Patrick D. Murphy

Born in a small town in Illinois in 1951. Went to UCLA in 1969 and became involved in the anti-war movement, and earned a BA in History. In the early 80s returned to school for an MA in English at Cal State Northridge and then a PhD at UC Davis, working on environmental issues in literature, with my MA thesis on the poetry of Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder. During my doctoral work wrote an essay on Gaia imagery as my first foray into ecofeminism, which was published in Environmental Ethics. Just as the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment was being formed, I founded the journal ISLE: Interdiscipinary Studies in Literature and Environment, which later became the official journal of ASLE when Scott Slovic took over as editor. Taught at Indiana University of Pennsylvania from 1987 through the spring of 2002, then moved to the University of Central Florida to serve as department chair for a two-year stint. In 2010 became interim department chair and then in 2011 department chair once again, a service I expect to complete in the summer of 2015. Have been married to Bonnie since 1982 and have one daughter, Mariko. For the past few years I have been working on literary representations of climate change and peak oil, water, and other resource issues, as well as promoting ecocriticism and ecofeminism in various other countries. My co-edited collection, Ecofeminist Literary Criticism, was recently translated into Chinese and I have a collection of essays similar to Transversal Ecocritical Practice also being translated into Chinese, which should appear in 2013 or 2014. Essays of mine have also been translated into Chinese, Danish, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish.