by Catriona Sandilands

About Catriona Sandilands

Catriona (Cate) Sandilands is Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, where she teaches and writes at the intersections of environmental literatures and histories, social and political theory, and feminist and queer studies. She is the author of over sixty chapters and articles, and recently the coeditor of Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire (2010) and Green Words, Green Worlds: Environmental Literatures and Politics (forthcoming).

Queer Ecology

book Keywords for Environmental Studies

The term “queer ecology” refers to a loose, interdisciplinary constellation of practices that aim, in different ways, to disrupt prevailing heterosexist discursive and institutional articulations of sexuality and nature, and also to reimagine evolutionary processes, ecological interactions, and environmental politics in light of queer theory. Drawing from traditions as diverse as evolutionary biology, LGBTTIQQ2SA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, intersex, queer, questioning, two-spirited, and allies) movements, and queer geography and history, feminist science studies, ecofeminism, and environmental justice, queer ecology currently highlights the complexity of contemporary biopolitics, draws important connections between the material and cultural dimensions of environmental issues, and insists on an articulatory practice in which sex and nature are understood in light of multiple trajectories of power and matter.