Table of Contents

Part I: Living Wisdom & Lived Heritages

Chapter 1: Humility by Proportion: What Zhu Xi and St. Paul Have to Say about the Baconian Attack on ‘Nature’

David Wang

Chapter 2: Old Dreams Retold: Lu Xun as Mytho-Ecological Writer

Ban Wang

Chapter 3: Planetary Healing Through the Ecological Equilibrium of Ziran: A Daoist Therapy for the Anthropocene

Jialuan Li and Qingqi Wei

Chapter 4: Toward an Ecocriticism of Cultural Diversity: Animism in the Novels of Guo Xuebo and Chi Zijian

Lili Song

Chapter 5: Population, Food, and Terraforming: Ethics in He Xi’s Alien Zone and Six

Realms of Existence

Hua Li

Chapter 6: Junkspace and Non-place in Taiwan’s New Eco-Literature

Peter I-min Huang

Part II: The Embodied Imaginary

Chapter 7: The Loss of Genetic Diversity and Embodied Memories in Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl

Simon Estok and Young-Hyun Lee

Chapter 8: ShakespeaRe-Told’s Macbeth and Eric Yoshiaki Dando’s Oink, Oink, Oink

Iris Ralph

Chapter 9: The Logic of the Glance: Non-Perspectival Literary Landscape in Wildfires by Ooka Shohei

Kenichi Noda

Chapter 10: The Paradox of Aerial Documentaries: Eco-Gaze and National Vision

Sijia Yao

Chapter 11: Humans, Mermaids, Dolphins: Endangerment, Eco-Empathy, Multispecies’ Co-existence in Stephen Chow’s The Mermaid

Kiu-Wai Chu

Part III: Myriad Therapeutic Lands

Chapter 12: Displacement and Restoration: A Therapeutic Landscape in 311 Revival

Kathryn Yalan Chang

Chapter 13: Nuclear Power Plants, East Asia, and Planetary Healing

Philip F. Williams

Chapter 14: The Revitalization of Old Industrial Sites in Beijing: A Case Study of Shougang (Capital Steel) Park

Xin Ning

Chapter 15: Rebuilding the Pavilion: ‘Doubled’ Experience of Heritage at the Geo-Media Age

Xian Huang

About the Author

Xinmin Liu is associate professor of Chinese and comparative cultures in the School of Languages, Cultures, and Race at the Washington State University.

Peter I-min Huang is professor emeritus at Tamkang University.

Reviews

This is a superb book. In reconstructing the relationship between embodied memory and ecological consciousness in East Asian cultures, it also foregrounds the latest and exciting explorations of East Asian scholars in ecocriticism. With these contributions, this anthology will lead to a redrawing of the map of global ecological research.
*Xiao-Hua Wang, Shenzhen University*

Embodied Memories, Embedded Healing: New Ecological Perspectives from East Asia is an impressive collection of fifteen chapters. Collectively, it raises crucial questions concerning ‘land-human affinity’ and human responsibility in turbulent times of ecological crisis. Veering away from the notion of aesthetics as fetishized knowledge (e.g., Sino- and/or Cartesian ocularcentric aesthetics), this volume advocates for localized and embodied aesthetic responses as a basis for ethics, politics, and everyday cultural practices. It brings together a variety of disciplines—classical philosophy, critical animal/multispecies studies, green literary/cultural/ cinema studies, minority literary studies, and science and technology studies (STS) and Sci-Fi/Cli-fi—to cover a dazzling array of topics, including biotechnology, eco-displacement and endangered species, energy strategies, global capitalism and food industry, and land and cultural ruination, restoration, and preservation in East Asia. This book is a significant contribution to the field of East Asian ecocriticism!
*Chia-ju Chang, Brooklyn College*

Ecological sensitivities in East Asia are experienced rather than conceptualized, and thus can be misleading. Presenting analytical interpretations on the viscerally and theoretically entangled ecological perspectives of East Asia, this collection offers common ground for ecocritical discussions from around the world.
*Yuki Masami, Aoyama Gakuin University*

In Embodied Memories, Embedded Healing: New Ecological Perspectives from East Asia, editor-contributors Xinmin Liu and Peter I-min Huang illuminate how the beliefs and practices of ancient East Asia are shaping twenty-first-century environmental consciousness. The collection features prominent scholars from around the world who offer new theoretical frameworks for ecological thinking and praxis. Readers are treated to cutting-edge research and eye-opening discussions spanning a wide variety of genres and media forms that cover a range of topics, from ancient animist beliefs to urban ecology, affect theory, and contemporary science fiction. Through various methods of analysis, each chapter makes substantial contributions to our understanding of global ecology, especially the relationship between human practices and nonhuman nature. This anthology is essential reading for anyone interested in healing the planet.
*DJ Lee, Washington State University*

When Hamlet rhapsodizes, "What a piece of work is a man!" it takes him only a moment to pivot from praise to disgust. His double-edged encomium to the civilized male human as the "measure of all things" offers a good starting point for consideration of this volume edited by Liu and Huang. Recalling the dilemma Einstein faced when his beautiful theory of energy led to invention of the atomic bomb, the many ways in which humankind has harmed nature are cataloged here. The Faustian bargain humans have pursued since the Industrial Revolution keeps coming back to haunt them, and now "the world is too much with us." This timely collection of dark ruminations on nature gathers 15 essays contributed by scholars of literature, media, philosophy, and geography from Asia and the US, all voicing their environmental concerns. Authors variously ponder, e.g., the origins of nature worship in Eastern philosophy or lay bare the decimation of the environment through "progress." The central theme of the collection is that homo sapiens is only part of nature and not its master. As framed by the editors, the essays illustrate that healing can begin only when human hubris can be swept aside to allow nature an opportunity to recover. Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals.
*Choice Reviews*