Four-Decade Studies of Ecocriticism and Beyond—Retrospect and Prospect: An Interview with Professor Scott Slovic

Abstract

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.