Ecofeminist Literary Pedagogy in India: A Route Map

Kalpana Rao Hulluru; Angela Sebastian

doi:10.5565/rev/indialogs.312

Ecofeminist Literary Pedagogy in India

A Route Map

Authors

Kalpana Rao Hulluru https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8403-9353
Angela Sebastian https://orcid.org/0009-0006-1121-6925

PDF

Abstract

This paper aims to draw a route map for a distinctly Indian ecofeminist literary pedagogy that would encourage and equip literature students to address the growing ecological challenges. Ecofeminist literary criticism which remained an extremely marginal presence in Indian academia for over a decade has recently seen a surge in interest with the publication of several edited volumes, papers, theses etc. Many young researchers feel the need to respond to some of the biggest issues around them through their practice of literary criticism. However, a look at the literature classrooms in India shows that ecofeminism, like most other environmental perspectives, suffers from stagnation- it remains a minor point of discussion under ‘ecocriticism’, often perceived as an outdated and essentialist idea by many students. It is this gap in pedagogy that we address in the paper. We attempt to map out the larger concerns of ecofeminism, its emergence in India and look at how an ecofeminist pedagogy, with its firm roots in activism and intersectionality, can reinvigorate the discussions on regionality, postcoloniality, neoliberalism, and much more in literature classes.

Keywords

Literary Pedagogy, Postcolonial Ecofeminism, Ecofeminism, Intersectionality, Environmental Movements, Ecocriticism, Regionality

References

AGARWAL, BINA (1998). “Environmental management, equity and ecofeminism: Debating India's experience”. The Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol.25, No.4, July: 55-95.

BAHUGUNA, SUNDERLAL (1997). “What Man Does to Mountain, and to Man: A Healing Message for Violent Times”. In. Tenzin Rigzen (ed.), Fire in the Heart, Firewood on the Back: Writings on and by Himalayan Crusader Sunderlal Bahuguna, Tehri: Parvatiya Navjeevan Mandal for Save Himalaya Movement.

CHATTOPADHYAY, SUTAPA (2019), “Infiltrating the Academy through (Anarcha-)Ecofeminist Pedagogies”, Capitalism Nature Socialism, Vol.30, No.1, 31-https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2019.1574846

DALY, MARY (1978). Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, Boston: Beacon Press, 1990.

D’EAUBONNE, FRANÇOISE (1974). Feminism or Death, London: Verso, 2022.

DECHAMMA, SOWMYA (2009). “Eco-feminism and Its Discontents: The Indian Context”, Kvinder, Kon & Forskning, Vol. 3, No.4: 101-107.

GAARD, GRETA (2011). “Ecofeminism Revisited: Rejecting Essentialism and Re-Placing Species in a Material Feminist Environmentalism”, Feminist Formations, Vol. 23, No. 2, Summer: 26–53. 10.1353/ff.2011.0017

GREWE-VOLPP, CHRISTA (2016). “Ecofeminisms, The Toxic Body, and Linda Hogan’s Power”, In: Hubert Zapf (ed). Handbook of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology Vol.2 , Berlin: De Gruyter: 208–25.

GUHA, RAMACHANDRA. (2013). “The past and present of Indian environmentalism”. The Hindu, 27 March 2013. https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-past-present-of-indian-environmentalism/article4551665.ece

HARAWAY, DONNA (1988). “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”. Feminist Studies, Vol.14, No. 3, Autumn: 575-599. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066

HARAWAY, DONNA. (2004) “Ecce Homo, Ain’t (Ar’n’t) I a Woman, and Inappropriate/d Others: The Human in a Post-Humanist Landscape”. In. Donna Haraway (ed.) The Haraway Reader, New York: Routledge, 47-61.

IYER, KAVITHA (2021). “Wish I had known there's cancer in the water”, People’s Rural Archive of India: 25 August. https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/wish-i-had-known-theres-cancer-in-the-water/

LI, HUEY-LI (2007). “Ecofeminism as a Pedagogical Project: Women, Nature and Education”. Barbara J Thayer-Bacon, Lynda Stone, and Katherine M. Spencer (ed). Education Feminism: Classic and Contemporary Readings, Albany: State University of New York Press: 323-240, 2013.

MAJUMDAR, ANINDITA (2019). “Beyond essentialism: ecofeminism and the ‘friction’ between gender and ecology”, In: Anu Aneja (ed). Women’s and Gender Studies in India: Crossings, Oxon, New York: Routledge, 66-78.

MUKHERJEE, SUROOPA (2010). Surviving Bhopal: Dancing Bodies, Written Texts and Oral Testimonials of Women in the Wake of an Industrial Disaster, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

MUKHERJEE, UPAMANYU PABLO (2010). Postcolonial Environments: Nature, Culture and the Contemporary Indian Novel in English, Palgrave Macmillan.

PARAMESWARAN, GOWRI (2022). “A History of Ecofeminist-Socialist Resistance to Eco-crisis in India”. Journal of International Women’s Studies, Vol.24, Iss. 2, Art. 4. https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol24/iss2/4

PHUKAN, SHIBANI and TRIVENI GOSWAMI VERNAL (2022). “Red Earth, Resisting Women: Violence and Conflict in Literature from the Northeast: An Ecofeminist Perspective”, In. Douglas A. Vakoch and Nicole Anae (ed.), Indian Feminist Ecocriticism, Lanham: Lexington, 65-78.

RANGARAJAN, SWARNALATHA (2018). Ecocriticism: Big Ideas and Practical Strategies, Hyderabad. Orient Blackswan.

ROY, TANIA and CRAIG BOROWIAK (2003). “Against Ecofeminism: Agrarian Populism and the Splintered Subject in Rural India”, Alternatives, Vol. 28, 57-89.

SHIVA, VANDANA (1988). Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development, London: Zed Books, 2002.

VARMA, SREEJITH R and SWARNALATHA RANGARAJA (2018). “The Politics of Land, and Toxins: Reading the Life Narratives of Three Women Oikos-Carers from Kerala”. In. Douglas A. Vakoch and Sam Mickey (ed.), Women and Nature? : Beyond Dualism in Gender, Body, and Environment, Oxon: Routledge, 167-184.

WARREN, KAREN (2000). Ecofeminist Philosophy: A Western Perspective on What It Is and Why It Matters, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Author Biographies

Kalpana Rao Hulluru

Dr. Kalpana Rao Hulluru is a former Professor of English at Pondicherry University in Puducherry, India. She has published extensively, including the recently co-edited volume Kala Pani Crossings: Gender and Diaspora - Indian Perspectives (Routledge, 2023). Her research interests encompass gender studies, feminist and cultural studies, literary theory, women's writing, as well as Indian and North American literature.

Angela Sebastian

ANGELA EMILY SEBASTIAN is a PhD Student in the Department of English, Pondicherry University, Puducherry, India. She is currently pursuing a PhD from the Department of English at Pondicherry University. Her doctoral research is on Environmental Reproductive Justice in fiction from the Global South, and she has a deep interest in the intersections of gender studies, cultural studies and environmental humanities.