Scott Slovic

Scott Slovic, University Distinguished Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Idaho in the United States, was the founding president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) from 1992 to 1995, and he edited ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, the major journal in the field of ecocriticism from 1995 to 2020. After nearly forty years of studying ecocriticism, he retired from his full-time faculty position at the end of 2023 and is now a senior scientist at the Oregon Research Institute. In this interview, Slovic looks back at his ecocritical studies in the past four decades, summarizes his important contributions, expounds his future research plan clarifying his going back to ecocritical studies from empirical perspectives which he did as a young professor and focusing on the empirical ecocriticism, a newly emerging subfield of ecocriticism, on the new journey. He made incisive comments on empirical ecocriticism, illustrating the implication of empirical ecocriticism, the necessity and significance, the methodology and strategy of having empirical ecocritical studies.
Scott Slovic, profesor distinguido de Humanidades Ambientales en la Universidad de Idaho en los Estados Unidos, fue el primer presidente de la Asociación para el Estudio de la Literatura y el Medio Ambiente (ASLE) desde 1992 hasta 1995, y editó ISLE: Estudios Interdisciplinarios en Literatura y Medio Ambiente, la principal revista en el campo de la ecocrítica, desde 1995 hasta 2020. Tras casi cuarenta años estudiando la ecocrítica, se jubiló a finales de 2023 de su puesto como profesor universitario y ahora es investigador senior en el Oregon Research Instittue. En esta entrevista, Slovic echa la vista atrás para explorar sus estudios de ecocrítica de las últimas cuatro décadas, resumiendo sus importantes aportaciones, y expone su plan de investigación futuro clarificando que vuelve a los estudios ecocríticos desde perspectivas empíricas que ya hizo en su juventud y que en este nuevo viaje que va a centrarse en la ecocrítica empírica, un nuevo campo emergente dentro de la ecocrítica. Hizo comentarios incisivos sobre la ecocrítica empírica, ilustrando la implicación de ésta, la necesidad e importancia, la metodología y la estrategia de tener estudios ecocríticos empíricosCuat.

The COVID-19 pandemic, especially during the early months of 2020, brought about not only fear and loss, but an unexpected increase in daily vigilance with regard to personal safety and public health among citizens throughout the world. This chapter takes a literary approach to the question of how our minds respond not only to actual pandemics but to textual representations of public health crises, which are examples of planetary and human precarity. Although the feeling of precarity might at first glance appear to be a negative condition, something to be avoided if possible, Kate Rigby suggests in her book Dancing with Disaster: Environmental Histories, Narratives, and Ethics for Perilous Times, that pandemic novels facilitate the capacity for "mindfulness" and "critical self-reflection". This chapter probes the connection between the complex narrative structures of pandemic fiction and an elevated sense of self-reflective vigilance.

Critical Plant Studies in Taiwan provides a diverse and energetic collection of scholarly studies of anthro-botanical relationships in Taiwan. The book builds upon and extends the work of earlier Taiwan- and East-Asia-focused projects in the environmental humanities, such as East Asian Ecocriticism: A Critical Reader (2015) and Ecocriticism in Taiwan (2015), neither of which dwells on plants in particular. Critical Plant Studies in Taiwan includes many examples of botanical ecocriticism, scrutinizing both Taiwanese writing and writing about Taiwan by non-Taiwanese authors, but it also extends widely into the realms of plant-related environmental history and cultural studies.

Ecodisaster Imaginaries in India: Essays in Critical Perspectives is a volume of critical essays that discuss and debate the literary and cultural representations of ecological/environmental disaster in India from the perspectives that are integral to postcolonial disaster studies and the environmental humanities. The essays offer theoretically informed readings of environmental fiction, nonfiction, and poetry among other contemporary literary genres that open our eyes to today's burning issues of global warming, climate change, pollution of air and water bodies, deforestation, and species extinction. The volume addresses the staunch ecological consciousness reflected in Rabindranath Tagore's writings from the early twentieth century, indigenous responses to ecodisaster, and the portrayal of ecodisaster in selected Indian movies which raise questions of human rights violations in the face of manmade disaster and environmental crisis.

The discipline of ecocriticism (or ecological literary studies) can be traced back to the earliest commentaries on natural themes in human texts, such as conversations about paintings of animals on the walls of European caves or discussions about how ancient songs invoked rain to bring crops to life. In A Century of Early Ecocriticism, David Mazel (2001) argues that some of the earliest examples of academic ecocritical studies of literature began in the 1860s with commentaries on works focused on environmental topics, such as the writings of John and William Bartram and Henry David Thoreau. He follows a trajectory of

Scott Slovic, University Distinguished Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Idaho in the United States, was the founding president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) from 1992 to 1995, and he edited ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, the major journal in the field of ecocriticism, from 1995-2020. He is currently the co-editor of two book series: Routledge Series in World Literatures and the Environment (2017-present) and Routledge Environmental Humanities (2018-present). Professor Slovic has written, edited, or co-edited thirty books in the field of ecocriticism. This interview focuses on the latest ecocritical developments, as well as key issues in the environmental humanities, in the Age of COVID and more broadly, the context of the Anthropocene. It stresses mainly three aspects: new ideas and directions in ecocriticism, the clarification of some key concepts in the environmental humanities, and studies of ecocriticism relevant with China. Professor Slovic expounds the "fourth wave" and "fifth wave" of ecocriticism, scrutinizes various terms, such as Anthropocene ecocriticism, climate fiction criticism, material ecocriticism, affective ecocriticism, empirical ecocriticism, critical animal studies, critical plant studies, etc., and crystallizes the connections and differences between ecocriticism, the environmental humanities and the medical-environmental humanities. He also explores the impacts of COVID-19 on ecocriticism studies, reveals the concerns of establishing "TCM ecocriticism," sheds light on the new possibilities for ecocriticism in the future, and offers constructive suggestions for Chinese scholars.

Nature and Literary Studies supplies a broad and accessible overview of one of the most important and contested keywords in modern literary studies. Drawing together the work of leading scholars of a variety of critical approaches, historical periods, and cultural traditions, the book examines nature's philosophical, theological, and scientific origins in literature, as well as how literary representations of this concept evolved in response to colonialism, industrialization, and new forms of scientific knowledge. Surveying nature's diverse applications in twenty-first-century literary studies and critical theory, the volume seeks to reconcile nature's ideological baggage with its fundamental role in fostering appreciation of nonhuman being and agency. Including chapters on wilderness, pastoral, gender studies, critical race theory, and digital literature, the book is a key resource for students and professors seeking to understand nature's role in the environmental humanities