Distinguished Professor Emeritus Scott Slovic taught at University of Idaho from 2012 to 2023. In January 2024, he retired from the U of I English Department to become a senior scientist at the Oregon Research Institute in Eugene, Oregon, where he continues his work in the environmental humanities. While at Idaho, he served as chair of the English Department from 2014 to 2018. He also helped to create the Semester in the Wild Program and taught environmental writing in SITW from 2013 through 2022.

Prior to coming to Idaho, he taught courses on ecocriticism, American and comparative environmental literature, and the interdisciplinary environmental humanities at the University of Nevada, Reno, for 17 years. At Nevada, he helped to create the prominent graduate program in literature and environment and develop the Center for Environmental Arts and Humanities, the Academy for the Environment, and the undergraduate environmental studies program. He also taught at Texas State University in San Marcos from 1990 to 1995. Scott earned his doctorate and masters in English at Brown University and his bachelors in English at Stanford University.

Scott has published more than 300 articles, interviews, op-eds, and reviews and is the author, editor, or co-editor of 31 books (as of the end of 2023), including the monographs “Seeking Awareness in American Nature Writing” (1992) and “Going Away to Think: Engagement, Retreat, and Ecocritical Responsibility” (2008). “Going Away to Think” has also appeared in Chinese and French translations, and Arabic, Portuguese, and Turkish translations are forthcoming. His many co-edited volumes include “Ecodisaster Imaginaries in India” (2023; with Joyjit Ghosh and Samit Kumar Maiti), “Nature and Literary Studies” (2022; with Peter C. Remien), and “The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Medical-Environmental Humanities” (2022; with Swarnalatha Rangarajan and Vidya Sarveswaran). Much of his current work focuses on “data studies” (how information is collected, communicated, and processed cognitively) in the contexts of humanitarian and environmental crises. He and Paul Slovic published the book Numbers and Nerves: Information, Emotion, and Meaning in a World of Data on this subject in 2015 (a Chinese translation appeared in 2024, and an Arabic translation is forthcoming). He serves as a contributing editor for the Arithmetic of Compassion website: www.arithmeticofcompassion.org

Scott served as the founding president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) from 1992 to 1995. He edited the journal “ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment” from 1995 to 2020. https://www.asle.org/stay-informed/asle-news/a-tribute-to-scott-slovic-isle-editor-1995-2020/. He edited the Environmental Arts and Humanities book series (University of Nevada Press, 1996-2001) and the Credo Series (Milkweed Editions, 1997-2005); at present, he co-edits two book series for Routledge: Routledge Studies in World Literatures and the Environment (with Swarnalatha Rangarajan) and Routledge Environmental Humanities (with Joni Adamson and Yuki Masami). He also serves on the editorial boards for twenty scholarly journals and two presses. He has repeatedly been a Fulbright Screening Committee member for the Institute of International Education (IIE) and a panelist in American studies and American literature for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). He has been a Fulbright Scholar in Germany (University of Bonn, 1986-87), Japan (University of Tokyo, Sophia University, and Rikkyo University, 1993-94), China (Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, 2006), and Turkey (Cappadocia University, 2021), and he frequently lectures in person and over Zoom at many universities around the world. 

Scott can be reached at sslovic@ori.org.

• Ecocriticism
• American and international environmental literature
• Western American literature
• Literary nonfiction
• Environmental writing
• Native American literature
• Sustainability studies
• Autobiography
• Professional publishing and editing

Recent Books:

• Co-editor (with Swarnalatha Rangarajan and Vidya Sarveswaran), The Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication. Abingdon-on-Thames, UK: Routledge, 2019.
• Co-editor (with David Taylor and Armando Fernandez), An Island in the Stream: Ecocritical and Literary Responses to Cuban Environmental Culture. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019.
• Co-editor (with Peter Quigley), Ecocritical Aesthetics: Language, Beauty, and the Environment. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2018. 
• Co-editor (with Chia-ju Chang), Ecocriticism in Taiwan: Identity, Environment, and the Arts. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016. Ecocritical Theory and Practice Series.
• Co-editor (with Paul Slovic), Numbers and Nerves: Information, Emotion, and Meaning in a World of Data. Corvallis: Oregon State UP, 2015.
• Co-editor (with James E. Bishop and Kyhl Lyndgaard), Currents of the Universal Being: Explorations in the Literature of Energy. Lubbock: Texas Tech UP, 2015.
• Co-editor (with Nevin Yildirim Yoyuncu, Klara Kolinska, and Erkin Kiryaman), Confinement, Resistance, Freedom: Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Cultural Studies Symposium. Izmir, Turkey: Aegean UP, 2015
• Co-editor (with Vidya Sarveswaran and Swarnalatha Rangarajan),Ecocriticism of the Global South. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books (Rowman & Littlefield), 2015. Ecocritical Theory and Practice Series.
• Ecoambiguity, Community, and Development: Toward a Politicized Ecocriticism. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books (Rowman & Littlefield), 2014
• Scott Slovic Speaks: Thinking Like Yucca Mountain [Scott Slovic wa kataru]. Compiled and translated into Japanese by Shoko Itoh and Michiko Nakashima. Hiroshima, Japan: Society of Ecocriticism-Japan, 2014.
• Co-editor (with Lorraine Anderson and John P. O'Grady), Literature and the Environment: A Reader on Nature and Culture. New York: Pearson Longman, 2013. (First edition 1999.)
• Editor, Nature and the Environment. Critical Insights Series. Ipswich, MA: EBSCO/Salem Press, 2012.
• Co-editor (with Serpil Oppermann, Ufuk Özdag, and Nevin Özkan), The Future of Ecocriticism: New Horizons. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2011.
• Going Away to Think: Engagement, Retreat, and Ecocritical Responsibility. Reno: U of Nevada P, 2008. (Chinese translation by Wei Qingqi published by Peking UP in 2010.)

Recent Articles:

• "Narrative in the Age of Precarity: Modeling Inner and Outer Weather through Story": in What's the Weather Like. Ed. Jean-Pierre naugrette and Catherine Lanone. Geneva and Paris: Honore Champion, forthcoming in 2020.
• "Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories and the City and the Local-Global Tension in Ecocritical Place Studies": in Turkish Ecocriticism. Ed. Serpil Oppermann and Sinan Akilli, Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2020.
• "Something Wonderful and Surreal: American Ecocritics and Environmental Writers Contemplate Exile in Cuba as Donald Trump Eyes the White House": in An Island in the Stream: Ecocritical and Literary Responses to Cuban Environmental Culture. Ed. David Taylor, Fernando Hernandez, and Scott Slovic. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2019. 143-48.
• "In Memoriam: Richard K. Nelson": Association for the study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) website (6 November 2019). www.asle.org
• "Furrowed Brows, Questioning Earth: Minding the Loess Soil of the Palouse": in Caliban 61 (2019): 53-68. Special issue on literature and the land.
• "The Importance of Validating Faculty Research": in Inside Higher Ed (4 September 2019). (With Janet E. Nelson.) https://www.insidehigher3ed.com/advice/2019/09/04/academic-administrators-must-do-more-highlight-researchers%E2%80%99-scholarly-and-creative
• "University of Idaho event shows how research here and around the U.S. betters the world": The Idaho Statesman (31 May 2019). (With Janet E. Nelson.)
• "'Let me tell your story': A Review of A Private War": www.arithmeticofcompassion.org (11 April 2019).
• "Environmental Humanities: Slow Violence, Narrative Empathy, Empirical Ecocriticism": on the Arithmetic of Compassion website: www.arithmeticofcompassion.org (February 2019).
• "'Bright words': finding common ground in environmental negotiations": in Transformation (1 February 2019).
• "Capturing and Catalyzing Global Reach: The Role of University Research Administrators": in NCURA Magazine 51.1 (Jan/Feb 2019) (co-authored with Janet E. Nelson): 12-13.
• "36 Views of Moscow Mountain: Teaching Travel Writing and Mindfulness in the Tradition of Hokusai and Thoreau": in Caliban 59 (2018): 41-54. Special issue on Anglophone Travel and Exploration Writing: Meetings between the Human and Non-Human.
• "Contextualizing the Ecological Indian: Annette Kolodny's Ceremonial, Multi-dimensional curating of Joseph Nicolar's The Life and Traditions of the Red Man": in Early American Literature 53.3 (2018): 909-15
• "Language Matters: Environmental Controversy and the Quest for Common Ground": in The Public Land and Resources Law Review (University of Montana) (2018): 1-21.
• "Toward Sustainable Aesthetics: The Poetry of Food, Sex, Water, Architecture, and Bicycle-Riding": in Ecocritical Aesthetics: Language, Beauty, and the Environment. Ed. Peter Quigley and Scott Slovic. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2018. 201-13.
• "The Caveman and the Bomb: Does Trump Grasp the Horror of His Threat to 'Totally Destroy' North Korea": in Scientific American. (14 November 2017) (With Andrew Quist and Paul Slovic.)
• “Going Away to the Wilderness for Solitude … and Community: Ecoambiguity and the Semester in the Wild Experience”: in Cultures of Solitude. Ed. Ina Bergmann and Stefan Hippler. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Peter Lang, 2017. 275-86.  
• “Liquid Scale: Trans-Scalar Thinking and the Perception of Water”: in Water in Social Imagination: from Technological Optimism to Contemporary Environmentalism. Ed. Jane Costlow, Yrjö Haila, and Arja Rosenholm. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2017. 11-27.
• “Empiricism, Information Management, and the Environmental Humanities”: in special issue of Journal of Ecocriticism (Spring/Summer 2017): 1-7. Guest edited by Chitra Sankaran.
• “Teaching With Wolves”: forthcoming in Western American Literature 52.3 (Fall 2017): 323-31. Special issue on Nature and Culture in the West. Guest edited by Helena Feder.
• “Ecocriticism and the Psychology of Information Processing: Taking a Seat at the Table”: in The Ecocriticism Review No. 10 (Spring/Summer 2017): 4-14. Also published in Portuguese in Revista Interdisciplinar de Literatura e Ecocritica No. 1 (2017).
• “Literature”: in Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology. Ed. Mary Evelyn Tucker, John Grim, and Willis Jenkins. London: Routledge, 2016. 353-61.
• “Re-Scaling Geo-Loyality: Considering Expressions of Trans-Scalar Thinking”: in Sense of Place: Transatlantic Perspectives // Sentido del Arraigo: Perspectivas Transatlánticas. Ed. Carmen Flys Junquera and Axel Goodbody. Alcalá, Spain: U of Alcalá P, 2016. 37-51.
• “Narrative Scholarship as an American Contribution to Global Ecocriticism”: in Handbook of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology. Ed. Hubert Zapf. Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter, 2016. 315-33.
• “Climate Change Is Genocide for Island Cultures”: in The Eugene Register-Guard (31 July 2016). (With Paul Slovic.)
• “Scott Slovic on Bangladesh and Allen Ginsberg”: in OSU Press Blog (20 July 2016).
• “What We Take For Granted”: in Fracture: Essays, Poems, and Stories on Fracking in America. Ed. Taylor Brorby. North Liberty, IA: Ice Cube Press, 2016. 207-10.
• “Countering ‘the anesthesia of destruction’: Information and Pathos in the Work of J.M.G. Le Clézio, Barry Lopez, and Vandana Shiva”: in Revista de Culturas y Literaturas Comparadas (University of Córdoba, Argentina) 5 (2015).
• “The Arithmetic of Compassion”: in The New York Times (4 December 2015 online and 6 December 2015 in print): 10SR. (With Paul Slovic.)
• “The Dance of Reason and Affect”: in OSU Press Blog (19 November 2015).
• Afterword: “Natural Prayers”: in new edition of Richard Jefferies’s The Story of My Heart. Ed. Terry Tempest Williams and Brooke Williams. Torrey, UT: Torrey House Press, 2014. 229-35.
• “Varieties of Environmental Nostalgia”: in The Memory of Nature in Aboriginal, Canadian and American Contexts. Ed. Françoise Besson. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2014. 11-30.
• “A Booklist of International Environmental Literature”: in World Literature Today (May 2014). Also see January 2009 issue. Coordinated this booklist.
• “Technologies of Contact”: in Environmental Humanities (University of New South Wales, Australia) (Fall 2013).
• “Ecological Civilization and Global Governance” (18 September 2013) and “Landmarks in Chinese Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature” (26 October 2012): in Chinese Social Sciences Today (a publication of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences).
• "Marks of Ambivalence: Thoughts on Perception and Inscription": in Miranda (Toulouse, France). Special issue on Marking the Land in North America. (Summer 2012).
• "An Abiding Sense of Relationship": in ELN: English Language Notes 50.1 (Spring/Summer 2012): 243-48. Special issue on "The Shape of the I," guest-edited by Julie Carr and John-Michael Rivera.
• Invited commentary: in ALH: American Literary History 24.1 (February 2012): 180-88. Special issue on sustainability.
• "Literary Istanbul and the Notion of Place in Contemporary Ecocriticism": in Istanbul in Turkish and World Culture. Ankara, Turkey: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, 2011. 589-603.
• "'What is a horizon without mountains?': Robert Laxalt's Sweet Promised Land and the Allure of Mountainous Places": in Mountains Figured and Disfigured in English and American Literature. Ed. Françoise Besson. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010. 235-42.

Selected Interviews:

• Amazonia: A Poetic Journey. Dir. Marcos Colón. Film forthcoming.
• "Recent Trends and Concerns of Ecological Criticism: Ethical Practice and Multiple Routes - An Interview with Professor Scott Slovic" (interviewed by Han Cunyuan and Ye Hua). Forthcoming in Academic Journal of Jinyang (Shanxi Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, P.R. China) (2020>
• "An Interview on the Emerging Field of Material Ecocriticism and It's Pedagogy" (interviewed by Tang Jiannan). Forthcoming in The Journal of Poyang Hu (2020)
• "Nature Writing and Ecocriticism in an Era of Posthumanism: An Interview with Professor Scott Slovic" (interviewed by Shi Haiyu). Forthcoming in Foreign Literature Studies (2020).
• "Sense of Place in American Literature". On the website of Grupo de Investigación en Erocritica Instituto Franklin - Uah, Espana (GIECO) (September 2019): http://www3.uah.es/gieco/index.php/sense-of-place/
• "Under the Signs of Ecocriticism: An Interview with Prof. Scott Slovic" (interviewed by Sayyed Ali Mirenayat and Elaheh Soofastaei). AJE: Australasian Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology (ASLE-ANZ) Vol. 6 (Summer 2016-17): 72-84
• "Ecocriticism in 25 years: Interviewing Scott Slovic" (Niju-go-nengo no ekokuritishizumu) (interviewed by Keitaro Morita and Yohei Yamamoto). Environmental Humanities II: Nature as the Other (kankyo-jinbungaku II: Tasa to-shiteno shizen). volume II. Fest schrift for ken-ichi Noda. Tolyo: Bensei, 217. 287-332. (In Japanese translation.)
• "5 Reasons We Don't Get Numbers: And It Has Nothing to Do with Math" (Scott Slovic and Paul Slovic interviewed by Marty Patail). Portland Monthly (1 march 2016). www.pdxmonthly.com/2016/3/1/5-reasons-we-don-t-get-numbers
• "Dialogue between Scott Slovic and Chinese Visiting Scholars" (interviewed by Liu Bei, Zhu Lihua, and Li Huihua). Special issue of The Journal of Poyang Hu devoted to "Scott Slovic and Ecocriticism) (2015, No. 5): 38-47. (In Chinese translation.)
• "Interview with Professor Scott Slovic" (interviewed by Yan Jianhua). Foreign Literature (2014): 148-55.
• "The Sea Is Warm: Nature, Environmental Art, and Ecocriticism - An Interview with Professor Scott Slovic" (interviewed by Su Bing). The Journal of Poyang Hu (2013, No. 3): 102-08. (In Chinese translation.)
• "Reflections on Academic publishing: A Conversation between Jiang Hong and Scott Slovic" (interviewed October 2012). Chinese Social Sciences Today 392 (14 December 2012) (a publication of the Social Sciences in China Press, a branch of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences). (In Chinese translation.)
• "From Place to Planet to 'Planetary Place': An Interview with Professor Scott Slovic" (interviewed by Xu Haixiang, Nanjing University, 1 November 2011). The Journal of Jiangsu University (May 2012): 42-46. (In Chinese translation.)
• "The Future of Ecocriticism: Strategic Openness and Sustainability - An Interview with Scott Slovic" (interviewed by Yang Ying-yu). Tamkang Review (Tamsui, Taiwan) 41.2 (June 2011): 63-74.
• "Reflections on Literature and Environment: An Interview with Scott Slovic" (interviewed by Diana Villanueva Romero). Econzon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture, and Environment 1.2 (2010): 67-86.
• "Scott Slovic: reflexiones sobre literatura y medio ambiente" (interviewed by Diana Villanueva Romero). Ecocríticas: Literatura y medio ambiente. Ed. Carmen Flys Junguera, José Marrero Henriquez, and Julia Barella Vigal. Madrid, Spain: iberoamericana, 2010. 29-47. (In Spanish translation.)
• "Eco-awareness and Ecocritical Responsibility: An Interview with Professor Scott Slovic" (interviewed by Ma Junhong). Contemporary Foreign Literature (Nanjing University) 31.2 (Summer 20120): 160-70. (In Chinese translation.)
• Practice of the Wild: A conversation with Gary Snyder and Him Harrison (interviewed by Will Hearst). Dir. John Healey. San Simeon Films, May 2020. Transcript appears in The Etiquette of Freedom: Gary Snyder, Jim Harrison, and The Practice of the Wild. Ed. Paul Ebenkamp. Counterpoint, 20120.
• "An Inconvenient Truth: Interviewing Scott Slovic and the World Wildlife Fund's Zhang Yifei" (interviewed by Zhang Lifeng and Eric Tang). Man & Nature 92 (May 2009): 108-09. (Shanghai Literature & Art Publishing Group.) (In Chinese translation.)
• "Der Nature auf der Spur: Eine poeto-öko-logische Anleitung" (interviewed by Andreas Trojan). Bayerischer Rundfunk, Munich, Germany (broadcast 12 February 2008).
• "Scott Slovic: The Current State of Ecocriticism." Literature and the Environment (journal of ASLE-Korea) (June 2006): 214-25. (In Korean translation.)
• Contemporary American Nature Writing: An Introduction" and "What is Nature? What Are We? New Perspectives on Literature" (responses to interview questions by Ken-ichi Noda). Folio A (Fall 1993): 8-16 and 17-24. (In Japanese translation.)

• University Distinguished Professor Award, University of Idaho, April 2020
• Excellence in Research and Creative Activity, University of Idaho, April 2018 
• Excellence in Interdisciplinary Collaborative Efforts Award (Semester in the Wild), University of Idaho, April 2014
• Thornton Peace Prize, University of Nevada, Reno, May 2012
• Vice Chair, Board of Directors, Orion magazine, 2010-2015
• Chair, Selection Committee, Inaugural Orion Book Award, 2007
• Regents' Award for Graduate Academic Advising, Nevada State System of Higher Education, May 2006
• Nevada Humanities Award (for distinguished scholarship in literature and environment), November 2004