Mushroom Clouds: Ecocritical Approaches to Militarization and the Environment in East Asia

Mushroom Clouds: Ecocritical Approaches to Militarization and the Environment in East Asia examines the growing significance of the eco-implications of the increasing militarism of East Asia. As a transcultural image and metaphor, mushroom clouds signify anthropogenic violence and destruction, as exemplified by wars and nuclear bombings. Immediately evoking memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the mushroom clouds metaphor has deep roots and implications in East Asia, and this volume explores these roots and implications from the perspectives of a variety of scholars and artists from different parts of East Asia. The chapters that comprise Mushroom Clouds respond to the increasingly dangerous developments in the world that led up to and have occurred since the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump, developments that threaten the stability of the region and the world. In the wake of the 70th anniversary of the division of Korea, increasing attention has been focused on the legacy of the Cold War, on the one hand, and on the continuing militarization of East Asia, on the other. After the nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after the truce across the 38th parallel, after the shelling of Kinmen and Matsu, East Asia became (and remains) one of the most densely militarized regions in the world. Under the shadow of war, however, the concern about environmental impacts has been growing, not only in social discourse but also in literature and the visual arts. The first of its kind, Mushroom Clouds gathers ecocritics from East Asia to examine issues such as militarization, militarized islands, military tourism, military villages, post-war environments, nuclear accidents, and the demilitarized sone (DMZ) wildlife, among others, in East Asia.

Simon C. Estok (editor-in-chief) currently holds the award of Foreign Expert of the Double First Class Discipline Cluster (2018-2021) at Sichuan University and was the recipient of the Shanghai Metropolitan Government "Oriental Scholar" Award (東方學者) (2015-18) at the Research Center for Comparative Literature and World Literatures at Shanghai Normal University. Estok is a full professor and Senior Research Fellow at Sungkyunkwan University (South Korea’s first and oldest university). He teaches literary theory, ecocriticism, and Shakespearean literature. His award-winning book Ecocriticism and Shakespeare: Reading Ecophobia appeared in 2011 (reprinted 2014), and he is co-editor of four books: Anthropocene Ecologies of Food: Implications and Perspectives from the Global South (Routledge, 2021), Landscape, Seascape, and the Eco-Spatial Imagination (Routledge, 2016), International Perspectives in Feminist Ecocriticism (Routledge, 2013), and East Asian Ecocriticisms (Macmillan, 2013). His much anticipated The Ecophobia Hypothesis was published in 2018 by Routledge and reprinted (with errata) as a paperback in July 2020. Estok has published extensively on ecocriticism and Shakespeare in such journals as PMLA, Mosaic, Configurations, English Studies in Canada, and others.

Iping Liang is Professor of English and American Studies at National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan. She is currently president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, Taiwan (ASLE-Taiwan) and organized the 2018 International Symposium on Literature and Environment, East Asia, from which the idea of this collection germinated. She publishes in the areas of critical plant studies, archipelagic American Studies, Native American literatures, and Asian American literatures in both English and Chinese, including Storytelling Survivance: A Critical Reading of Native American Fiction (2021), I’m Migrant: New Perspective on Overseas Chinese Studies (2018), Asia/America: Asian American Literatures in Taiwan (2013), and Ghost Dances: Toward a Native American Gothic (2006). She served on the International Women’s Committee of the American Studies Association (2010-2012) and on the Advisory Board of Multiethnic Studies of Americas and Europe (2014-2020). She is on the Editorial Board of Translocal Chinese: East Asian Perspectives (2018-2021) and on the Advisory Board of the International Society for the Studies of Chinese Overseas (2017-2021). Her current research project, funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology (Taiwan), investigates the plant narratives in East Asia.

Shinji Iwamasa teaches at Shirayuri University, Tokyo. His research interests include toxic discourse, Asian thoughts, and ecocriticism. He is a recipient of the governmental scientific research fund for 2017–19 with his project titled, "A Study of Toxic Discourse hinted by the Mythification of Narratives in Obama's Hiroshima Speech." His publications include "Reading Gary Snyder from the Viewpoint of the Place of Nothingness" Literature and Environment, 2008. "The Mechanics of Place in the Writings of Rachel Carson" Ecocriticism Review, 2010; "A Study of Thoreau's Prayer in the Writings of Terry Tempest Williams." Shirayuri Christiano-Cultural Studies, 2013; "Toxic Discourse and the Creation of the Myth of Land in the Writings of Terry Tempest Williams" Themes of Environmental Humanities, 2017, which he edited as well. He co-edited and co-translated Terry Tempest Williams's The Hour of Land, 2019. His professorial affiliations include Stanford University, where he was a visiting scholar from 2011-2012 and currently 2019-2020.