This edited collection brings together literary and cultural texts from India, the United States, South Korea, and Australia to build upon a relational understanding of ecocriticism. The volume opens by tracing the development and future directions of ecocriticism in the East and West, situating it within the public humanities and environmental responsibility. Further contributions read literary and cultural texts that foreground ecofeminist resistance, posthuman transformation, indigenous cosmologies, and struggles in environmental justice. While chapters are grounded in close reading, authors also engage with activist movements and histories of displacement. Together, they demonstrate that ecocriticism is a multidisciplinary practice, illuminating how literature participates in shaping relational ethics and more sustainable modes of coexistence.

Philip Edward Phillips is Professor of English and Associate Dean of the University Honors College and at Middle Tennessee State University, USA. His research areas include American literature, ecocriticism, and spatial literary studies. His recent books include Poe and Place (Palgrave, 2018) and Poe Spaces: Within and Beyond the Spatial Turn (Palgrave, 2025), both of which received the Poe Studies Association's J. Lasley Dameron Award for an outstanding collection on Poe.