Thoreau's Nature: Ethics, Politics, and the Wild explores how Thoreau crafted a life open to 'the Wild,' a term that marks the startling element of foreignness in every object of experience, however familiar. Thoreau's encounters with nature, Bennett argues, allowed him to resist his all-too-human tendency toward intellectual laziness, social conformity, and political complacency. Bennett pursues this theme by constructing a series of dialogues between Thoreau and our contemporaries: Foucault on identity and power, Haraway on the nature/culture of division, Hollywood celebrities on the Walden Woods Project, the National Endowment for the Humanities on politics and art, and Kafka on the question of political idealism. The pertinence to the late 20th century of Thoreau's pursuit of independent judgment, ecological foresight, and moral nobility becomes apparent through these engagements.

In the seventeenth century the ancient hope for the physical resurrection of the body and its flesh began an unexpected second life as critical theory, challenging the notion of an autonomous self and driving early modern avant-garde poetry. As an emerging empirical scientific world view and a rising Cartesian dualist ontology transformed the ancient hope for the resurrection of the flesh into the fantasy of a soul or mind living on separately from any body, literature complicated the terms of the debate. Such poets as Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, and Jonson picked up the discarded idea of the resurrection of the flesh and bent it from an apocalyptic future into the here and now to imagine the self already infused with the strange, vibrant materiality of the resurrection body. Fate of the Flesh explores what happens when seventeenth-century poets posit a resurrection body within the historical person. These poets see the resurrection body as the precondition for the social person’s identities and forms of agency and yet as deeply other to all such identities and agencies, an alien within the self that both enables and undercuts life as a social person. This perspective leads seventeenth-century poets to a compelling awareness of the unsettling materiality within the heart of the self and allows them to re-imagine agency, selfhood, and the natural world in its light. By developing a poetics that seeks a deranging materiality within the self, these poets anticipate twentieth-century “avant-garde” poetics. They frame their poems neither as simple representation nor as beautiful objects but as a form of social praxis that creates new communities of readers and writers assembled around a new experience of self-as-body mediated by poetry.

Turning on its head that familiar "woman question," this innovative work poses masculinity as a problem that requires explanation. Ferguson rebukes the sense of coherence contained in patriarchal theory in the name of a voice that both calls upon and challenges the category woman. Stepping back from the opposition of male and female, she artfully loosens the hold of gender on life and meaning, creating and at the same time deconstructing a women's point of view. Posing the "man question" provides a way not only to view male power and female subordination but also to valorize and problematize women's experiences, thus destabilizing conventional notions of man and woman. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994. Turning on its head that familiar "woman question," this innovative work poses masculinity as a problem that requires explanation. Ferguson rebukes the sense of coherence contained in patriarchal theory in the name of a voice that both calls upon and chal

The book explores the profound insights of Seyyed Hossein Nasr, an Islamic scholar, on the ecological crisis and its underlying causes. Nasr argues that the dominance of scientism, which prioritizes contemporary science as the sole source of knowledge, has led to a destructive relationship between humans and nature. He proposes that restoring the religious perspective is crucial for finding a lasting solution to the ecological problem. The book delves into Nasr's comprehensive body of work, covering diverse subjects such as Islamic philosophy, Islamic art, Islamic science, Sufism, and the ecological crisis. Nasr's approach advocates for a holistic and inclusive philosophy that draws inspiration from the perennial philosophy and the principles of Islam. He emphasizes the importance of reconnecting with our spiritual heritage and rediscovering reverence for the natural world. The book also discusses the relevance and applicability of Nasr's ideas to non-Islamic cultures and societies. This is a unique study into the work of an important Islamic scholar and ecologist. The key audience includes scholars and researchers interested in Islamic philosophy, environmental ethics, and the intersection of religion and ecology.

A comprehensive analysis of diverse areas of scholarly research on U.S. environmental policy and politics, this Handbook looks at the key ideas, theoretical frameworks, empirical findings and methodological approaches to the topic. Leading environmental policy scholars emphasize areas of emerging research and opportunities for future enquiry.

Nature in Modernity: Servant, Citizen, Queen or Comrade explores the origins and implications of the mastery of nature agenda within Western culture and argues that there is a long-standing parallel «shadow» tradition grounded instead in mutuality, respect and reciprocity. This is explored in a series of chapters that focus on our hunter-gatherer heritage, the shift to a more sedentary and agricultural life and the subsequent emergence of mastery of self and nature as the dominant cultural objective. The impact of this mastery agenda on the natural environment is explored and a case made that our current ecological crisis has its origins in this tradition of mastery. A counter tradition is examined, identifying a range of cultural tools grounded in alternative traditions, tools that can be used to create a culture of care, mutuality and reciprocity in which it will be logical to welcome nature in all its complexity as a fellow citizen.