Intermedial Ecocriticism: The Anthropocene Ecological Crisis across Media and the Arts

This article is an introduction to the edited issue of Ekphrasis that publishes selected and rewritten versions of papers presented at the international conference "Intermedial Ecocriticism: The Anthropocene Ecological Crisis across Media and the Arts" that took place in Cluj, Romania, in August 2019.Taking as its starting point the by now well-established fact that the ecological crisis defines our current moment and threatens our planetary future, the article argues that environmental humanities is in need of a research agenda that is able to systematically study, compare and criticize many different ecomedia products from a wide range of media types.The article argues that major insights from intermedial studies ought to be combined with the basic ideas of contemporary ecocriticism, and the article briefly outlines an intermedial ecocritical research agenda.Also, the article offers brief introductions to the 12 articles of this special issue, which covers a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches to the intersections of intermedial studies and ecocriticism.The articles deal with a wide variety of different media types, from scientific articles and social media articulations and to blockbuster cinema, narrative literature, TV-series, Japanese manga documentary film.