Academia

Dr Catherine Olver is an independent scholar whose research uses ecocriticism, ecofeminism, and sensory studies to evaluate environmental messages in children’s books and fantasy series for all ages. She holds a PhD in children’s literature from the University of Cambridge and an MA in Place and Environment Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London.

Publications

Ecoconscious: Skilful Sensing in Young Adult Fantasy Novels,
University of Cambridge
PhD thesis, 2021.
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/

Nature’s Puzzles: An Ecocritical Theorisation of Children’s Activity Books,
Children’s Literature in Education,
vol. 55, 2024.
Link here

Room to Imagine? Authoritative Architecture in J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World.
Children’s Literature in Place,
edited by Željka Flegar and Jennifer M. Miskec,
Routledge, 2024, pp. 59-67.
https://www.routledge.com/

Sensitive Girls, Purposeful Boys, and Embodied Emplacement,
co-written with Maria Nikolajeva.
Children’s Literature and Childhood Discourses,
edited by Anna Cermakova and Michaela Mahlberg,
Bloomsbury, 2024, pp. 11-30.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/

Eye Wonder? Reflecting Harry in Animal Eyes.
The Ivory Tower, Harry Potter, and Beyond,
edited by Lana A. Whited,
University of Missouri Press, 2023, pp. 185-200.
https://blackwells.co.uk/

Echoing Ecopoetics: Fantasy Literature’s Background Sounds,
Mythlore, vol. 41, no. 1, Fall / Winter 2022, pp. 67-89.
https://www.jstor.org/

Making Sense of Settings: How Sensory Description Builds Dalemark.
Diana Wynne Jones: Bristol, 2019,
edited by Catherine Butler and Farah Mendlesohn,
Manifold Press, 2020, pp.100-103.
https://payhip.com/

Conferences

Catherine has spoken at numerous academic conferences about her ecocritical work. These were some of her favourites:

Naming No Names? Finding Plants and Animals in Contemporary Children’s Poetry.
In the panel, The Lost Words: On Losing, Finding, and Learning Nature’s Names. International Research Society for Children’s Literature Congress 2023: Ecologies of Childhood, 13 August 2023, online.

Chosen Children vs. Adult Antagonists: Environmental Crisis and Intergenerational Injustice in C21st Young Adult Fantasy Novels. Assembling Common Worlds: An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Environment and Young People’s Literature and Culture, 11 June 2022, Vancouver Island Universty and online.

Don’t Touch? Anthropocene Anxieties in the Magical Practices of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicle. Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene, 5 October 2018, Masaryk University, Czech Republic.

Places Grown-Ups Don’t Know: Rewilding the Child in Katherine Rundell’s Adventure Stories.
Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment: A Place on the Edge, 2 September 2018, Kirkwall, UK.

Staying Grounded: Spatial Metaphors as Eco-Ethics in Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching Books.
Comicon, 6 March 2016, Oxford, UK.

 

Poetry

Fantasy

Academia

Teaching