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Special Issue Articles

Vol. 6 No. 2 (2025): Versions of America: Speculative Pasts, Presents, Futures

"Last Frontier. North to the Future." – Oil-Age Alaska and the Environmental Critique in Mei Mei Evans's Oil and Water

Submitted
October 16, 2024
Published
June 18, 2025

Abstract

This article discusses Mei Mei Evans's 2013 novel Oil and Water as a critical response to the competing narratives that have historically shaped three dominant versions of Alaska in the national imagination: as the Last Frontier to be explored, as an enduring frontier promising a balance between resource extraction and environmental protection, and as a wilderness to be preserved. Inspired by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, which takes a pivotal place in US environmental history, the novel offers a realistic exploration of the environmental, social, and cultural consequences of oil dependency. By dramatizing the spill's devastating impact on both human and more-than-human life, Oil and Water challenges the images of Alaska as a limitless resource frontier and the enduring frontier, while advancing the notion of Alaska as a wilderness to be protected.

References

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