The American Hunting Story and the Formation of Environmental Literature

This dissertation addresses the almost complete absence of American hunting stories in the subfield of environmental literature within American literature. Since environmental literature's inception in the early 1990s with The Norton Book of Nature Writing (1990) and American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau (2008), environmental literary scholars have failed to take into account the roles of hunters in advancing conservationist measures to protect and preserve wildlife and lands throughout America from the early nineteenth century through the present day. This project seeks to build a bridge between environmental literary scholars and environmentalists far removed from hunting traditions and those whose involvement in hunting furthers both their commitment to improving their local surroundings and their support for conservationist measures. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.).