When more than half of the Earth population lives in cities, and living conditions worldwide suffer from a steady increase in environmental issues, historical inquiry provides useful reflections and new perspectives on the present. Urban Narratives about Nature: Socio-Ecological Imaginaries between Science and Entertainment aims at generating specific historical knowledge concerning processes of production, circulation, and management of natural history narratives and the associat...

Environmentalism has relentlessly warned about the dire consequences of abusing and exploiting the planet's natural resources, imagining future wastelands of ecological depletion and social chaos. But it has also generated rich new ideas about how humans might live better with nature.Green Utopias explores these ideas of environmental hope in the post-war period, from the environmental crisis to the end of nature. Using a broad definition of Utopia as it exists in Western ...

This book explores the relationship between reading science in fiction and engaging with science. Focusing on embodied readers and empirical approaches to fiction reading, the authors examine contemporary social, cultural, biographical and political contexts in which science fictions come to matter. Drawing together a distinctive set of research studies and conceptual resources, the book outlines theories, epistemologies and methodologies for understanding how and why we read science ficti...