The paradoxical role nature plays in American myth and history grows in part from the male's reverent fascination with the wilderness and his equally strong impulse to dominate it. Many canonical literary works--think of Thoreau, Melville, Hemingway, Faulkner--look to the wild as the site for establishing a man's selfhood. But nature is just as often subjected to his most violent displays of mastery.

This tension lies at the heart of Eco-Man, which brings together two rapidly growing fields: men's studies and ecocriticism. The two disciplines have rarely if ever touched on...

The paradoxical role nature plays in American myth and history grows in part from the male's reverent fascination with the wilderness and his equally strong impulse to dominate it. Many canonical literary works--think of Thoreau, Melville, Hemingway, Faulkner--look to the wild as the site for establishing a man's selfhood. But nature is just as often subjected to his most violent displays of mastery.

This tension lies at the heart of Eco-Man, which brings together two rapidly growing fields: men's studies and ecocriticism. The two disciplines have rarely if ever touched on...

Lines on the Land

Writers, Art, and the National Parks

Scott Herring

The nineteenth-century photographer William Henry Jackson once complained of the skepticism with which early descriptions of Yellowstone were met: the place was too wondrous to be believed. The public demanded proof, and a host of artists and writers obliged. These early explorers possessed a vigorous devotion to the young nation's wilderness--the naturalist John Muir famously toured the land from Wisconsin to Florida on foot--and through their work established aesthetic categories that exist to...