Institutionalized ecocriticism canonized only American authors for over a decade

Evidence

In October 1995, the New York Times Sunday Magazine featured a cover story by Jay Parini entitled “The Greening of the Humanities.” 2 Parini described the rise to prominence of environmentalism in the humanities, especially in literature departments. At the end of the essay, he named twenty-five writers and critics whose work was central to this environmental studies boom. Something struck me as odd about the list, something that passed unmentioned in the article: all twenty-five writers and critics were American. … This unselfconscious parochialism was disturbing, not least because at that time I was involved in the campaign to release Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Ogoni author who was being held prisoner without trial for his environmental and human rights activism in Nigeria. Two weeks after Parini’s New York Times article appeared, the Abacha regime executed Saro-Wiwa, making him Africa’s most visible environmental martyr. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 717

Categorization

• SEED: The parochial-canon anecdote is a strong opening hook for an essay on how disciplinary canons silently reproduce national boundaries — ‘the 25 Americans’ as a teachable moment.
• XREF: Connects to the polyad’s settler-colonial/land strand and to Nixon’s ch.22 on Saro-Wiwa as first African environmental-committed writer. — connects to: Academic canonization may domesticate critical theory’s radical edge — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 30; Institutional structures, not intrinsic qualities, produce unified literary fields — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 513; Identity politics and poststructuralism delayed environmentalism’s entry into literary studies. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 774 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Identity politics and poststructuralism delayed environmentalism’s entry into literary studies. #corroborates (0.85) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 774
• Institutional structures, not intrinsic qualities, produce unified literary fields #expands (0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 513
• Academic canonization may domesticate critical theory’s radical edge #expands (0.78) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 30
• Institutionalization enables collective work while codification imposes a false orthodoxy #expands (0.75)