6Ecocriticism

Abstract

AbstractThis review of publications in the field of ecocriticism in 2018 is divided into six sections: 1. Introduction: Anthropocene Timescales and Affects; 2. Affective Ecocriticism; 3. Material and Empirical Ecocriticisms; 4. Ecocriticism and Ecopoetics; 5. Ecocritical Convergences; 6. Conclusion. The review focuses on four single-authored monographs, three edited book collections, three journal issues, and three stand-alone articles. The biospheric urgencies of the Anthropocene and its cataclysmic signature—climate change—have attracted ecocritical attention to concerns of time, scale, and affect. In particular, 2018 marked the further maturation of material and queer ecocriticisms, the florescence of affective ecocriticism, and the germination of empirical ecocriticism. The field in 2018 explores, in depth, the role of affect—emotions, intensities, corporealities, and modes of relations—in the Anthropocene. All the while, confluences between affective, material, and queer ecocriticisms continue to broaden the scope of environmental affect to include ‘bad’ and irreverent modes. What’s more, new publications in material ecocriticism draw attention to environmental narratives as vehicles for concretizing the highly abstract spatiotemporalities of the Anthropocene whereas empirical ecocriticism applies qualitative methods to understanding the transformative potential of narratives. 2018 saw major studies of ecopoetics in addition to convergences between ecocriticism, animal studies, performance studies, crime fiction studies, and the environmental humanities. The year also brought the extension of ecocritical approaches to the genre of crime fiction and the literature of the Global South.