A Keyword Analysis of Climate Change in Contemporary Literary Studies, 2000-2022

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.