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Fresh Leaves: Practicing Environmental Criticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Karen L. Kilcup
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Extract

Ecocide is more of a threat than nuclear war.

—Lawrence Buell

It is worth noting that [environmental destruction] is not the work of ignorant people. Rather, it is largely the result of work by people with BAs, BSs, LLBs, MBAs, and PhDs.

—David Orr

I cannot identify what sparked my environmental awareness. The romantic in me invokes childhood with an ardently outdoor maternal grandfather, who taught me to distinguish a beech tree from a birch, to plant potatoes, and to welcome the tree frogs' spring chorus with awe and delight. More likely, the recognition arrived not from childhood pleasures or reading Henry David Thoreau but from something as quotidian and cumulative as exhaustion from years of commuting from New Hampshire to Boston for work as an adjunct, sucking exhaust fumes on Route 128.

Type
The Changing Profession
Information
PMLA , Volume 124 , Issue 3 , May 2009 , pp. 847 - 855
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2009

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