Ecocritical Explorations in Literary and Cultural Studies: Fences, Boundaries, and Fields (review)

Through his scholarly output since the 1980s and his role as founding editor of the journal Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Patrick Murphy has remained one of the most active proponents of ecocriticism as it has emerged over the past two decades. His ongoing commitment to the field is also marked by continued criticism of a conservative potential within it—a movement toward stasis and monovocality—that necessitates new directions of inquiry. This book, like his earlier Farther Afield in the Study of Nature-Oriented Literature (2000), draws on a diverse range of contemporary sources to call for a rethinking of approaches to ecocritical theory, popular genre fiction, and teaching environmental literature and cultural studies. Though some of the book’s concerns and directions seem dated as current scholarship is already addressing them (this seems especially true of the section on science fiction), the book is a welcome discussion of how those who study and teach what Murphy calls “nature-oriented literature” might reconsider their theoretical, textual, and teaching choices. In addition to his primary audience of ecocritics, Murphy’s theoretical and pedagogical insights, especially on the nation-state and transnational theory in relation to localized concerns, will appeal to scholars of American regional fiction and genre studies.

Ecocritical Explorations is divided into three sections of four chapters each. The introduction opens with a theoretical discussion of the referentiality of language and literature and how this imposes an ethical responsibility on scholars and educators. This foregrounding of individual responsibility and academics as activism informs the entire book and is supported by Murphy’s frequent references to his own experiences as a scholar, teacher, and parent. The opening section is concerned with theoretical problems in ecocriticism and engages with the romaticization of simplicity in ecocritical approaches to nature writing; the nation-state and alternatives to it; the challenge of “multimodal discourses,” such as Internet communications, for theory and pedagogy; and the potential for transnational approaches to ecocritical theory that maintain a localist orientation. The second section of the book begins with a chapter on the contemporary novel and is primarily concerned with how ecocriticism would benefit from further engagement with nature-oriented genre fiction such as science fiction and mystery novels. The final section is presented from a cultural studies perspective and begins with a welcome chapter considering fatherhood and environmental crisis, followed by chapters on discourses of environmental disaster, hurricanes in the United States, and Murphy’s own reflections on his past curricula.

Ecocritical Explorations’ greatest strength is the diversity of its “explorations,” yet this also leads to a weakness. The inclusion of such a wide array of texts and theoretical concerns provides much for the ecocritical scholar to consider and potentially apply to his or her own work. It is in this way valuable as a call for ecocritics to rethink their teaching and as a starting point for new research. However, this diversity of texts limits the time Murphy can spend engaging with each, which often leaves the reader wishing for a more sustained theoretical explication or textual analysis.