The Ecophobia Hypothesis grows out of the sense that the capacity of "the biophilia hypothesis" as an explanatory model of human/environment relations is limited. This volume offers a rich tapestry of connected, comparative discussions about the new material turn and the urgent need to address the agency of genes.

Dr. Simon C. Estok is a Senior Fellow and Full Professor at South Korea's oldest university, Sungkyunkwan University (established in 1398), where he teaches literary theory, ecocriticism, and Shakespearean literature. Estok is also a recipient of the Shanghai Metropolitan Government "Oriental Scholar" Award (¿¿¿¿) (2015-2018) at the Research Center for Comparative Literature and World Literatures at Shanghai Normal University. His award-winning book Ecocriticism and Shakespeare: Reading Ecophobia appeared in 2011 (reprinted 2014), and he is co-editor of a book entitled Landscape, Seascape, and the Eco-Spatial Imagination (Routledge, 2016). Estok also co-edited International Perspectives in Feminist Ecocriticism (Routledge, 2013) and East Asian Ecocriticisms (Macmillan, 2013) and has published extensively on ecocriticism and Shakespeare in such journals as PMLA, Mosaic, Configurations,English Studies in Canada, Concentric, Neohelicon, and others. Dr. Estok received his MA and PhD in English Literature from the University of Alberta.

Contents

Foreword by Sophie Christman Lavin

Introduction

Chapter 1 - Material Ecocriticism, Genes, and the Phobia/Philia Spectrum

Chapter 2 - Terror and Ecophobia

Chapter 3 - Ecomedia's Enabling of Globalized Ecophobia: Marketing concerns

Chapter 4 - From Ecophobia to Hollow Ecology

Chapter 5 - Animals, Ecophobia, and food

Chapter 6 - Madness and Ecophobia

Chapter 7 - The Ecophobic Unconscious: Indifference to Waste and Junk Agency

Acknowledgements