Table of Contents

Foreword: Storied Matter
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
Introduction: Stories Come to Matter
Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann

Part I. Material Ecocriticism: Theories and Relations
1. From Ecological Postmodernism to Material Ecocriticism: Creative Materiality and Narrative Agency Serpil Oppermann

2. On the Limits of Agency: Notes on the Material Turn from a Systems-Theoretical Perspective
Hannes Bergthaller

3. Creative Matter and Creative Mind: Cultural Ecology and Literary Creativity
Hubert Zapf

4. Natural Play, Natural Metaphor and Natural Stories: Biosemiotic Realism
Wendy Wheeler

5. The Ecology of Color: Goethe's Materialist Optics and Ecological Posthumanism Heather Sullivan

Part II. Narratives of Matter
6. Bodies of Naples: Stories, Matter, and the Landscapes of Porosity
Serenella Iovino
7. When It Rains
Lowell Duckert

8. Painful Material Realities, Avoidance, Ecophobia
Simon C. Estok
9. Semiotization of Matter: A Hybrid Zone between Biosemiotics and Material Ecocriticism
Timo Maran

Part III. Politics of Matter
10. Pro/Polis: Three Forays into the Political Lives of Bees
Catriona Sandilands

11. Excremental Ecocriticism and the Global Sanitation Crisis Dana Phillips

12. Oceanic Origins, Plastic Activism, and New Materialism at Sea
Stacy Alaimo
13. Meditations on Natural Worlds, Disabled Bodies, and a Politics of Cure
Eli Clare

Part IV. Poetics of Matter
14. Corporeal Fieldwork and Risky Art: Peter Goin and the Making of Nuclear Landscapes
Cheryll Glotfelty

15. Of Material Sympathies, Paracelsus, and Whitman
Jane Bennett

16. Source of Life: Avatar, Amazonia, and an Ecology of Selves
Joni Adamson

17. The Liminal Space between Things: Epiphany and the Physical
Timothy Morton

Coda: Open Closure
A Diptych on Material Spirituality
18. Spirits that Matter: Pathways towards a Rematerialization of Religion and Spirituality
Kate Rigby
19. Mindful New Materialisms: Buddhist Roots for Material Ecocriticism's Flourishing
Greta Gaard

Afterword: The Commonwealth of Breath
David Abram

Works Cited
List of Contributors
Index

About the Author

Serenella Iovino is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Turin, Italy.

Serpil Oppermann is Professor of English at Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey.

Reviews

"References and engages with the major works and writers on the new materialism with its focus on material entanglements and material agency... The quality of the essays ensures that this will be a useful volume for both undergraduate and graduate courses." - Anne Elvey, Monash University "The contributions to this collection are consistently well-written, balancing technical language, poetic vividness, and accessibility. Of interest to literary scholars and readers throughout the environmental humanities and theoretical sciences." - Scott Slovic, Idaho State University