In Chapter 14, “Nature, Gender, and Sexuality,” Greta Gaard constructs a genealogy feminist ecocriticism and ecofeminist literary criticism. Beginning with foundational figures like Rachel Carson, Carolyn Merchant, Val Plumwood, and Annette Kolodny (to whom the chapter is dedicated), Gaard displays the challenges that many women faced when establishing the field(s) and giving voice to ecofeminist ideas. Analyzing works by Freya Mathews, Linda Hogan, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Zora Neale Hurston, among many others, Gaard reveals the richly intersectional nature of contemporary ecofeminist criticism and feminist ecocriticism, which explore and develop out of the many junctures of gender, sexuality, indigeneity, and race.

The contemporary pertinence of green utopianism in its myriad manifestations lies in its trenchant critiques of the ecological deficiencies of the present and its imaginative projections of more ethical modes of human–animal–nature relationality. The extant climate and ecological crisis demands a radical rethink of how we relate to the non-human world. Thus, drawing largely on green utopian and posthuman theory, this chapter features critical assessments of human–non-human relations as depicted in four canonical ecotopian literary texts: Aldous Huxley’s Island (2009), Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), Kim Stanley Robinson’s Pacific Edge (1990) and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home (1985). The extent to which the works deconstruct traditional human/nature dualisms and hierarchies is explored and discussed in depth. The chapter concludes with ruminations on potentially ethical modes of relationship that move beyond hierarchical and antagonistic structurings of ‘otherness’ and incorporate reverence and respect for irreducible alterity.