50 paper ISBN 0-8139-2372-7