Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-hgkh8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T08:55:40.730Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Literature, Asia, and the Anthropocene: Possibilities for Asian Studies and the Environmental Humanities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2014

Get access

Extract

The term “Anthropocene,” coined in the 1980s by the ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer and popularized at the turn of the twenty-first century by the atmospheric chemist and Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, has been used increasingly in the past decade to highlight human activity as a geological force and to underscore the rapidly escalating impacts of human behaviors on the planet—sufficient, many have argued, to launch a new geological age. While geologists and environmentalists continue to debate the validity of Anthropocene as a formal designation, climate change; mass extinctions of plant and animal species; and widespread pollution of sky, sea, and land make clear the extent to which humans have shaped global ecologies. An understanding of Asia—home to more than half the world's population, an increasingly significant contributor to global carbon dioxide emissions, the site of the Third Pole, and an area acutely vulnerable to climate change and rising sea levels—is vital to an understanding of the physical, chemical, biological, and cultural processes that comprise the Anthropocene.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Abé Kōbō, . 1959. Daiyon kanpyōki [Inter-ice age 4]. Tokyo: Kodansha.Google Scholar
Buell, Lawrence. 2005. The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Ch'oe Sŭngja, . 1984a. “Kyŏul e pada e kassŏtta” [Went to the sea in winter]. In Chŭlgŏun ilgi: Ch'oe Sŭngja sijip [Joyful diary: Collection of poetry by Ch'oe Sŭngja], 5051. Seoul: Munhak kwa Chisŏngsa.Google Scholar
Ch'oe Sŭngja, . 1984b. “Yŏŭido kwangsigok” [Rhapsody of Yŏŭido]. In Chŭlgŏun ilgi: Ch'oe Sŭngja sijip [Joyful diary: Collection of poetry by Ch'oe Sŭngja], 5460. Seoul: Munhak kwa Chisŏngsa.Google Scholar
George, Timothy. 2001. Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hudson, Mark. 2014. “Asia and the Anthropocene: Resilience, Vulnerability, and Change.” Presentation at Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, March 29.Google Scholar
ICIMOD Foundation. 2014. “What Is the Third Pole?” http://www.icimod.org/?q=3487 (accessed August 5, 2014).Google Scholar
International Commission on Stratigraphy, Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy. 2014. “Working Group on the ‘Anthropocene.’” http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/workinggroups/anthropocene/ (accessed August 5, 2014).Google Scholar
Ishimure Michiko, . [1969] 2004. Kugai jōdo: Waga Minamatabyō [Sea of suffering and the pure land: Our Minamata disease]. In Ishimure Michiko zenshū 2 [The complete works of Ishimure Michiko 2], 7254. Tokyo: Fujiwara Shoten.Google Scholar
Kim, Chǒngnan. 2003. “Late Twentieth-Century Poetry by Women.” In A History of Korean Literature, ed. Lee, Peter H., 457–67. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Loh, Shi-Lin. 2012. “Beyond Peace: Pluralizing Japan's Nuclear History.” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 10 (11, no. 6). http://www.japanfocus.org/-Shi_Lin-Loh/3716 (accessed August 3, 2014).Google Scholar
Minh Chuyen, . [2005] 2010a. “A Father and His Children.” Translated by Lien, Huy and Waugh, Charles. In Family of Fallen Leaves: Stories of Agent Orange by Vietnamese Writers, eds. Waugh, Charles and Lien, Huy, 120–33. Athens: University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Minh Chuyen, . [2005] 2010b. “Le Cao Dai and the Agent Orange Sufferers.” Translated by Lien, Huy and Waugh, Charles. In Family of Fallen Leaves: Stories of Agent Orange by Vietnamese Writers, eds. Waugh, Charles and Lien, Huy, 161–71. Athens: University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Rohith, P. 2011. “People and Forests: An Eco-Social Reading of Kadamanitta's Poems.” In Ecological Criticism for Our Times: Literature, Nature and Critical Inquiry, eds. Sivaramakrishnan, Murali and Jana, Ujjwal, 147–60. New Delhi: Authorspress.Google Scholar
Sakaki Nanao, . [1986] 1989. “Nihonjin no senzo” [Ancestors of the Japanese]. In Chikyū B: Nanao Sakaki shishū [Earth B: Collection of poetry by Sakaki Nanao], 4243. Tokyo: Sutajio Rīfu.Google Scholar
Sheng Keyi, . 2014. “China's Poisonous Waterways.” New York Times. April 6, Sunday Review, 4.Google Scholar
Snyder, Gary. 1987. “Foreword.” In Break the Mirror: The Poems of Nanao Sakaki, Nanao Sakaki, ixxii. Nobleboro, Maine: Blackberry Books.Google Scholar
Stromberg, Joseph. 2013. “What Is the Anthropocene and Are We in It?” Smithsonian Magazine. January. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-is-the-anthropocene-and-are-we-in-it-164801414/ (accessed August 3, 2014).Google Scholar
Tekin, Latife. 1984. Berci Kristin çöp masallari [Berji Kristin: Tales from the garbage hills]. Istanbul: Adam.Google Scholar
Thornber, Karen. 2012. Ecoambiguity: Environmental Crises and East Asian Literatures. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Tsing, Anna et al. 2009. “Matsutake Worlds: A New Form of Collaboration in Cultural Anthropology.” American Ethnologist 36(2):380403.Google Scholar
Voosen, Paul. 2013. “Who Is Conservation For?” Chronicle Review. November 15, B6–13.Google Scholar
Wang, Lixiong. 1991. Huang huo [Yellow peril]. 3 vols. New York: Mirror Books.Google Scholar
Charles, Waugh and Lien, Huy, eds. 2010. Family of Fallen Leaves: Stories of Agent Orange by Vietnamese Writers. Athens: University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, Diane. 2005. An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters, and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas. White River Junction, Vt.: Chelsea Green Publishing.Google Scholar
Wilson, Diane. 2011. Diary of an Eco-Outlaw: An Unreasonable Woman Breaks the Law for Mother Earth. White River Junction, Vt.: Chelsea Green Publishing.Google Scholar