Hilary Cunningham Scharper

Hilary Cunningham Scharper M.A., Ph.D, (born November 21, 1961) is a novelist and Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Scharper’s fiction, academic writing, teaching and research focus on cultural approaches to Nature.

Life and Work

Fiction and the Eco-gothic

Scharper describes her fiction as “eco-gothic:” a new and emerging literary genre that builds on elements of traditional Gothic but specifically seeks to engage with conceptions of and ideologies about nature. The eco-gothic engages with all sub-genres of the Gothic—ranging from early gothic classics such as The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, (1794) and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, (1818) to contemporary forms of urban, cyber and post-colonial gothic (including the current fascination with vampires and zombies). The critical eco-gothic focuses on how power relations among humans and between humans and non-human animals, shape encounters with (and access to) the natural world.

Scharper’s fiction explores several gothic themes: the tension between country and city life; the differences underlying surface appearances and inner moral character; as well as contradictory notions of what is considered “wild” and “domesticated.” She engages primarily with 19th century gothic genres and is influenced by the works of writers such as Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Robert Louis Stevenson, Wilkie Collins, Mary E. Wilkins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edith Wharton and Henry James.

Scharper has also proposed the eco-gothic as a fin-de-“cene”—rather than a fin-de-siècle—literary genre. While literary scholars have often noted the Gothic’s association with crises in social identity (especially those occurring during the transition from one century to the next), Scharper has suggested that—ecologically-speaking—it is better to think of ourselves as transitioning from one geological epoch to the next. As we shift from the current Holocene to an Anthropocene (i.e., an era in which human activities have a primary and extensive impact on the earth’s systems), the eco-gothic is relevant to a society facing the need to forge more intimate, imaginative and sustainable relationships with Nature.

Scholarly Work and Research

Scharper’s anthropological research is based in northern Ontario on the Bruce Peninsula, and explores what she terms "gated ecologies." Her scholarly work explores boundary-making as itself a multi-faceted encounter with "nature." By adopting a unique interdisciplinary framework (that includes fiction), Scharper explores "nature" as entailing boundary-making—i.e., as entailing metaphysical, aesthetic and political acts that both enact and enable particular human-nature interactions.

Bibliography

Fiction

Perdita (2013). Scharper’s first novel is set on the northern Bruce Peninsula and focuses on the life of a woman who claims to be 134 years old. The story explores the concept of “biophilia” through several gothic motifs—wild nature, romance, and the supernatural.

Dream Dresses (2009, 2013). Influenced by Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus, this short story collection explores how the fabric of women's dreams and aspirations become so entangled with attire that the dress and the dream sometime become one and the same.

Non-fiction

“Bordering on the Environmental: Permeabilities, Ecology and Geopolitical Boundaries.” In The Blackwell Companion to Border Studies, edited by Thomas M. Wilson and Hastings Donnan. Wiley Blackwell, 2012.

“Ecology, Poverty and 'Possible Urban Worlds'.” In The Natural City: Re-envisioning the Built Environment, edited by Ingrid Stefanovic and Stephen B. Schaper. University of Toronto Press. 2012.

“Gating Ecology in a Gated Globe: Environmental Aspects of ‘Securing our Borders’.” In Borderlands: Ethnographic Approaches to Security, Power and Identity, edited by Hastings Donnan and Tom Wilson. University Press of America. 2010.

God and Caesar at the Rio Grande: Sanctuary and the Politics of Religion. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. 1995.

External Links

University of Toronto, Department of Anthropology Website