Matthew Schneider-Mayerson is assistant professor of environmental studies at Yale-NUS College. His research employs literary criticism, qualitative social science, and cultural history to examine cultural and political responses to contemporary environmental challenges, with a focus on climate change. He has published articles and book chapters on literature, popular culture, environmental futures, and environmental politics; he is the author of Peak Oil: Apocalyptic Environmentalism and Libertarian Political Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2015) and the coeditor of An Ecotopian Lexicon (University of Minnesota Press, 2019). He is currently at work on a monograph on reproduction in the age of climate change.
RCC Research Project: Empirical Ecocriticism: A Workshop at the Rachel Carson Center
Selected Publications:
- “‘Just as in the Book’? The Influence of Literature on Readers’ Awareness of Climate Injustice and Perception of Climate Migrants.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. Forthcoming.
- “The Influence of Climate Fiction: An Empirical Survey of Readers.” Environmental Humanities 10, no. 2 (2018): 473–500.
- “Climate Change Fiction.” In American Literature in Transition: 2000–2010, edited by Rachel Greenwald Smith. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
- Peak Oil: Apocalyptic Environmentalism and Libertarian Political Culture. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015.
- “Disaster Movies and the ‘Peak Oil’ Movement: Does Popular Culture Encourage Eco-Apocalyptic Beliefs in the US?” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature & Culture 7, no. 3 (2013): 289–314.