Panel proposed at the 2023 ASLE + AESS Conference: “Reclaiming the Commons”

July 9-12, 2023 in Portland, Oregon

Ecocriticism and the environmental humanities have always been problem-oriented fields. In the field-defining The Ecocriticism Reader (1996), Cheryll Glotfelty notes “Our temperaments and talents have deposited [ecocritics] in literature departments, but, as environmental problems compound, work as usual seems unconscionably frivolous. If we’re not part of the solution, we’re part of the problem” (xx-xxi). Twenty-six years later, the environmental problems mentioned by Glotfelty have indeed compounded. The …