Back to the UCLA Americanist Research Colloquium (ARC) - Spring 2006 Schedule

"Eco-Tales: Finding, Telling, and Living the Stories for the Future" - Introduction
Bonnie Foote, Ph.D. Candidate, UCLA
April 20, 2006

Where are the stories that will help us create a better environmental future?  How are they told, what do they say - what patterns of form and content do they show?  How might authors, activists, and average citizens learn to find, tell, and live better environmental stories?  And what might the investigation of eco-tales have to tell us about literature as a whole?

These are the driving questions behind my dissertation, for which you will be reading the working introduction.  I suggest a purpose-driven, cross-genre approach, analyzing a range of contemporary environmental narratives through the lenses of three major narrative goals:  To Warn, To Role-Model, and To Inspire.  (For instance, Erin Brockovich, Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony, an opinion piece by Molly Ivins protesting the relaxation of mercury emissions standards, and Rachel Carson's classic Silent Spring each display the key characteristics of a "warning" story.)  Ultimately, this purpose-driven approach suggests an understanding of any literary work as a member of its own interactive ecology--an understanding of literature which has been latent in ecocriticism from its inception as a field and should constitute its major contribution to literary theory as such.