This volume gathers nineteen of the most representative and defining essays from the journal ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment over the course of its first ten years. ISLE is the journal of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment. Both the journal and the organization are devoted to ecological literary criticism and environmental scholarship in related disciplines in the United States and around the world. Following an introduction that traces the stages of ecocriticism's development, The ISLE Reader is organized into three sections, each of which reflects one of the general goals that the ecocritical articles in ISLE have sought to accomplish. The section titled "Re-evaluations" provides new readings of familiar environmental writers and new environmental perspectives on authors or literary traditions not usually considered from a green perspective. The writings in the "Reaching Out to Other Disciplines" section promote cross-pollination among various disciplines and methodologies in the environmental arts and humanities.
The writings in the final section, "New Theoretical and Practical Paradigms," are especially significant for the conceptual and methodological terrain they map. The ISLE Reader at once marks an important milestone, documents the state of research in ecocriticism and related interdisciplinary fields, provides a survey of the field, and points to new methodologies and possibilities for the future.