In “Extinction,” Timothy Sweet explores how species extinction and the ultimate specter of human extinction shape modern literature and theory. The chapter begins with an overview of the Sixth Extinction crisis, which was first recognized by scientists in the 1980s and has since become a matter of public concern in journalism and memoir. The chapter then focuses on the history of the concept of extinction from its establishment as geohistorical fact in the late eighteenth century to its role in the development of evolutionary theory. An important archive for the chapter is the repository of megafaunal remains from Big Bone Lick, Kentucky. Alternative explanations for these extinctions and other fossil remains circulated in American Indian traditions, and later versions adapted Darwinian theory to traditional ends. The chapter ends with examination of literary and artistic works such as Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior that grapple with the problems of representing the extinction of animals and humans.

In “Narrating Nature,” Erin James considers how modern literature and theory grapple with the broader timescales, planetary conceptions of space, and inhuman perspectives that representations of climate change demand. Focusing on the “unnatural nature” of climate change, James undertakes a narratological analysis two recent “cli-fi” novels, Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 and Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves. Maintaining a pedagogical emphasis, the chapter foregrounds strategies teachers can use to help students understand and write about climate change. The chapter ultimately considers how narrative can both perpetuate and subvert dominant ideologies about nature and how changing nature is changing the texture of modern narratives.