Anamaria Schwab

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Humanities
ICUB Fellow

October 2022 - January 2023

Environmental humanities; Material culture in American and English fiction; critical and cultural theory

Anamaria Schwab holds a BA (English-Romanian) (1997) with the Faculty of Foreign Languages - University of Bucharest, an MA in British Cultural Studies (1998) - University of Bucharest and a PhD in American literature/cultural studies (2015) - University of Bucharest. In 2008 she was granted an Inter-European Research Scholarship by the European Association for American Studies (EAAS). She teaches English at Transylvania University in Brasov. Her book, Deadly Dwelling in Manhattan: Three Recent American Novels, deals with an immoderate attachment to commodities as detrimental of more vital impulses in the work of ceertain recent American novelists.

How To Content Yourself With Less: D. H. Lawrence’s Practical Guide To Sustainable Living

My project investigates ways of efficiently acting upon the Anthropocene in three important novels by D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and The Lost Girl. Specifically, I aim to show that in these novels Lawrence provides practical  solutions  for  a  diminished  human  impact  upon  the  environment  – what  we  today  call sustainability. Key characters there succeed in living simpler yet more fulfilling lives and thus, as it were, provide a blueprint of a new kind of human existence. Such existence takes guidance from nature rather than seeks to master it. In this context, modern materialistic abundance and comfort are disregarded as a true burden that prevents the flourishing of life. As materialistic restraint is embraced willingly, the protagonists develop a more genuine relationship both with their environment and themselves. I maintain that Lawrence effectively proves that humans can still act to make a difference even in the present situation: their choice of significant material restraint enhances the earth’s regenerating potential.

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