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Houser engages with affect theory to push the boundaries of material ecocriticism in an innovative and necessary direction¿ she insightfully complicates the role of "writer-activist" and asks her audience to consider critically what shape this activism might take and what its future might entail. This well-researched argument draws on psychology, sociology, cognitive science, and other disciplines to illuminate the contributions artists make in conversations--typically dominated by scientists, environmentalists, and politicians--about environmental policy, and aims to encourage and enrich those conversations. In its analytical poise and sharp close readings, Ecosickness in Contemporary US Fiction itself is a valuable addition to affect studies and ecocriticism. Priscilla Wald, Duke University, author of Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative:The 'ecosickness' that Heather Houser explores offers yet another example of the dangers of humanity's efforts to 'master' nature. The novels and memoirs she studies demonstrate the intricate connections between somatic and ecological damage. Yet it is the literary critical argument that most distinguishes this work. Houser elegantly shows how these novels and memoirs produce narratives with unpredictable affects and how that unpredictability in turn generates an ethics that, she argues, might lead to new ways of addressing ecological damage. This timely book is crucial not only for its ecocritical insights, but for its depiction of the importance of humanistic inquiry to planetary ethics. Lawrence Buell, Harvard University:This sophisticated reco The 1970s brought a new understanding of the biological and intellectual impact of environmental crises on human beings. As efforts to prevent ecological and bodily injury aligned, a new literature of sickness emerged. "Ecosickness fiction" imaginatively rethinks the link between these forms of threat and the sick body to bring readers to environmental consciousness. Tracing the development of ecosickness through a compelling archive of contemporary U.S. novels and memoirs, Ecosickness in Contemporary U.S. Fiction establishes that we cannot comprehend environmental and medical dilemmas through data alone and must call on the sometimes surprising emotions that literary metaphors, tropes, and narratives deploy. In chapters on David Foster Wallace, Richard Powers, Leslie Marmon Silko, Marge Piercy, Jan Zita Grover, and David Wojnarowicz, Heather Houser shows how narrative affects such as wonder and disgust organize perception of an endangered world and orient us ethically toward it. The study builds the connective tissue between contemporary literature, ecocriticism, affect studies, and the medical humanities. It also positions ecosickness fiction relative to emergent forms of environmentalism and technoscientific innovations such as regenerative medicine and alternative ecosystems. Houser models an approach to contemporary fiction as a laboratory for affective changes that spark or squelch ethical projects
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