Definitions of Ecocriticism Archive

This archive chronicles the emergence of ecocriticism as a field of study—from the founding of ASLE in the early 1990s to 2009.

Greening the Library:  The Fundamentals and Future of Ecocriticism
By Loretta Johnson, published in Choice (December 2009)
Copyright the author and Choice magazine

Recent Ecocritical Studies of English Renaissance Literature
By Karen Raber, published in English Literary Renaissance 37.1 (February 2007)
Copyright English Literary Renaissance Inc. (Blackwell Publishing Ltd.)

Nobel Prize: A Shot in the Arm for African Eco-Criticism
From The Nation (Nairobi)  (October 2004)

Blues in the Green: Ecocriticism under Critique
By Michael P. Cohen, published in Environmental History 9.1 (January 2004)

Bibliography: Writing of Place and Nature
“Ecocriticism”
By Kate Rigby, Chapter 7 in Julian Wolfreys (ed.), Introducing Criticism at the Twenty-First Century (May 2002)

A Report Card on Ecocriticism
By Simon C. Estok, published in AUMLA: The Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 96 (November 2001)

In the Green Team: James Hopkin Looks at How Eco-critics are Sending Ripples through Literature
From The Guardian (12 May 2001)

Nature 101
From Sierra Magazine (November/December 2000)

Forum on Literatures of the Environment
From PMLA 114.5 (October 1999)

Ecocriticism at the MLA: A Roundtable
From ASLE News 11.1 (Spring 1999)

Ecocriticism: Natural World in the Literary Viewfinder
By Serpil Oppermann (1999)

Birds and Bees 101: Finding Nature in Literature
Originally published in The Hartford Courant (16 December 1998)

Wild Things: Forget deconstruction–today’s hippest literary critics have gone green
From Utne Reader (November/December 1997)

Science and Ecocriticism
By Ursula K. Heise, published in The American Book Review (July-August 1997)

Swampy’s Smart Set
From The Times Higher Education Supplement (4 July 1997)

Only God Can Make a Tree: The Joys and Sorrows of Ecocriticism
By Sven Birkerts, published in The Boston Book Review, (November/December 1996)

Scholars Embark on Study of Literature About the Environment
From The Chronicle of Higher Education (9 August 1996)

The Greening of the Humanities
By Jay Parini, published in The New York Times Magazine (29 October 1995)

Narrative Scholarship: Storytelling in Ecocriticism
Nineteen Position Papers from the 1995 Western Literature Association Meeting

Defining Ecocritical Theory and Practice
Sixteen Position Papers from the 1994 Western Literature Association Meeting