Reading the Book of Nature

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Availability of Data and Resources My research project on the life and work of May Watts presents a unique opportunity to take advantage of an excellent local archival source: the Sterling Morton Library at the Morton Arboretum, one of the best natural history libraries in the Midwest, has her personal papers in its archive, as well as a deep collection in ecology, natural history, botany, and local history. These resources are fully available to me as a professional scholar through arrangements I have confirmed with the Morton Library. Also available through Arboretum staff and records is information on former students of Watts, some of whom are still alive and potentially available for interviews for my planned biographical research on Watts. Relationship of Work to Developments in the Field Two major areas of research and writing intersect within my proposed project: ecological criticism, or "ecocriticism"; and the history, literature, and natural history of Chicago. Until quite recently, ecocritical scholarship has concentrated largely on writers, literary genres, and themes grounded in remote and rural settings, as opposed to critiquing writers and texts associated with urban themes and city landscapes. (For a brief definition of ecocriticism, see the Research Design and Analytic Methods section below.) In this fashion, since its inception in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a self-described "green" method of literary and cultural criticism, ecocriticism has displayed a bias against the urban sphere, though more by benign neglect than conscious prejudice. In the process, ecocriticism lent credence to that age-old opposition of nature and culture by implicitly defining wilderness as, among other things, that-which-is-not-urban. Recently, though, there has been a slight shift in the winds. For example, critic Michael Bennett argues for an increased emphasis on urban themes and environments in his 2001 essay, 11
"From Wide Open Spaces to Metropolitan Spaces: The Urban Challenge to Ecocriticism," and his co-edited collection (with David Teague) of urban-centered ecocritical studies, The Nature of Cities (1999), sketches an outline of how ecocriticism could address urban topics, issues, and problems. Several years later, the urban environment has become a sparsely settled but active frontier in ecocriticism. Yet, only a few articles and books have applied ecocriticism to urban subjects (such as John Tallmadge's The Cincinnati Arch); and but for my 2011 publication on Leonard Dubkin, none take Chicago as its focus. My focus on May Watts as well as the wider context of Chicago's urban nature will continue to help expanding the ecocritical agenda to urban subjects in coming years. Another relevant area of scholarship is what I've come to call "Chicago Studies" for lack of an official term -- works of literary criticism and biography; history, both political and environmental); sociology and urban studies; and natural history and science. These four subareas of Chicago Studies represent but a mere taste of the extraordinary range and depth of research on and writing about the Chicago region. They include literary studies such as Clarence Andrews' Chicago in Story: A Literary History (1982) that primarily focus on canonical authors and works of Chicago-based fiction and poetry, but pay virtually no attention to nature writing or works with a scientific element. Biographical studies of important environmental figures include Victor Cassidy's Henry Chandler Cowles: Pioneering Ecologist (2007) and Robert Grese's Jens Jensen: Maker of Natural Parks and Gardens (1998). Chicago has inspired a wealth of influential historical studies, from Milo Milton Quaife's and Bessie Louise Pierce's comprehensive histories published in the early decades of the 20th century, to more recent works such as William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1991), Donald Miller's City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of 12
Page 1 and 2: Faculty Research Leave Application
Page 3 and 4: Such a "re-visioning" of Chicago --
Page 5 and 6: movements in the 1960s, Watts close
Page 7 and 8: In addition to this research and wr
Page 9: Tentative Timeline* for Project Res
Page 13 and 14: productions within the context of C
Page 15 and 16: Appendix A: Outcome of Previous Res
Page 17 and 18: and Environment. Secondly, during w
Page 19 and 20: Dixon, Terrell, ed. City Wilds: Ess

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