kate rigby
Kate Rigby
(Fellow of the Australian Humanities Academy and of the Alexander
von Humboldt Foundation) is Associate Professor in the Centre for
Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Monash University
in Melbourne, where she has worked since 1991. She is a founding
co-editor of the Australian journal of sustainability thought and
practice, PAN (Philosophy Activism Nature), and has published widely in
the areas of ecocriticism, ecophilosophy, and ecology and religion, as
well as in German Studies, which is her ‘home’ discipline. Kate is the
founding President of the Australia-New Zealand Association for the Study of Literature and Environment and
a member of the national working party on the Ecological Humanities.
She also serves on the editorial advisory board of the journal
Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (U of Nevada)
and the book series Nature Culture and Literature (Rodopi,
Netherlands). Her most recent book, Topographies of the Sacred. The Poetics of Place in European Romanticism
(University of Virginia Press, 2004) undertakes an ecocritical
reconsideration of literary, philosophical and religious discourses on
nature, place and poiesis in German and English Romanticism. Kate is
currently working on an ecocultural history of the Canberra region as a
member of an ARC-funded group research project on utopianism,
dystopianism and sustainability in Australia; co-editing with Axel
Goodbody (Bath) a volume of essays on ecocritical theory and European
thought; and embarking on a new project on the cultural mediation of
environmental catastrophe considered in the context of the social,
cultural and ethical challenges posed by Climate Change.
Current Research Projects
1.) Ecocritical Theory: New European Approaches
Together with Axel Goodbody (University of Bath), I am preparing an edited collection that is intended to provide the first overview of the potential contribution of twentieth-century European philosophy to contemporary ecocritical theory. Each essay presents an approach of relevance for ecocriticism in the broader sense – i.e. a theory underpinning the literary and cultural analysis of rhetorical strategies, narratives and imagery used to shape arguments about the relationship between the human and the non-human – and includes a demonstration of the practical application of the theory in question.
2.) Learning to Live on the Limestone Plains: Culture and Environment in Canberra and the ACT
This is an investigation into the ‘deep’ environmental history of the Canberra area, encompassing the geophysical, climatological, ecological and socio-cultural forces that have formed and transformed this place over time. My research is focused on particular sites in and around the present-day federal capital, from which different layers of this long history, along with different issues of current and future social and ecological concern, will be explored.
Canberra from Mount Ainslie
3.) Changing the Climate: Imagining Catastrophe
This is a collaborative project (currently in the running for ARC Discovery Project funding) examining responses to climate change and associated visions of the future within contemporary Australian art, literature and popular culture, and in the discourses of new religious and political movements. It will consider how such prefigurations are informed by earlier cultural assumptions, values and narratives and how they could either impede or facilitate our ability to respond creatively, compassionately and sustainably to the impact of climate change in our region. In association with this project, the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies will host a conference under this title in September 2010 (link).
Praise for Topographies of the Sacred:
“… heralds a new synthesis long overdue within what has been characterized as ‘green romanticism’. Eloquently written, passionately argued, and thoroughly researched, this work not only makes a lasting contribution to ecocriticism but pushes well beyond the pioneering efforts of its major figures [Bate, Buell, Kroeber, McKusick…and] will set the standard for future generations striving to engage and intervene in those ecological crises that threaten to overwhelm biotic diversity of the human and more than human.”
Mark Lussier, Arizona State U, in Organization and Environment
“Implicitly challenging the binary mode of thinking that opposes urban and rural contexts, the book’s final chapters takes the reader on a journey through “Verdant Veils and City Streets” […] This foray into urban Romanticism will surely inspire Romantic ecocritics and others to investigate the ecological dimensions of Romantic cityscapes, thereby helping to dismantle the urban/rural and other related nature/culture binary oppositions that implicitly continue to haunt much “green” discourse to its potential disadvantage.”
Kevin Hutchings, University of Northern British Columbia, in European Romantic Review
“I have taken more notes on this book than on anything else since Buell’s Environmental Imagination: its contribution to Ecocritical debate is of comparable importance.”
Axel Goodbody, University of Bath, in Green Letters
Selected publications
Books
Refereed Articles
Journal Guest Editorship
Other Articles
Book Chapters
Current Research Projects
1.) Ecocritical Theory: New European Approaches
Together with Axel Goodbody (University of Bath), I am preparing an edited collection that is intended to provide the first overview of the potential contribution of twentieth-century European philosophy to contemporary ecocritical theory. Each essay presents an approach of relevance for ecocriticism in the broader sense – i.e. a theory underpinning the literary and cultural analysis of rhetorical strategies, narratives and imagery used to shape arguments about the relationship between the human and the non-human – and includes a demonstration of the practical application of the theory in question.
2.) Learning to Live on the Limestone Plains: Culture and Environment in Canberra and the ACT
This is an investigation into the ‘deep’ environmental history of the Canberra area, encompassing the geophysical, climatological, ecological and socio-cultural forces that have formed and transformed this place over time. My research is focused on particular sites in and around the present-day federal capital, from which different layers of this long history, along with different issues of current and future social and ecological concern, will be explored.
Canberra from Mount Ainslie
3.) Changing the Climate: Imagining Catastrophe
This is a collaborative project (currently in the running for ARC Discovery Project funding) examining responses to climate change and associated visions of the future within contemporary Australian art, literature and popular culture, and in the discourses of new religious and political movements. It will consider how such prefigurations are informed by earlier cultural assumptions, values and narratives and how they could either impede or facilitate our ability to respond creatively, compassionately and sustainably to the impact of climate change in our region. In association with this project, the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies will host a conference under this title in September 2010 (link).
Praise for Topographies of the Sacred:
“… heralds a new synthesis long overdue within what has been characterized as ‘green romanticism’. Eloquently written, passionately argued, and thoroughly researched, this work not only makes a lasting contribution to ecocriticism but pushes well beyond the pioneering efforts of its major figures [Bate, Buell, Kroeber, McKusick…and] will set the standard for future generations striving to engage and intervene in those ecological crises that threaten to overwhelm biotic diversity of the human and more than human.”
Mark Lussier, Arizona State U, in Organization and Environment
“Implicitly challenging the binary mode of thinking that opposes urban and rural contexts, the book’s final chapters takes the reader on a journey through “Verdant Veils and City Streets” […] This foray into urban Romanticism will surely inspire Romantic ecocritics and others to investigate the ecological dimensions of Romantic cityscapes, thereby helping to dismantle the urban/rural and other related nature/culture binary oppositions that implicitly continue to haunt much “green” discourse to its potential disadvantage.”
Kevin Hutchings, University of Northern British Columbia, in European Romantic Review
“I have taken more notes on this book than on anything else since Buell’s Environmental Imagination: its contribution to Ecocritical debate is of comparable importance.”
Axel Goodbody, University of Bath, in Green Letters
Selected publications
Books
- 1996: Transgressions of the Feminine. Tragedy, Enlightenment and the Figure of Women in Classical German Drama, 270 pp. (Heidelberg: Winter, Reihe Siegen).
- 1996 (With Silke Beinssen-Hesse) Out of the Shadows. Contemporary German Feminism, c. 120 pp. (Melbourne: MUP, "Interpretations" series).
- 1999 (Co-edited with Constant Mews) Ecology, Gender and the Sacred, Clayton: Centre for Studies in Religion and Theology, Monash University - co-edited, with an introduction, co-written with Constant Mews.
- 2004: Topographies of the Sacred: The Poetics of Place in European Romanticism. Romanticism, Ecology and the Poetics of Place (University Press of Virginia).
Refereed Articles
- 1992: "The Return of the Repressed, or the Strange Case of Kleistian Feminism", Southern Review 25/3 (1992) pp.320-332.
- "Beyond the Frame: Art, Ecology and the Aesthetics of Nature", Thesis Eleven, 32 (1992), pp.114-128 (review article).
- 1998: "Women and Nature Revisited", Arena Journal no. 12, pp. 143-69 (review article).
- 1999: "Making Connections: Towards a Spirituality of Immanence", 1999.A Social Ecology Journal, pp. 209-24.
- 2000: "Goethean Science and the Blindness of Faust", Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, 7.2 (Summer 2000), 25-42.
- 2001: "The Discovery of (the Other) Place in European Romanticism,"European Romantic Review 12.2 (Spring 2001), Special Issue on Romanticism and the Physical, 165-74.
- 2001: "Recovering from the Fall: The Greening of Modernity," AUMLA(Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association) 96 (Nov. 2001), Special Issue on Nature and the Environment, 35-48.
- 2004: Kate Rigby 'Earth, World, Text: On the (Im)possibility of Ecopoiesis', New Literary History, 35.3 (Summer 2004), 427-42.
- 2005: “On not Eating the Limb of a Living Animal: Rethinking our Relations with (other) Animals,” Australian Humanities Review Issue 34 (Jan.-Feb. 2005), on-line.
- 2006: “Minding (about) Matter: On the Eros and Anguish of Earthly Encounter” (review essay), Australian Humanities Review, Issue 28 (2006)
- 2006: “Writing After Nature,” Australian Humanities Review, Issue 39-40 (Sept. 2006), 2007: “Tragedy, Modernity and Terra Mater: Christa Wolf Recounts the Fall,” New German Critique 101 (Summer 2007), 115-141.
- 2008 “Discoursing on Disaster: The Hermeneutics of Environmental Catastrophe,” Tamkang Review 39.1, 19-40.
- 2008 “Noah’s Ark Revisited: (Counter-)Utopianism and (Eco-)Catastrophe,” commissioned by Andrew Milner, Matthew Ryan and Simon Sellars for Demanding the Impossible: Utopia and Dystopia, North Carlton: Arena Publications, 163-78.
Journal Guest Editorship
- "Religion, Literature and the Earth" Special issue of Religion and Literature 40.1 (Spring 2008)
Other Articles
- 1993: "Germoney and 'the Change'", Arena Magazine 3 (Feb./Mar. 1993), 25-6.
- 1998: "The Cunning of Nature", Arena Magazine 35 (June-July 1998), 33-5.
- 2000: "The Politics of Pilgrimage", in Philosophy Activism Nature, No. 1, 23-30.
- 2002: (with Constant Mews) “Ecology, Gender and the Sacred,” Pacific Ecologist 2 (Winter 2002), 8-13
- 2004: “Returning to Rocky Nob: Stray Thoughts on Canberra,” Southerly 64.2 (2004), 94-117.
- 2005: “Val Plumwood as Earth Visionary,” for Earthsong Journal No. 3 (Spring 2005), 24-5.
Book Chapters
- 1996: "Die Inszenierung des Weiblichen. Mythos und Aufklrung im Drama"("Staging the Feminine. Myth and Enlightenment in Drama"), in Corina Caduff (ed.), Das Geschlecht der Knste (The Gender of Art), Cologne and Weimar: Bhlau, 1-30.
- 1998: "Myth, Memory, Attunement: Towards a Sensuous Semiotics of Place", in C. Houston et al. (eds) Imagined Places. The Politics of Making Space, Bundoora: School of Sociology, Politics and Anthropology, La Trobe University, 175-82.
- 1999: "Forests of the Night: Topographies of the Sacred in European Romanticism", in M. Griffith and J. Tulip (eds), Spirit of Place: Source of the Sacred? Sydney: Centre for Studies in Religion, Literature and the Arts, Australian Catholic University, 328-337.
- 2001: "The Goddess Returns: Ecofeminist Reconfigurations of Gender, Nature and the Sacred", in F. Devlin-Glass and Lyn McCredden (eds), Feminist Poetics of the Sacred: Creative Suspicions, New York: OUP, 23-54.
- 2002: "Ecocriticism", in Julian Wolfreys (ed.), Introducing criticism at the 21st century, Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 151-78.
- 2003: "Tuning in the Spirit of Place" in J. Cameron (ed.) Changing Places: Re-imagining Australia Longueville Books, Sydney, pp. 107-115.
- 2004: "The Rebirth of Nature in Romantic Thought" in H. Heinze, C. Weller and H. Kreutz (eds) Worlds of Reading: On the Theory, History and Sociology of Cultural Practice, Festschrift for Walter Veit Peter Lang, Frankfurt, pp. 387-397.
- 2006: “(Not) by Design: Utopian Moments in the Creation of Canberra,” in Imagining the Future: Utopia and Dystopia, ed. A. Milner, M. Ryan and R. Savage, Arena Journal Series 25/26 (2006), 155-177.
- 2007: “Ecopoetics of the Limestone Plains,” in C.A. Cranston and Robert Zeller, The Littoral Zone. Australian Contexts and their Writers. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2007: 153-75.
- 2007: “Prometheus Redeemed? From Autoconstruction to Ecopoetics,” Catherine Keller and Laurel Kearns (eds), Eco-Spirit: Religions and Philosophies for the Earth. Fordham University Press, 2007: 270-94
- 2008 “(Post-)koloniale Inkorperierung: Ökologie und Esskultur in Australien,” in Claudia Lillge and Anne-Rose Meyer f(eds), Interkulturelle Mahlzeiten: Kulinarische Begegnungen und Kommunikation in der Literatur, Bielefeld: transcript, 315-36.
