Environmental Knowledge, Race, and African American Literature

by Matthias Klestil

This open access book suggests new ways of reading nineteenth-century African American literature environmentally. Combining insights from ecocriticism, African American studies, and Foucauldian theory, Matthias Klestil examines forms of environmental knowledge in African American writing ranging from antebellum slave narratives and pamphlets to Charlotte Forten’s journals, Booker T. Washington’s autobiographies, and Charles W. Chesnutt’s short fiction. The volume highlights how literary forms of environmental knowledge in the African American tradition were shaped by the histories of slavery and race, mainstream environmental writing traditions, and African American forms of expression and intertextuality. Turning to the Underground Railroad, debates over education and home-building, and the aesthetics of the pastoral and the georgic, Environmental Knowledge, Race, and African American Literature provides an original perspective on the African American ecoliterary traditionthat uncovers new facets of canonical and understudied texts and offers new directions for ecocriticism and African American studies.

440 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 20, 2023

Reviews

[Breanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Environmental knowledge is an interesting theory that Klestil explains well and demonstrates throughout many fugitive slave narratives. He goes into detail about specific works more like a research thesis at times, but you can easily skip over those sections if they aren’t related to your studies. But the core info presented here was well articulated and relevant to understanding the strategic pastoral.