HAROLD
FROMM
Harold
Fromm lives in Tucson and is University Associate in English at the University
of Arizona as well as a member of the UA’s Institute of the
Environment. He is the author of The
Nature of Being Human: From Environmentalism to Consciousness, Academic
Capitalism and Literary Value, and co-editor of The
Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. His writings have
appeared in a wide range of journals and he is a regular contributor to the Hudson
Review. [EMAIL ADDRESS: Click here. ]
SELECTIVE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
[For
a complete BIBLIOGRAPHY, click
here.]
NEW:
“Philip Glass, Maximalist?”
review essay about Glass’s new autobiography, Words Without Music, from Hudson Review, Summer 2015 (68:2).
“Ecocriticism at Twenty-five,” an overview
of ecocriticism’s history, with commentary on several recent ecocritical books. In a special
65th anniversary environmental issue of the Hudson Review. Spring 2013
(66:1): 196-208. From UA Inst. Of the Environment, see
also:
http://www.portal.environment.arizona.edu/environmental-innovators/taking-ecocriticism-mainstream
Groping For Groups (A review of E.O. Wilson’s The Social Conquest of Earth and
Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind)
in Hudson Review, Winter
2013 (65:4):652-58.
Cheryll Glotfelty
is interviewed in PMLA on the genesis
of ecocriticism, with replies from Harold Fromm, Michelle Balaev,
and Cheryll Glotfelty:
PMLA May 2012 (v.127/3) and PMLA
October 2012 (v.127/4).
How We became So Beautiful
and Bright: Deep History and Evolutionary Anthropology, in Hudson Review,
Spring 2012 (65:1): 19-35. Discusses Deep History: The Architecture of Past and Present, ed. by Andrew Shryock & Daniel Lord Smith; The Evolution of the Human Head, by Daniel E. Lieberman; and The Human Condition by Robert G.
Bednarik. [In a printout, black margins are removed.] A major section of
this review has been reproduced with some alterations in Rock Art Research 2012 - Volume 29, Number 2.
Vegans vs. Evolution, in The Evolutionary Review,
volume 3, 2012.
RECENT:
“It’s Only a Theory,” or At My Back I Cringe to
Hear/ The Texas School Board Drawing Near: review of Dawkins and Coyne on
evolution, in The Evolutionary Review,
volume 2, 2011: 224-29.
Against Representation: Ralph Vaughan Williams and
the Erotics of Art, in Hudson Review, Summer 2010 (63:2): 277-86
Free as We Need to Be, in Politics and Culture, 2010 Issue 1
(April 29th)
Michael Phelps, Domenico Scarlatti, and Scott Ross, in Hudson Review, Winter 2010 (62:4): 631-8.
Two Brains Better Than One:
review of Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique, by Michael Gazzaniga, in The Evolutionary Review, vol. 1
[2010]: 59-61.
The Nature of
Being Human: From Environmentalism to Consciousness
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. REVIEWS
Fromm . . .
presents a complex, densely written discussion on the relationship between
materiality (physical person who ostensibly believes in free will and decision
making derived from experience) and consciousness (defined by neuroscience as
directed by neurons and synapses that are self-directing, deterministic
systems). He illuminates the connection between these seemingly disparate
topics by revealing the shift in his reflective analytical thoughts across several
decades. Essentially his perspective is an evolved conclusion that the
humanities, his primary academic background, are seriously flawed in light of
the implications of environmental events. He further indicates that this
discipline is failing to even consider the implications of what science is
reporting about how free-will humans function as they do. [CHOICE, October 2009]
Collecting Science:
review of Alan Sokal’s Beyond the Hoax: Science,
Philosophy and Culture, with brief notice of The Oxford Book of Modern
Science Writing, edited by Richard Dawkins and American Earth:
Environmental Writing Since Thoreau, edited by Bill McKibben, in Hudson
Review, Autumn 2008 (61:3): 573-9
Arguing for Embodied Consciousness:
review of Edward Slingerland’s What Science Offers
the Humanities, in Science, October 10, 2008 (322: 195-6)
Pinker and Johnson on Human Nature,
in Hudson Review, Spring 2008 (61:1): 220-6.
[PDF] (Also html)
J.S. Bach in the Twenty-First Century: The Chapel
Becomes a Larder, in Hudson Review, Winter
2008 (60:4): 543-62. [PDF]
Review of this essay in the Wilson
Quarterly, Spring 2008
WRITINGS
ON ECOLOGY, SCIENCE, EVOLUTION, CONSCIOUSNESS:
Michael Pollan’s Ecology of
Food, in Hudson Review, Autumn 2006:
517-24.
Science Wars and
Beyond, in Philosophy and Literature, 2006,30:
580-589.
Review of Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think, eds. Alan Grafen & Mark Ridley, in Evolutionary Psychology 2006:4. [http://human-nature.com/ep]
Daniel Dennett and the Brick
Wall of Consciousness, in Hudson Review, Spring 2006: 161-68.
Reading with Selection in Mind:
review of The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative, ed Gottschall
& Wilson. In Science, Feb. 3, 2006 (311: 612-13)
Letter to PMLA on science and the
humanities (“Forum,” January 2006, vol. 121 #1, p.297)
Back to Bacteria: Richard Dawkins’
Fabulous Bestiary, in Hudson Review, Autumn
2005: 519-27.
Review of John Searle’s Mind: a Brief Introduction
in Georgia Review, Fall 2005
Muses,
Spooks, Neurons and the Rhetoric of “Freedom,” in New Literary
History, Spring 2005 (36: 147-59).
Evolution, Ecology, and the Western Diet—with
a Glance at Jared Diamond, Michael Pollan, and Gary Nabhan (delivered in June 2005 at the conference of the
Association for the Study of Literature and Environment [ASLE], held at
the University of Oregon).
Full-Stomach
Wilderness and the Suburban Esthetic, in Holding Common Ground:
The Individual and Public Lands in the American West, ed. Paul Lindholdt & Derrick Knowles. Eastern
Washington University Press, 2005.
Overcoming
the Oversoul: Emerson’s Evolutionary
Existentialism, in Hudson Review, Spring 2004:
71-95.
Ecocriticism’s
Big Bang in Logos, Summer 2004
[www.logosjournal.com/fromm.htm]
The New Darwinism in the Humanities:
Part One: From Plato to Pinker, in Hudson Review, Spring 2003 (pdf)
Part
Two: Back to Nature, Again, in Hudson Review, Summer
2003 (pdf)
(Both parts as one html)
Ecology
and Ecstasy on Interstate 80 (on ecology, technology, and the
arts) in Hudson Review, Spring 1998: 65-78.
My Science Wars in Hudson Review 49 (Winter
1997):599-609. (pdf) This essay is one of the early
accounts of the issue of Social Text that is reputed to have set off the
so-called science wars.
A
Crucifix for Dracula as html A Crucifix for Dracula
as pdf
This review from Hudson
Review, Winter 2001, vol.. 53 #4 [657-64], deals
with the trashing of Edward O. Wilson's Consilience by Wendell Berry in
his book, Life is a Miracle. Berry's reply and my reply to him
subsequently appeared in the Summer 2001 of Hudson
Review.
Berry/Fromm
replies: This is the exchange that followed publication of "A
Crucifix for Dracula."
Aldo
Leopold, Aesthetic ‘Anthropocentrist’ This
essay appeared in the first issue of ISLE(Interdisciplinary
Studies in Literature & Environment) in 1993 and was anthologized in
2003 in The ISLE Reader from U. of Georgia Press.
Postmodern Ecologizing:
Circumference Without a Center [Hudson Review 48 (Winter 1996):691-99] pdf This account of Lawrence Buell’s The Environmental
Imagination is both a literary and an ecological critique of Buell’s work.
The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, The
University of Georgia Press, 1996
A trilogy on air pollution
and ecology:
On Being Polluted [Yale Review 65 (Summer 1976):
614-29] pdf
From
Transcendence to Obsolescence: A Route Map [Georgia Review 32 (Fall 1978):
543-552] pdf
Air
and Being: The Psychedelics of Pollution [Massachusetts Review 24 (Autumn
1983): 660-68] pdf
ACADEMIC
FEUDS (from a fading past):
Harold Fromm, Henry
Louis Gates, Mary Louise Pratt, Michael Awkward:
From Race,
Writing, and Difference, ed. Henry Louis Gates, U. of Chicago Press, 1986.
The items in the book originally appeared in Critical Inquiry, Autumn 1985 and 1986. The texts below have been taken
from the Autumn 1986 issue.
Harold Fromm: “The Hegemonic Form of Othering; or The
Academic’s Burden.”
Mary
Louise Pratt: “A Reply to Harold Fromm.”
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: “Talkin’
That Talk.”
From
New Literary History, Autumn
1988 (20: 49-64).
Harold Fromm: "Real Life, Literary
Criticism, and the Perils of Bourgeoisification."
Harold
Fromm: a reply to Michael
Awkward’s criticisms of the above in American
Literary History.
MUSIC:
Against Representation: Ralph Vaughan Williams and
the Erotics of Art, in Hudson Review, Summer 2010 (63:2): 277-86.
Michael Phelps, Domenico Scarlatti, and Scott Ross, in
Hudson Review, Winter 2010 (62:4): 631-8.
J.S. Bach in the Twenty-First Century: The Chapel Becomes
a Larder, in Hudson Review, Winter
2008 (60:4): 543-62.
Review of this essay in the Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2008
Toscanini, Then and Now , in Hudson Review 55 Winter 2003 (55:4): 662-70.
Eyes of Blue, Ears of Tin, from The New Republic, July 20, 1968. Here, from my earliest salad
days, the roots of my later take on music vs. texts.
BOOKS:
The Nature of Being Human: From
Environmentalism to Consciousness: 2009, Johns Hopkins UP
The
Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology: 1996, University of Georgia
Press
Academic
Capitalism and Literary Value: 1991, University of Georgia
Press
Bernard
Shaw and the Theater in the Nineties: 1967, University of Kansas
Press
LITERARY
AND CRITICAL ESSAYS:
Coetzee’s
Postmodern Animals [Hudson Review 53 (Summer 2000): 657-64] pdf
Myths
and Mishegaas: Robert Graves and Laura
Riding [Hudson
Review 44 (Summer 1991): 189-202]
Sylvia Plath: Hunger Artist [Hudson Review 43 (Summer 1990):
245-56]
Ford Madox Ford Unmuddled?
[Hudson Review 44
(Winter 1992): 649-58] pdf
Wrestling
With Heidegger [Hudson Review 51 (Winter 1999): 681-90]
pdf
Andrew
Ross and the Curse of Postmodernism [Hudson Review 49 (Summer 1996): 323-30] pdf
Holroyd/Strachey/Shaw:
Art and Archives in Literary Biography [Hudson Review 52 (Summer 1989): 201-21] pdf
Toscanini, Then and Now [Hudson Review 55 (Winter 2003):
662-70] pdf
Genius or Fudge?
The Clouded Alembics of Magister Poe [Hudson Review 45 (Summer 1992):
301-9] pdf
O,
Paglia Mia! [Hudson Review 48 (Summer
1995): 308-16] pdf
Establishing
A Way in a World of Conflicts,
in Teaching the Conflicts: Gerald Graff, Curricular Reform, and the Culture
Wars, edited by William E. Cain. [Garland Publishing, NY & London, 1994, 67-77] pdf
“Scholarship, Politics, and
the MLA” (review of Introduction to Scholarship in Modern
Languages and Literatures by Joseph Gibaldi) Hudson
Review 46 (Spring 1993): 157-68.
If a Poem is Like a Painting,
What’s a History of Poetry Like? Review of David Perkins, A History of Modern Poetry: Modernism and After
[Poetry, vol. 151, no.
3 (Dec. 1987) 296-310]
Leonard and Virginia Woolf:
Virginia
Woolf: Art and Sexuality [Virginia Quarterly Review 55 (Summer 1979): 441-59] pdf
Recycled Lives: Portraits of the Woolfs
as Sitting Ducks [Virginia Quarterly Review 61:3 (Summer 1985): 396-417] pdf
Leonard Woolf and His Virgins [Hudson Review 38 (Winter 1986): 551-69] pdf
Service Not Power: Leonard Woolf’s Letters [Hudson Review 43 (Spring 1990): 170-75] pdf
Between
the Acts: The Demiurge Made Flesh [Southern Humanities Review 15 (Summer 1981): 209-17] pdf
To The Lighthouse: Music and Sympathy [English Miscellany 19 (1968): 181-95] pdf
EDITING
AND CUSTODIANSHIP:
LOOKING OUT FOR DOROTHY M. RICHARDSON [In memory of Gloria G. Fromm]
A
number of the items in the bibliography have been collected in Fromm: Academic
Capitalism and Literary Value, U. of Georgia Press, 1991.
Harold
Fromm has a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has taught in
English departments at Wisconsin-Madison, Oakland University, Wayne State,
Brooklyn College, Indiana University Northwest, and the University of Illinois
at Chicago. He now has a research appointment at the University of Arizona in
association with the Department of English along with a membership in the UA
Institute of the Environment.