Joni Adamson

Joni Adamson is Professor of Environmental Humanities in the Department of English at Arizona State University. She is known for her work in ecocriticism, environmental justice critical studies, American Studies, indigenous studies, and for working to organize and network the environmental humanities (also known as the Ecological Humanities). In 2012, she served as President of the Association for the Study Literature and Environment (ASLE) an organization with over 1800 members in 41 countries around the world. From 1999 to 2010, she founded and led the Environment and Culture Caucus of the American Studies Association (ASA-ECC).

Adamson is best known for raising what leading ecocritic, Lawrence Buell, describes in The Future of Environmental Literary Criticismas the “challenge of ecojustice revisionism” to early discussions of the meanings and frameworks for ecocritism (Buell, 2005: 115). Buell cites Adamson’s monograph, American Indian Literature, Environmental Justice and Ecocriticism (University of Arizona Press, 2001), and her co-edited collection, The Environmental Justice Reader: Politics, Poetics, and Pedagogy (University of Arizona Press, 2002), as contributing to the “sheer moral force” that the environmental justice movement was exerting on the emerging shape of academic environmental studies. This force, he notes, should “not be underestimated” (Buell, 2005: 115). Both were published at the leading edge of the environmental justice movement and helped shape transnational American Studies and environmental justice critical studies. The book has been cited in dozens of languages, reprinted in “introductions to ecocriticism” textbooks, and translated into Mandarin.

Other recent publications include Humanities for the Environment (Routledge 2017); Ecocriticism and Indigenous Studies—Conversations from Earth to Cosmos (Routledge 2016); and Keywords for Environmental Studies (New York University Press, 2016). Adamson has lectured across the US, and in Australia, China, England, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, and Taiwan. She has published over 70 articles, chapters and reviews exploring global indigenous literatures, multispecies relationships, food justice, critical plant studies, eco-digital humanities and the arts of futurity.