Chinese Environmental Humanities showcases contemporary ecocritical
approaches to Chinese culture and aesthetic production as practiced in
China itself and beyond. As the first collaborative environmental
humanities project of this kind, this book brings together sixteen
scholars from a diverse range of disciplines, including literary and
cultural studies, philosophy, ecocinema and ecomedia studies, religious
studies, minority studies, and animal or multispecies studies. The
fourteen chapters are conceptually framed through the lens of the
Chinese term huanjing (environment or "encircling the surroundings"),
a critical device for imagining the aesthetics and politics of
place-making, or "the practice of environing at the margin." The
discourse of environing at the margins facilitates consideration of the
modes, aesthetics, ethics, and politics of environmental inclusion and
exclusion, providing a lens into the environmental thinking and
practices of the world's most populous society.