Ecocriticism and Geocriticism ― Overlapping Territories in Environmental and Spatial Literary Studies

The contributors to Ecocriticism and Geocriticism survey the overlapping territories of these critical practices, demonstrating through their diversity of interests, as well as their range of topics, texts, periods, genres, methods, and perspectives, just how rich and varied ecocritical and geocritical approaches can be. As diffuse 'schools' of criticism, ecocriticism and geocriticism represent two relatively recent discourses through which literary and cultural studies have placed renewed emphasis on the lived environment, social and natural spaces, spatiotemporality, ecology, history, and geography. These loosely defined practices have also fostered politically engaged inquiries into the ways that humans not only represent, but also organize the spaces and places in which they, their fellow humans, and many other forms of life must dwell. These essays exemplify the ways in which critics may bring environmental and spatial literary studies to bear on each other, enabling readers to looks at both literature and their surroundings differently.

Robert T. Tally Jr. is Associate Professor of English at Texas State University, USA. He is the author of Fredric Jameson: The Project of Dialectical Criticism; Poe and the Subversion of American Literature; Spatiality (The New Critical Idiom); Utopia in the Age of Globalization; and, as editor, Geocritical Explorations, Literary Cartographies, and The Geocritical Legacies of Edward W. Said.

Christine M. Battista is the Chair of Media and Communication Studies and Assistant Professor of English at Johnson and Wales University, USA, where she teaches critical media studies, literary theory, American literature, and postcolonial literature.