Birth of environmental literary studies

Nevertheless, in the mid-1980s, as scholars began to

collaborate on projects, the field of environmental
literary studies was seeded, and it expanded in the
early 1990s. Teaching Environmental Literature:
Materials, Approaches, Resources, edited by Frederick
O. Waage in 1985, comprised course descriptions from
nineteen different professors and attempted to develop
"a broader presence of environmental concern and
knowledge in literary disciplines." Alicia Nitecki started
The American Nature Writing Newsletter in 1989 with
the intention of publishing brief articles, book reviews,
classroom notes, and information about the study of
writing about nature and the environment. Others have
been in charge of established literary journals' specific
environmental issues? Some institutions began to
incorporate literature courses into their environmental
studies curricula, while others established new
institutes or programmes in nature and culture, and
some English departments began to offer an
environmental literature minor. The University of
Nevada, Reno established the first academic chair in
Literature and the Environment in 1990.
Several special sessions on nature writing or
environmental literature began to appear on the
programmes of annual literary conferences during this
time period, perhaps most notably the 1991 MLA
special session organised by Harold Fromm and titled
"Ecocriticism: The Greening of Literary Studies," and
the 1992 American Literature Association symposium
chaired by Glen Love and titled "American Nature
Writing: New Contexts, New Approaches.
The Association for the Study of Literature and
Environment (ASLE) was founded in 1992 at the annual
meeting of the Western Literature Association, with
Scott Slovic elected as the first president.
The objective of ASLE is to "support new nature
writing, traditional and creative scholarly approaches
to environmental literature, and inter-disciplinary
environmental research." In its first year, ASLE had
more than 300 members; in its second year, that
number doubled, and the group established an
electronic-mail computer network to facilitate
communication among members; and in its third year,
1995, ASLE's membership had surpassed 750, and the
group hosted its first conference.
In 1993 Patrick Murphy launched a new journal, ISLE:
Inter- disciplinary Studies in Literature and
Environment, to "offer a forum\sfor critical studies of
the literary and performing arts coming from or\
saddressing environmental problems. They would
include ecological theory, environmentalism, nature
ideas and portrayals, the human/nature divide, and
unresolved concerns."
By 1993, ecological literary studies had established
themselves as a distinct critical school. The previously
dispersed scattering of lone academics had joined
forces with younger scholars and graduate students to
establish a powerful interest group with ambitions to
alter the profession. So, the development of
ecocriticism as a critical perspective predates its recent
institutionalisation by more than two decades.