Jesse Oak Taylor (English) teaches ecocriticism, a field that uses literature, art, film, video games, and other cultural artifacts (a taxidermied leopard skin, for example) to understand humanity’s relationship with the Earth. The “eco” in ecology comes from the Greek word oikos, for “home” or “dwelling,” while criticism in this case refers to judgement or discernment. Hence, ecocriticism is not only a mode of reading, but rather of dwelling critically, thinking about how reading literature can help us understand the world we live in. Ecocriticism is a practice, a mode of action as well as contemplation. It attempts not merely to understand the world, but to change it; to imagine new worlds, and to make worlds bearable; to mourn what has been lost and cling to all we can still save.
For Humanities First, Taylor is excited to think about what it means to read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) in the context of the Anthropocene, a new epoch in Earth’s history defined by human action. Eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in the midst of climate chaos produced by the eruption of Mt Tambora, in Indonesia, which produced the infamous “Year Without a Summer.” What does it mean to read it now, two hundred years later, in the midst of climate change, wildfire smoke, and a looming sense of planetary catastrophe?
