Reframing Nature Within the Garden Walls: Feminist Ecological Citizenship in the Work of Louise Glück, Jeanne Larsen, and Anat Shiftan

Poets Louise Glück and Jeanne Larsen and ceramic artist Anat Shiftan use the theme of the garden to establish a commons of thought from which to negotiate questions of environmental preservation. Their aesthetic expressions reshape feminist ecocritical discourse to foster connection and frame productive responses to environmental crises. The garden-based work of these women provides a means to restore the lost connection between humans and the natural world, with an emphasis on feminist ecological citizenship. Through formal experiments involving the defamiliarization of human bodies, other natural phenomena, and the material media in which they operate, Glück, Larsen, and Shiftan call attention to ways we conceptualize the natural world and our relationship to it. Without offering technical solutions, they recapitulate complex social forms and structures that perpetuate ecological damage as well as collective actions that could lead to a sustainable future for the planet.