Reading the Book of Nature

America (1996), and the magisterial Encyclopedia of Chicago (2004). With the notable exception
of Cronon's work, though, none of these portray the natural environment as a central character in
the historical drama, highlighting instead the various political, social, and economic forces that
have shaped Chicago's development and identity.
Scholars working in the interdisciplinary field of urban studies -- who draw insights from
sociology, political science, history, cultural geography, and other fields -- have produced a
wide range of Chicago-based work. Recent examples include Sylvia Washington's Packing Them
In: An Archeaology of Environmental Racism in Chicago, 1865-1954 (2005), which takes a
comprehensive look from an environmental policy and social justice perspective at the impact of
industrialization, pollution, and hazardous waste on immigrant groups and minority populations
in the city; John Hudson's recent geographic synthesis Chicago: A Geography of the City and Its
Region (2006); and Larry Bennett's assessment of Chicago's emergent identity as a postindustrial,
global metropolis in the process of redefining what it means to be a modern city, The
Third City: Chicago and American Urbanism (2010).
Finally, relevant works of natural history and science focused on the Chicago region
include Joel Greenberg's remarkable environmental history, A Natural History of the Chicago
Region (2003) and his edited anthology of nature writing, Of Prairie, Woods, and Water (2008);
Libby Hill's The Chicago River: A Natural and Unnatural History (2000); the Chicago
Wilderness Atlas of Biodiversity, now in its 2 nd edition (2011); and Floyd Swink's and Gerould
Wilhelm's botanical classic Plants of the Chicago Region (4 th edition, 1994).
My proposed research project is unique and timely because it applies an ecocritical
perspective to an urban subject -- in this case, an important, influential, and heretofore criticallyneglected
writer and naturalist, May Watts; situates the study of Watt's literary and artistic
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