Timely Ecocriticism: Reading Time Critically in the Environmental Humanities

Abstract

While the field of ecocriticism has largely been associated with concepts of place, bioregion, and other spatial concerns, there are also many ways in which environmental approaches to cultural and literary studies can benefit from a concentrated focus on issues connected to time. Various scholars have considered matters of time and the environment from a range of important perspectives; indeed, the diversity of these approaches speaks to the fact that “time” is never a single entity, but is rather a collection of multiple, contested practices and experiences that continuously take shape through the negotiations of culture with nature. For my own part, I have benefitted greatly from the work of many scholars of time, from Johannes Fabian and Barbara Adam to Michelle Bastian and Rita Felski, and I think it is worth our while to keep building our toolbox of “timely” insights. I want to suggest that a critical focus on time as it relates to the environment should be understood as both a coherent field and as a collection of diverse approaches that can draw from a wide range of insights into the cultural politics of time and the environment. In this article, I make a case for an approach that I call ecocritical time studies.

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