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Open research questions in Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature

68 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 4,986 Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • Based on Roy Bhaskar's late phase thinking, this paper asserts that the mainstream interpretation of the climate crisis is still limited by the residue of anthropocentrism and has not adequately elaborated on the ecological relationality that constitutes oikos as the home of human and more-than-human life.

    Eco-Transcendence: Reconfiguring MetaReality to Rethink the Climate Crisis · 2026 · DOI

  • Future studies are needed to investigate cartoons across different languages and cultures to better understand how they can explain the relationship between the economy and ecological challenges and how they try to encourage their audiences to address and redress this relationship.

    Cartooning in the Anthropocene · 2026 · DOI

  • Although crisis narratives and related public communication actively par- ticipate in the production of the crisis as well as coping, there is still limited research on recipient feedback to spatial messages and the use of danger maps within communication related to EHC.

    Myths, Maps and Vernacular Perception: A Theoretical Framework for Analyzing the Spatial Representations of Environmental Health Crises in Mythological Narratives · 2026 · DOI

  • Beard, as “existential” in the sense that it allows for the possibility of “things human 181 longer temporal horizon beings can do now that, collectively, will move us towards safe, joyous, and inclusive futures” (5), but it is also “reasonably demanding: requiring substantial commitment from us to maintain it while still allowing that we are imperfect and limited by our capabilities and abilities” (6).

    Imaginaries of Planetary Futures: <i>The Expanse</i> and Democracy-to-Come · 2026 · DOI

  • Like other translation activities, it is an act of creative interpretation that has limitations in rendering the logic of arboreal life into a familiar human narrative while inevitably glossing over the untranslatable aspects of tree lives or “culture” that remain to be fully understood or that exist beyond human grasp.

    Entangled Material Literacy: Nonfiction Forest Writings and Forest Experience for a Relational Ecocritical Pedagogy · 2026 · DOI

  • Facilitation, community connections, hosting 1 3Sustainability Science (4) Afterlife, the ways in which these co-creative processes evolved and generated other processes. Artistic methods and practices were defined during phases 1 and 2. They were defined through exploratory conversations with research leads and local collaborators to allow appropriate media and approaches to emerge from each context’s specific dynamics. Research observers were present during the workshops to document processes and provide independent field notes. In Bangladesh, three researchers observed and documented the embroidery workshop. In Brazil, four researchers served as observers during the animation workshop. The Hawaiʻi case did not include dedicated research observers due to its extended engagement format, though the core team main- tained detailed field journals throughout.

    Arts-led co-creation in contested coastal futures · 2026 · DOI

  • What aspects of these men’s lives, including but not limited to their environmental activism, nourish promising alternatives? In what ways does this challenge hegemonic masculinity? This article addresses these questions through life histories of nine men engaged in the Network of Agroecological Gardens of Cali (Colombia), drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and secondary sources.

    Buen Vivir as fertile soil for ecological masculinities: learning from gardening men in Cali, Colombia · 2025 · DOI

  • Set in Nagasaki, struck by atomic bombing during the Second World War, Kazuo Ishiguro's A Pale View of Hills (1982/1990) has been explored through the lens of ecocriticism only by a few critics, and investigations into the wilderness have been underexplored.

    Dualistic Wilderness in Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of Hills · 2024 · DOI

  • We conclude that, given the unprecedented implications of climate crises and biodiversity collapse, a YCW ethics that does not consider these implications for young people is insufficient for the context of practice today.

    Youth and Community Work for Climate Justice: Towards an Ecocentric Ethics for Practice · 2024 · DOI

  • Ecofeminist scholarship grew in volume and prominence in the 1970s and 1980s but began to falter under the weight of critiques that the approach upheld gender essentialism and a white western feminism that does not account for the needs, views, politics, and orientations to the planet outside of the global north.

    Feminist approaches to environmental politics · 2024 · DOI

  • Besides, the paper also summarizes the specialized characteristics of proximization strategies in Silent Spring, which may lay a foundation for further research on environmental discourse: 1) Silent Spring frequently uses spatial proximzation strategies to emphasize the actual harms of chemicals to the environment.

    A Wmatrix-based Analysis of Proximization Strategy of Environmental Discourse: A Case of Silent Spring · 2023 · DOI

  • It first examines the main approaches in environmental ethics (land ethic, deep ecology, social ecology, and postmodern environmental ethics)—biocentric, ecocentric, anthropocentric, socialist, postmodern—and reveals that they are but limited to the human perspective, deeply rooted in human exceptionalism.

    Exploring Environmental Ethics: From Exclusion of More-than-Human Beings Towards a New Materialist Paradigm · 2023 · DOI

  • In the practice of experience making that Stewart1 refers to as “worlding,” there exists the processually differentiating capacity to bring to life encounters and events in which the energy of the future lies in the speculative force and living potential of the always not yet known.

    The Anthropocene, Affect, and Autoethnography? · 2020 · DOI

  • Given the significant and inexorable changes being wrought by global warming and the lack of similitude between Earth prior to anthropogenic warming and the incipient Eaarth introduced by global warming, examining the continued relevance of the terms sustainable development and sustainability is warranted.

    Rethinking Sustainability on Planet Earth: A Time for New Framings · 2012 · DOI

  • Nevertheless, the extreme dangers that capitalism inherently poses to the environment are often inadequately understood, giving rise to the belief that it is possible to create a new "natural capitalism" or "climate capitalism" in which the system is turned from being the enemy of the environment into its savior.

    The Ecology of Marxian Political Economy · 2011 · DOI

  • Abstract Stories about the forest recounted in a Quichua-speaking Runa village in Ecuador's Upper Amazon point to an element of ecological understandings that is rarely studied; these are primarily about capturing and sharing the experience of the process of knowing rather than trafficking in stabilized tokens of ecological knowledge.

    Runa realism: Upper Amazonian attitudes to nature knowing · 2005 · DOI

  • While existing scholarship has documented environmental themes in African American writing, few studies have comprehensively examined the relationship between narrative strategies and community empowerment across historical periods and diverse genres.

    Environmental racism and community empowerment: ecological justice narratives in African American literature · 2026 · DOI

  • The question that remains to be answered is, if he fears that his fake identity might get disclosed or because he is reluctant to spend his present life of living away from the people amidst Nature, and monkeys.

    Ecocritical Approach to the Postcolonial Anthropogenic novel Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (1998) · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper analyzes two specific ecopoems in detail but does not address how findings might apply to other literary genres or non-literary environmental communication forms.

    An ethological-hydrographic reading of the ecological literacies of selected Philippine ecopoems in English · 2026 · DOI

  • The interrelation between ecological thought and psychological responses (including suicide mentioned in the text) is raised but not thoroughly theorized or explored in depth.

    An ethological-hydrographic reading of the ecological literacies of selected Philippine ecopoems in English · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper discusses place-based education and ecological self-formation through ecopoetry but does not empirically test or validate whether readers actually develop enhanced ecological literacy through engagement with these texts.

    An ethological-hydrographic reading of the ecological literacies of selected Philippine ecopoems in English · 2026 · DOI

  • The analysis of ethological behavior (sparrow nest defense) in relation to hydrographic features is presented as an original undertaking, but the paper does not discuss comparative analysis across multiple animal species or their behavioral responses to pollution.

    An ethological-hydrographic reading of the ecological literacies of selected Philippine ecopoems in English · 2026 · DOI

  • While the paper analyzes dark ecology and disaster representation in ecopoems, it does not provide systematic methodology for measuring or quantifying ecological literacy across a larger corpus of texts.

    An ethological-hydrographic reading of the ecological literacies of selected Philippine ecopoems in English · 2026 · DOI

  • Thus, this work contends that examining cultural productions highlighting the environmentalism of the poor signals an innovative humanities-based pedagogical shift that can help foster understanding of themes, concepts, and lifeworlds not fully explored in the science or social science literature.

    Theorizing a we-speak-for-ourselves storytelling approach for reconceptualizing environmental education in schools of education · 2025 · DOI

  • By focusing on non-human beings living in the city, Woolfson makes them more salient in the readers’ minds, demonstrating that direct contact with nature is not limited to the wilderness or the countryside and is accessible to anyone, regardless of where they live.

    Reconnecting with the Non-human World: Loss and Uncertainty in Esther Woolfson’s Field Notes from a Hidden City: An Urban Nature Diary · 2024 · DOI

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68 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 4,986 Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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