Research
My research interests include 19th and 20th century American literatures; critical theory; feminist theory; cultural studies, green cultural studies; science studies; environmentalism and feminism; environmental health, environmental justice, environmental ethics; animal studies; emerging theories of materiality in environmental feminism, corporeal feminism, and science studies.
My first book Undomesticated Ground: Recasting Nature as Feminist Space (Cornell, 2000), explores the work of North American women writers, theorists, and activists from the early 19th century to the late 20th century, arguing that "nature" has been a crucial site for a wide range of feminist cultural interventions. <click here to link to Cornell's description>
Material Feminisms, edited with Susan J. Hekman, (Indiana 2008), charts emerging models of materiality in feminist theory, bringing together environmental feminism, corporeal feminism, feminist science studies, and disability studies.
I am currently writing a book entitled Bodily Natures: Science, Environment and the Material Self, which argues that focusing on "trans-corporeality"--the movement across human bodies and nonhuman nature--profoundly alters our sense of human subjectivity, environmental ethics, and the individual's relation to scientific knowledge. The book engages with feminist theory, science studies, environmental philosophy, and a range of literary, popular, and scientific texts, focusing on environmental health and environmental justice.
Articles and book chapters :
"MCS Matters: Material Agency in the Science and Practices of Environmental Illness," in progress.
"Eluding Capture: The Science, Culture, and Pleasure of Queer Animals," in progress.
"The Naked Word: The Trans-corporeal Ethics of the Protesting Body," in progress.
“Introduction: Emerging Models of Materiality in Feminist Theory” (with Susan J. Hekman) in Material Feminisms. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008L 1-19..
“Trans-Corporeal Feminisms and the Ethical Space of Nature” in Material Feminisms. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008: 237-264.
"The Trouble with Texts, or Teaching Green Cultural Studies in Texas,” in Teaching North American Environmental Literatures, ed. Frederick O. Waage, Mark Long, and Laird Christensen. New York: MLA, 2008: 369-376.
“This is about Pleasure: An Ethics of Inhabiting” In Architecture, Ethics, and the Personhood of Place, ed. Gregory Caicco. University Press of New England, 2007: 151-172.
“‘Comrades of Surge’: Meridel Le Sueur, Cultural Studies, and the Corporeal Turn,” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 12.2 Winter 2005: 55-74.
“Discomforting Creatures: Monstrous Natures in Recent Films,” in Beyond Nature Writing, ed. Karla Armbruster and Kathleen Wallace, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001: 279-296.
“Cultural Difference and Epistemic Rupture: The Vanishing Acts of Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Alfredo Véa Jr.,” MELUS (Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the U. S.) 25.2 Summer 2000.
“Endangered Humans?: Wired Bodies and the Human Wilds,” Camera Obscura 40-41 (May 1997): 227-244.
“The Undomesticated Ground of Feminism: Mary Austin and the Progressive Women Conservationists,” Studies in American Fiction 26.1 (Spring 1998): 73-96.
“‘Skin Dreaming’: The Bodily Transgressions of Fielding Burke, Linda Hogan, and Octavia Butler,” in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy, University of Illinois, 1998. Originally, “Displacing Darwin and Descartes: The Bodily Transgressions of Fielding Burke, Linda Hogan, and Octavia Butler,”ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 3.1 (Fall 1996): 47-66.
"Cyborg and Ecofeminist Interventions: Challenges for Environmental Feminism." Feminist Studies 20.1 (Spring 1994): 133-152.
“The Morgesons: A Feminist Dialogue of Bildung and Descent," Legacy: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers 8.1 (Spring 1991): 29-37.
Review Essays
“Feminism, Nature, and Discursive Ecologies,” special issue of the Electronic Book Review, on Critical Ecologies, guest edited by Cary Wolfe. EBR IV (Winter 1996-7), http://www.altx.com/ebr/ebr4/alaimo.htm.
Interview
Video interview with Jeanne Hamming, for Ecology, Technology, Culture: An online resource center for Environmental Humanities. January, 2006. http://www.centenary.edu/etc/videoarchive/alaimo