Heather Milligan

@hrmilligan.bsky.social

393 Followers 444 Following

Research Fellow at Loughborough University // contemporary lit, ecocriticism, and American culture // writing a book called Ecogothic America and the Twenty-First-Century Novel (forthcoming Edinburgh University Press) // she/her

Article mocked up for publication in MFS: Modern Fiction Studies. Title reads: "Contemporary Oil Fiction: From Exuberance to Exhaustion." Abstract: Whereas Frederick Buell identified two recurring motifs for oil fiction in the twentieth century (an “exuberance” always haunted by “ca- tastrophe”), this essay proposes a third mode for contemporary oil fiction: exhaustion. The essay examines Hanya Yanagihara’s novel The People in the Trees as a case study in the imbrication of extractivism with colonization, sexual exploitation, and extinction. This petro-exhaustion aesthetic indexes the wearing out of people, affect, and nonhuman lives and is thus particularly suited to sustaining attention to “slow violence” (Nixon) and “slow death” (Berlant). The essay speculates exhaustion now constitutes a defining feature of contemporary culture.
A tabby cat sits on a path leading to Holywell Conference Centre in Loughborough, surrounded by greenery
Copies of Djuna Barnes's Nightwood, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Helena María Viramontes's Their Dogs Came With Them on a dark background with green and red tile coasters.
The Cloisters at University of Glasgow: fluted columns and archways connecting the campus's East and West Quadrangles.
Excerpt from forthcoming article, reads: '...exhaustion novels underscore the violence and precarity of oil extraction and even anticipate a future post-Peak Oil; but while actual oil production continues largely unimpeded, that future shows little indication of arriving anytime soon. The irony of exhaustion as an aesthetic mode is that more energy—including fossil-derived energy—is being used than ever before. Instead of generating more exuberance, contemporary culture is increasingly defined by exhaustion, and often in ways that lack a critical impulse: in the creative malaise of endlessly repeated remakes, franchises, and cinematic universes; in burnout culture and the fatigue of long Covid; and in the rise of generative AI to replace human creative outputs, collectively resulting in limp, uninspired productions. If Ezra Pound’s demand of modernism was to Make It New, the driving force of contemporary culture might be to Make It Again—Fredric Jameson’s “nostalgia mode” in hyperdrive.'
Screenshot of paper abstract. Title: ‘Reintroducing Wolves in the Cultural Imagination’. Abstract: ‘FAR FROM FICTION’ announces American biotech company Colossal’s webpage about the dire wolf de-extinction project, which launched to mixed reception in 2025. But the dire wolf experiment is undoubtedly tied to fiction: notable investors include fantasy author George R.R. Martin – who popularised knowledge of dire wolves in his A Song of Ice and Fire series – and director Peter Jackson, best known for his film adaptations of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Hunted to extinction in Britain and most of western Europe, the Big Bad Wolf has accrued conflicting meanings in contemporary culture. In Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Crossing (1994), the protagonist’s plan to trap and kill a pregnant wolf is overturned when he develops a bond with the wolf and decides to return her to Mexico. In his 2021 novel Herscht 07769, Nobel-winning author László Krasznahorkai constructs a parallel between the reappearance of wolves in Germany and the rise of a neo-Nazi group. Meanwhile, Sarah Hall’s The Wolf Border (2015) and Charlotte McConaghy’s Once There Were Wolves (2021) both depict the reintroduction of wolves to Scotland. In this paper I take a comparative approach to the fraught and evolving symbolism of the wolf in contemporary literature, ranging from extremist politics to migration, national identity and sovereignty, to autonomous female sexuality. How wolves appear in our cultural imagination has ramifications for public opinion, conservation, and rewilding efforts. What futures does literature summon for wolves today?
A pile of four books on a desk, from top to bottom: Greyhound by Joanna Pocock Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
Author Samuel Miller McDonald sits in Toppings bookshop in Edinburgh at a round table with stacks of books PROGRESS: A History of Humanity's Worst Idea
A white rhinoceros in the foreground grazes on grass; in the background a turreted manor house set amongst trees.
spotify wrapped my top song: "how to disappear completely" by radiohead played 46 times
Headshot of woman with short blonde hair in graduation robes
sunset lane in the meadows with streetlamp