American academic
Catriona Sandilands is a Canadian writer and scholar in the environmental humanities. She is most well known for her conception of queer ecology. She is currently a Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. She was a Canada Research Chair in Sustainability and Culture between 2004 and 2014. She was a Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation in 2016.
Sandilands served as president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment in 2015. She is also a past President of the Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada (ALECC) and the American Society for Literature and the Environment (ASLE).
Education.
Sandilands received a BA in sociology from the University of Victoria and subsequently an MA and PhD in sociology from York University.
Research.
Sandilands' first book, "The Good-Natured Feminist: Ecofeminism and the Quest for Democracy" was published in 1999 by University of Minnesota Press. It explores identity, gender and democracy through the lens of ecofeminism and the perceived relationships between the category of "women" and nature. Sandilands invokes a multitude of contemporary feminist and political theorizations of democracy, including Donna Haraway's cyborg feminism. "The Good-Natured Feminist" was described as "a strikingly original and vitally important contribution to debates in feminist theory, environmental thought, and cultural studies ... an essential text not only for those engaged in ecofeminist projects, but, more broadly, for anyone interested in feminism, environmentalism, or social and political theory." In 2004, Sandilands co-edited the multidisciplinary anthology "This Elusive Land: Women and the Canadian Environment" with Melody Hessing and Rebecca Raglon.
Her most well-known work to date, "Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire," co-edited with Bruce Erickson, was "the first book-length volume to establish the intersections of queer theory and environmentalisms at such depth ... [and] created a rich field for further research." It "advances her earlier work on ecofeminism, democracy and sexuality", and explores "such issues as animal sex, species politics, environmental justice, lesbian space and "gay" ghettos, AIDS literatures, and queer nationalities".
Sandilands has also written extensively on environment, society, culture and literature in publications such as "The Guardian" and the "Los Angeles Review of Books". In 2013, Lisa Szabo-Jones wrote that Sandilands, Pamela Banting, and Stephanie Posthumus were "three figures who were instrumental in bringing meetings together" at the 2005 ASLE Conference, which led to the formation of ALECC and the creation of ALECC's flagship journal "The Goose."