Eco-Man: New Perspectives on Masculinity and Nature (Under the Sign of Nature) From University of Virginia Press

Product Description

The paradoxical role nature plays in American myth and history grows in part from the male's reverent fascination with the wilderness and his equally strong impulse to dominate it. Many canonical literary works-think of Thoreau, Melville, Hemingway, Faulkner-look to the wild as the site for establishing a man's selfhood. But nature is just as often subjected to his most violent displays of mastery.

This tension lies at the heart of Eco-Man, which brings together two rapidly growing fields: men's studies and ecocriticism. The two disciplines have rarely if ever touched on each other; brought together, men's studies is freed from the typical limitation of an exclusively urban-centered perspective, while ecocriticism engages an "ecomasculine" lens through which to view the field. The book's contents are diverse, but the contributors all challenge our idea of masculinity as merely the social code of patriarchy. By complicating our cultural notions of nature and masculinity, the volume's twenty essays question whether we can construct a notion of manhood around ecological principles and practices-and if so, what this would look like, and how it would enrich men's studies.

The varied assembly of contributors to Eco-Man -- including historians, philosophers, poets, both male and female -- have all written with the general reader in mind. The result is a book as approachable as it is groundbreaking.
Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #507550 in Books
Published on: 2004-08
Number of items: 1
Binding: Paperback
273 pages
Editorial Reviews

Warren Farrell, author 'Why Men Are The Way They Are' and 'The Myth of Male Power'
"'Eco-Man' is a refreshing, thoughtful and diverse expansion of the study of masculinity and its connection to nature."
Customer Reviews

Eco-Man: Ideological inquiry and cultural assessment
A wonderful book! Allister synthesizes the work of leading scholars into a coherent and useful exploration of the budding ecocritical field. Both abundantly accessible and scholarly, Eco-man interdisciplinarily addresses intersecting issues of gender and ecology, pooling a variety of resources into a ligical, potent, and helpful conversation on what it means to be a man in relation to the natural world. While this book helped me contextualize my own boyhood outdoor experiences as "culturally constructed," it also offered an inspiring vision for how we might render these experences meaningful and generative in the future. I highly recomend this book for women and men, scholars and non-scholars alike, who are interested in ecology, culture, and literature.