The main call number range for books on ecocriticism is:
PN98. E36 - PN98.E4
There are many books of literary criticism which fall outside this range, however, which still deal primarily with nature, or the intersection of literature and the environment. That is because, according to the Library of Congress Classification System, books of literature and literary crticism are usually categorized first by country or nationality, then by genre, then, typically, by author, and then, optionally, by subject or theme. Nature is often referred to as a Special Subject, and can by further subcategoried into General works, Botany, or Zoology.
So the book Ecocriticism and Shakespeare: Reading Ecophobia, has the call number PR 3039 .E88 2011 because it is primarily considered a work of literary criticism that looks at how William Shakespearewhile, an English Renissance author, dealt with Nature in his drama, while the book Peter Matthiessen and Ecological Imagination is simply categorized as a work of American Literature by an individual author who has published between 1961-2000, and thus has been assigned the call number, PS 3563 .A8584 .Z64 O43 2010.
While I encourage you to browse through the call number ranges for Ecocriticism, because of the wide range of call numbers associated with this complex subject, I also recommend that you actively search our Library catalog, which is currently accessible through OneSearch. To best search OneSearch, go to the CSUS Library homepage, and then click on Advanced Search.
1) You can search by Subject in OneSearch for:
- Ecocriticism
- "Nature in Literature"
- Nature AND Poetry AND Criticism
Both Ecocriticism and "Nature in Literature" are Library of Congress Subject Headings - carefully selected words and phrases used to succintly describe a certain topic. If you searched another library catalog for these Subject Headings, the chances are high that they would also retrieve results. I would reccomend searching for these Subject Headings one at a time.
2) You could search for Liter* by Subject and then add any of the following bulleted words below, one at a time, in subsequent boxes. (Note: Adding an asterisk to the end of a root word will pick up all possible suffixes for that word. For example, Liter* will pick up literary, literature, and literatures).
I would recommend searching for these, not by subject, but by using the default ANY, which means the database will look for these word anywhere in the catalog record - in the title, subject, or notes field.
- Environment* (picking up environment, environmental, environmentalist)
- Eco* (picking up ecology, ecocriticism, and ecologist)
- Natur* (picking up nature, natural, and naturalist)
- Wild* (picking up wild and wilderness)
3) You could do a broad search, by asking the database to look for the words Nature Writ* and Critic* anywhere in the record.
These are just a few ideas. I encourage you to conduct other searches using your own combinations of relevant words...
