Volume 17 Number 1
A Keyword Analysis of “Climate Change” in Contemporary Literary Studies, 2000-2022
Abstract
In not only classrooms but also digital spaces, conceptual keywords are rich tools for scholarship, teaching, and research. This article analyzes “climate change” as a keyword in contemporary literary studies to assess how the keyword's occurence in the MLA International Bibliography frames metadata engagement. Encouraging access to scholarship through effective keyword selection enables finding, citing, and responding to important scholarship. Among other fields, contemporary literary studies and the digital humanities will benefit from shared terms of engagement to encourage precision with terms in a variety of contexts. Drawing on bibliometric analysis tools, I analyze indexed citations from four academic journals: ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment; Contemporary Literature; MFS Modern Fiction Studies; and PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association. Working with ISLE as a reference case and the latter three as test cases, I find that the occurence of “climate change” as a keyword is less than that of a different, broader keyword: “enviromental crisis.” The disjunction in occurence rates between these two terms provides a keyword problematic that requires further review. For each corpus, I discuss the ramifications of this keyword problematic by highlighting significant intersections and disconnections. To conclude, I reflect on the benefits of standardized indexing practices for contemporary literary studies, the digital humanities, and emergent fields such as the digital environmental humanities.
Corpus and Methods
Reference Case: ISLE
Test Cases: Contemporary Literature, MFS, and PMLA
Conclusion: Keywords and Digital Environmental Humanities
Acknowledgements
Notes
Works Cited
Recommendations
DHQ is testing out three new article recommendation methods! Please explore the links below to find articles that are related in different ways to the one you just read. We are interested in how these methods work for readers—if you would like to share feedback with us, please complete our short evaluation survey. You can also visit our documentation for these recommendation methods to learn more.
SPECTER Recommendations
Below are article recommendations generated by the SPECTER model:
- Review of The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Digital Humanities (2023), 2025, Soni Wadhwa, SRM University, India
- A Review of Bridget Whearty's Digital Codicology: Medieval Books and Modern Labor (2022), 2025, Loren Lee, University of Virginia
- Scholarly Primitives of Scholarly Meetings: A DH-Inspired Exploration of the Virtual Incunabular in the Time of COVID 19, 2022, Jennifer Edmond, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland; Nicole Basaraba, Maastricht University, the Netherlands; Michelle Doran, Centre for Digital Humanities, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland; Vicky Garnett, DARIAH-EU; Courtney Helen Grile, School of Creative Arts, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland; Eliza Papaki, DARIAH-EU; Erszébet Toth-Czifra, DARIAH-EU
- The Digital Environmental Humanities (DEH) in the Anthropocene: Challenges and Opportunities in an Era of Ecological Precarity, 2023, John Ryan, Southern Cross University; Lydia Hearn, Edith Cowan University; Paul Longley Arthur, Edith Cowan University
- The Page Is an Image Again: Bleedmapping as an Analysis Technique for Historical Newspapers, 2023, Quintus van Galen, University of Amsterdam
DHQ Keyword Recommendations
Below are article recommendations generated by DHQ Keywords:
- Mining Public Discourse for Emerging Dutch Nationalism, 2016, Maarten van den Bos, Utrecht University; Hermione Giffard, Utrecht University
- Using structured text corpora in Parliamentary Metadata Language for the analysis of legislative proceedings, 2018, Richard Gartner, Warburg Institute, London, UK
- Social Networks and Archival Context Project: A Case Study of Emerging Cyberinfrastructure, 2014, Tom J. Lynch, Computer Sciences Corporation
- Project Quintessence: Examining Textual Dimensionality with a Dynamic Corpus Explorer, 2023, Samuel Pizelo, UC Davis; Arthur Koehl, UC Davis; Chandni Nagda, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Carl Stahmer, UC Davis
- Mapping Concord: Google Maps and the 19th-Century Concord Digital Archive, 2009, Amy Earhart, Texas A&M University
TF-IDF Recommendations
Below are article recommendations generated by the TF-IDF Model:
- More than Distant Viewing: Qualitative Views on Machine Learning as an Automated Analysis Method in Networked Climate Image Communication, 2022, Paul Heinicker, University of Potsdam; Janna Kienbaum, University of Potsdam; Birgit Schneider, University of Potsdam
- Developing Research through Podcasts: Circulating Spaces, A Case Study, 2021, Christian Howard-Sukhil, University of California, Berkeley; Samantha Wallace, University of Virginia; Ankita Chakrabarti, University of Virginia
- The Digital Environmental Humanities (DEH) in the Anthropocene: Challenges and Opportunities in an Era of Ecological Precarity, 2023, John Ryan, Southern Cross University; Lydia Hearn, Edith Cowan University; Paul Longley Arthur, Edith Cowan University
- To tree, or not to tree? On the Empirical Basis for Having Past Landscapes to Experience., 2018, Philip I. Buckland, Umeå University, Sweden; Nicolò Dell'Unto, Lund University, Sweden; Gísli Pálsson, Umeå University, Sweden
- Ethical and Effective Visualization of Knowledge Networks, 2022, Chelsea Canon, Department of Geography, University of Nevada, Reno; Douglas Boyle, Department of Geography, University of Nevada, Reno; K. J. Hepworth, UniSA Creative, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia