Open research questions in Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature
311 gap statements mined from Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 5,927 papers on the topic — drawn mostly from each paper's own stated research gap, future-work, challenge and limitation notes, and its abstract. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one.
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What the literature leaves open
This essay will examine two understudied poems, “Love peruse me, seeke, and finde” from the prose romance and “My paine, still smother’d in my grieved brest” from Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, to offer a material ecofeminist reading that highlights the connection between Wroth’s understanding of nature and her self-fashioning as a female poet.
The note likewise adds further weight to an understudied aspect of Silko’s novel through her focus on Irish colonial histories, including the Great Potato Famine.
Leslie Marmon Silko’s Transnational Archives: Seed Saving and Transatlantic Connection in Gardens in the Dunes · 2026 · DOIWhile animal enunciation has been extensively studied, vegetal discourse in Cyrano’s works remains underexplored.
If the novel determines that both "pet" and "adopted" are insufficient categories, then what sort of "conceptual repertoire," Murray asks, might the critic adopt to remain faithful to the text's representation of human-cat relations?3"Companion animal" has become the field's go-to formulation, but Murray distrusts this term for its insinuation of a relationship free of hierarchy.
A careful look at the history of the field guide and recent innovations in the genre clarifies how these understudied texts have long worked to shape human attitudes to the environment—and how renovating the genre could play an equally important part in renovating human commitments to a flourishing natural world.
It remains to be seen what the origins of this geocentrism are in ecological epistemology.
The intention is not so much to provide answers here for the open questions, but rather to think through the knots, the tangles, the interactions.
Thus the “geological fantasy” in question is a problematic field through which interpretations and affective resonances proliferated—with contradictory results.
How the Earth Feels: Geological Fantasy in the Nineteenth-Century United States. By Dana Luciano · 2024 · DOIFuture research can explore the application of material ecocriticism to other literary genres. The study suggests further analysis of the role of water in Philippine ecopoetry. Future research can investigate the impact of ecopoetry on environmental awareness and education.
An ethological-hydrographic reading of the ecological literacies of selected Philippine ecopoems in English · 2026 · DOIThe study highlights the need for a more nuanced understanding of non-human entities in the biosphere.
An ethological-hydrographic reading of the ecological literacies of selected Philippine ecopoems in English · 2026 · DOIFuture research could explore the application of the 'plastic domestication' convention to other species and genres. It could investigate the implications of plasticity for animal welfare and conservation. Further study could examine the role of plasticity in shaping human-animal relationships in different cultural contexts.
It highlights the need for a more nuanced understanding of animal agency and animal-human relationships.
Future research could further explore the implications of the paper's findings for our understanding of the human condition. It could also examine other works of literature from a postcolonial and posthumanist perspective.
Scale, the Other, and Boundaries: Postcolonial Allegory and Posthuman Reflections in Voltaire’s Micromégas · 2026 · DOIThe role of the natural environment as a medium of 'othering' remains underexamined. The intersection of ecological concerns and Gothic tradition is a relatively new area of study.
There is a lack of research on the potential of fantasy literature to shape environmental attitudes. Ecocriticism has focused primarily on realist environmental writing and nature essays. The intersection between fantasy narratives and environmental consciousness is an understudied area.
The study highlights the need for more emphasis on the intersection of environmental and societal issues in literature.
The lack of attention to mythological stories in modern times.
DEPRECIATION OF MYTHOLOGICAL STORIES RESULTED IN DESTRUCTION OF ENVIRONMENT: A STUDY OF AMITAV GHOSH’S THE LIVING MOUNTAIN – A FABLE FOR OUR TIMES · 2026 · DOIThe study is limited to a specific research site, the SLF flat field research site. The measurements are taken over a limited period, from 1 April 2007 to 25 April 2007. The study does not provide a comprehensive analysis of the uncertainty associated with the modeled results.
The research gap is also identified in the need to investigate the influence of local advection of sensible heat on snow ablation.
Future research should prioritize interdisciplinary collaboration. The concept of the Anthropocene should be further examined. More nuanced approaches to understanding complex phenomena are necessary.
The gap between the humanities and life sciences is a significant challenge. The lack of precise terminology and considered metaphorical use is a limitation. The need for a more nuanced approach to interdisciplinary research is a key gap.
As we have seen, our capacity to measure, prevent and put forward public policies to tackle this unease is clearly limited by the inability to develop accurate indicators due to the great number of cultural factors involved in ‘mental health’.
Anthropocene fiction, in Adam Trexler’s terminology, is fiction that interrogates the stakes of anthropogenic transformations to the Earth system, including but not limited to the changing climate.
Unstable Affects and Temporal Complexity in Two Doggerland Novels by Élisabeth Filhol and Ben Smith · 2024 · DOIFurther study on the role of mythological stories in preserving the environment. Analysis of other literary works that depict the impact of human activities on the environment.
DEPRECIATION OF MYTHOLOGICAL STORIES RESULTED IN DESTRUCTION OF ENVIRONMENT: A STUDY OF AMITAV GHOSH’S THE LIVING MOUNTAIN – A FABLE FOR OUR TIMES · 2026 · DOIFacilitation, community connections, hosting 1 3Sustainability…
Most-cited papers in Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature
- Defining the Anthropocene · Nature · 2015 · 2,485 citations
- The Anthropocene: From Global Change to Planetary Stewardship · AMBIO · 2011 · 1,174 citations
- The Capitalocene, Part I: on the nature and origins of our ecological crisis · The Journal of Peasant Studies · 2017 · 1,044 citations
- Materialist returns: practising cultural geography in and for a more-than-human world · Cultural Geographies · 2006 · 950 citations
- World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice · BioScience · 2017 · 938 citations
- Neoliberalising Nature: The Logics of Deregulation and Reregulation · Environment and Planning A Economy and Space · 2007 · 848 citations
- After Nature · Current Anthropology · 1999 · 698 citations
- Decolonizing posthumanist geographies · Cultural Geographies · 2013 · 616 citations
- The Force of Things · Political Theory · 2004 · 586 citations
- A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative · Journal of American History · 1992 · 583 citations
Most recent work
- Hope or fear? Children’s responses to climate change fiction · Environmental Education Research · 2026
- A Feminist Political Ecology on Women’s Environmental Activism from Latin America/Abya Yala · Latin American Perspectives · 2026
- Verify if you are human: what is the ‘human’ in ‘human migration’? · Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies · 2026
- Caring pedagogy and climate literacy: teaching English through Han Kang’s fiction in Indonesian higher education · Pedagogy Culture and Society · 2026
- Representing Animals in the Anthropocene: A Corpus‐Based Ecological Discourse Analysis of The Globe and Mail · International Journal of Applied Linguistics · 2026
- Geographies of the seasons · Dialogues in Human Geography · 2026
- The Aesthetics of the Unreachable, Imagination, and Climate Change · The Monist · 2026
- Talking a Lot, Yet Little to Say: Economics Imperialism in the Economics of Climate Change · Review of Radical Political Economics · 2026
- Ecophenomenology as a link between the fields of environmental education and health education · Qualitative Research Journal · 2026
- Scalar Anglosphere: Wasteocene Waters and Vulnerable Bodies in Chioma Okereke’s Water Baby · Critique Studies in Contemporary Fiction · 2026
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