Dr Anna Pilz
Environmental Humanities Fellow
September - November 2018
Project: The Wooded Isle: Trees, Inheritance, and Estates in Irish Writing
Anna Pilz specialises in nineteenth-century Irish literature and culture. She is co-editor of Irish Women’s Writing, 1878-1922: Advancing the Cause of Liberty (Manchester University Press, 2016). The IASH fellowship supports the writing of her first monograph, The Wooded Isle: Trees, Inheritance and Estates in Irish Writing. A fusion of literary and environmental history, this interdisciplinary project traces how trees and woodland served as a nexus for debates about inheritances, dispossession, and ownership by taking account of the complex questions and issues these literary representations raised: within the context of colonialism (via narratives of colonial extraction versus conservative environmental stewardship); the competing conceptualisation of arboreal landscapes that ensued (nationality, aesthetics, economics, class identity, conservationism); and the consequent politicization of sylvan culture and horticultural pursuits across genres.