Antipastoral. Agribusiness, and Post 1945 literature of Postmodern Farming

This lecture explores the use of antipastoral in 20th- and 21st-century U.S. literature and food writing to critique industrial agriculture and rural decline. Authors like Wendell Berry, Jane Smiley, and Michael Pollan portray small farms as victims of chemical pollution, corporate agribusiness, and misguided federal policies. While these texts often employ the pastoral mode to idealize rural life, they also reveal tensions between nostalgic reform efforts and the realities of global food demands. Ultimately, antipastoral narratives both critique and enable new forms of agricultural capitalism, revealing how cultural anxieties around land, food, and community continue to shape debates over farming and sustainability today.