Interrogating Boundaries of the Nonhuman

Matthias Stephan is associate professor at Aarhus University, coordinator at the Centre for Studies in Otherness, author of Defining Literary Postmodernism for the Twenty-First Century, and editor of Otherness: Essays and Studies.Sune Borkfelt is lecturer at Aarhus University and author of Reading Slaughter: Abattoir Fictions, Space, and Empathy in Late Modernity.

• Part I: Past Narratives of Environmental CrisisChapter 1: The Peculiar Associations of Melville’s “Encantadas”: Nature and National AllegoryKristen R. EganChapter 2: Making a Difference? Richard Jefferies’ After London, E. M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops,” and Climate Change FictionAdrian TaitChapter 3: Stories of “Being-with” Other Animals: A Case of Humans and Horses Mary TrachselPart II: WitnessingChapter 4: Animal Texts: How Coyote America and American Wolf Embody the Literary Animal Through A Cross-Disciplinary ApproachLauren E. PerryChapter 5: Beautiful and Sublime: Embracing Otherness in Mary Oliver’s EcopoetryAnastasia CardoneChapter 6: The Sea’s Witness: Narration, Texturisation and Reader Responsibility in Rachel Carson’s Oceanalia Lauren O’MahonyPart 3: Nonhuman Agency/Representation of the NonhumanChapter 7: The Posthuman Return: Transformation through Stillness in Richard Powers’s The OverstoryOwen HarryChapter 8: Classifying MonstersVera VeldhuizenChapter 9:

“Ranging from the nineteenth century to contemporary climate change fiction and embracing a variety of literary genres and geographical contexts, the essays in this collection offer a wide gamut of perspectives on how literature may probe nonhuman ways of being in the world and question anthropocentric assumptions. The collection positions debates on literature and climate change within a longer history of Western thinking on the nonhuman—a provocative and valuable move in today's scholarly landscape. Engaging with themes including animal experience, nuclear anxieties, and environmental activism, the authors convincingly show that literature is no mere illustration of posthumanist ideas but that its very form can perform philosophical tensions and positions in transformative ways.”