Nicole Seymour
Professor
Biography
Nicole Seymour works in the environmental humanities, asking how literature and other cultural forms – from documentary film to standup comedy – mediate our relationship to environmental crisis. Before coming to CSUF, she held positions at the University of Louisville, the University of Arkansas, and the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich, Germany. Her first monograph, Strange Natures: Futurity, Empathy, and the Queer Ecological Imagination, won the 2015 scholarly book award from the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE). Her second, Bad Environmentalism: Affect and Dissent in the Ecological Age (University of Minnesota Press, 2018), recuperates irreverent and anti-sentimental expressions of environmentalism and was recognized by the Chicago Review of Books as among the “Best Nature Writing of 2018.” Her latest book is Glitter, an environmental-cultural history of that substance from Bloomsbury’s “Object Lessons” series. Dr. Seymour enjoys working with students on research and public activism projects such as Climate Change Theatre Action.
Degrees
2008, Ph.D, English Literature, Vanderbilt University
2004, M.A., English Literature, Vanderbilt University
2001, B.A. summa cum laude, American Literature and Culture, University of California, Los Angeles
Research Areas
Contemporary Anglophone literature, culture, and media; environmental humanities/ecocriticism; gender and sexuality studies; queer theory; affect theory.
Courses Regularly Taught
Analysis of Literary Forms, Literature and the Environment, Landscape in American Literature, Graduate Seminar: Problems in Criticism.
Publications
“The Greenhouse in the Bathhouse: Ecosexuality and the Legacy of Libertine Botany.” L’Esprit Créateur, vol. 62, no. 4 (2022), pp. 160-175. Special issue on “Libertine Botany,” edited by Natania Meeker and Antónia Szabari.
“Afterword: Ecological Inqueeries.” Co-authored with Juno Salazar Parreñas. Environmental Humanities vol. 14, no. 3 (2022), pp. 718-725. Special issue on “Sex and Nature,” edited by Sarah Bezan and Ina Linge.
“The (Im)possibilities of Vegan Satire.” Edinburgh Companion to Vegan Literary Studies. Edited by Emelia Quinn and Laura Wright. Edinburgh University Press, 2022.
“Plastic Ambivalence.” Ecologies of Gender: Contemporary Nature Relations and the Nonhuman Turn. Edited by Susanne Lettow and Sabine Nessel. Routledge, 2022.
“Junk Food for Thought: Decolonizing Diets in Tommy Pico’s Poetry.” Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Environment. Edited by Sarah Ensor and Scotti Parrish. Cambridge University Press, 2022.
“Captive Audiences: Quarantining with the Tiger King.” Co-authored with Hannah Boast. Tiger King: A Docalogue Book. Edited by Jaimie Baron and Kristen Fuhs. “Docalogue” series on documentary film and television. Routledge, 2021.
“Contemporary Cli-Fi and Indigenous Futurisms.” Co-authored with undergraduate student Briggetta Pierrot. Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, vol. 9, no. 4 (2020), pp. 92-113.
Office Hours
Fall 2024
MW 1:00pm-2:15pm
