Anthropocene Panic

Contemporary Ecocriticism and the Issue of Human Numbers

Authors

  • Lawrence Buell Harvard University

Abstract

Environmental humanists rightly believe they have valuable contributions to make to rethinking and redressing Anthropocene Age excess. Ecocriticism’s recent maturation as an interdiscipline has put it in a stronger position to do so than ever before. Its “material” turn in the 2000s bears this out up to a point, but its interventions also seem somewhat self-limiting. This essay argues that ecocritics and environmental humanists more generally have foregone a promising opportunity by avoiding the controversial issue of unsustainable human population growth as a sociohistorical phenomenon and an impetus to creative imagination.

Author Biography

  • Lawrence Buell, Harvard University

    Lawrence Buell is Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus at Harvard University. His most recent book is The Dream of the Great American Novel (2014). In 2007 he received the Modern Language Association’s Hubbell Award for lifetime contributions to American Literature studies.

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Published

2026-05-04

Issue

Vol. 29 No. 2 (2016): Perspectives on the Anthropocene

Section

Main Section

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Buell, L. (2026). Anthropocene Panic: Contemporary Ecocriticism and the Issue of Human Numbers. FRAME, Journal of Literary Studies, 29(2), 11-27. https://platform.openjournals.nl/FRAME/article/view/27366