About the Author

Dana Phillips earned a doctorate in English at Duke University. He has published articles on American literature in Raritan, American Literature, Arizona Quarterly, Nineteenth-Century Literature and New Literary History.

Reviews

"Readers concerned that the community of nature writers and ecocritics has become too chummy and self-congratulatory...need look no further than Dana Phillips's witty and provocative new book for an astringent remedy.... Reading The Truth of Ecology...will make you stronger, better able to appreciate and evaluate the literature that explores our relationship with nature."--Orion
"The grand project of this text is to urge writers to question the gaps between experience and language, perception and description; these are worthwhile portals of inquiry for writers working in landscapes that seem to have a priori discrete identities."--Western American Literature
"The Truth of Ecology will help ecocriticism come of age. Dana Phillips is a tough, challenging, and unsentimental reader. Even those who disagree with him will agree that he adds two crucial elements to current discourse in the environmental humanities: a powerful philosophical armature and a genuinely sophisticated understanding of ecological science and its discontents."--William Howarth, Princeton University
"The Truth of Ecology is a fiercely interesting book at least in part because it is quite fierce. Dana Phillips takes on the very young tradition of ecocriticism, which he finds already moldy. He declares a pox on both the houses of nature-as-text and nature-as-the-world-out-there. But if he has a sharp eye for an argument, Mr. Phillips is also immensely learned, balanced, generous. Nature-writing is the most classic American literature and The
Truth of Ecology does it full and rare justice."--Myra Jehlen, Rutgers University
"The Truth of Ecology provides a penetrating assessment of contemporary conceptions of nature and ecology, which have been plagued by a combination of mysticism and literalism. Dana Phillips is setting ecocriticism on the right track: toward a theoretically rigorous, truly interdisciplinary, and imaginative discussion of the entanglements of nature and culture."--Bonnie Costello, Boston University
"The Truth of Ecology is a significant intervention in the ongoing nature/culture debates. Within its original contributions to these debates, Dana Phillips's book raises important questions abut the relationship between science and the humanities through querying the function of theory in both these fields. It is a polemic of exceptional theoretical rigor and imagination, written with a fine sense of style, of which wit is a welcome component. Whether
or not one is interested in ecocriticism per se, the book has a lot to offer in its wide ranging interests and is a pleasure to read for the lively critical intelligence therein engaged."--Eric Cheyfitz,
University of Pennsylvania
"Readers concerned that the community of nature writers and ecocritics has become too chummy and self-congratulatory...need look no further than Dana Phillips's witty and provocative new book for an astringent remedy.... Reading The Truth of Ecology...will make you stronger, better able to appreciate and evaluate the literature that explores our relationship with nature."--Orion
"The Truth of Ecology will help ecocriticism come of age. Dana Phillips is a tough, challenging, and unsentimental reader. Even those who disagree with him will agree that he adds two crucial elements to current discourse in the environmental humanities: a powerful philosophical armature and a genuinely sophisticated understanding of ecological science and its discontents."--William Howarth, Princeton University
"The grand project of this text is to urge writers to question the gaps between experience and language, perception and description; these are worthwhile portals of inquiry for writers working in landscapes that seem to have a priori discrete identities."--Western American Literature
"The Truth of Ecology is a fiercely interesting book at least in part because it is quite fierce. Dana Phillips takes on the very young tradition of ecocriticism, which he finds already moldy. He declares a pox on both the houses of nature-as-text and nature-as-the-world-out-there. But if he has a sharp eye for an argument, Mr. Phillips is also immensely learned, balanced, generous. Nature-writing is the most classic American literature and The
Truth of Ecology does it full and rare justice."--Myra Jehlen, Rutgers University
"The Truth of Ecology provides a penetrating assessment of contemporary conceptions of nature and ecology, which have been plagued by a combination of mysticism and literalism. Dana Phillips is setting ecocriticism on the right track: toward a theoretically rigorous, truly interdisciplinary, and imaginative discussion of the entanglements of nature and culture."--Bonnie Costello, Boston University
"The Truth of Ecology is a significant intervention in the ongoing nature/culture debates. Within its original contributions to these debates, Dana Phillips's book raises important questions abut the relationship between science and the humanities through querying the function of theory in both these fields. It is a polemic of exceptional theoretical rigor and imagination, written with a fine sense of style, of which wit is a welcome component. Whether
or not one is interested in ecocriticism per se, the book has a lot to offer in its wide ranging interests and is a pleasure to read for the lively critical intelligence therein engaged."--Eric Cheyfitz,
University of Pennsylvania