Adeline Johns-Putra

Biography

I came to Queen’s and to Canada via a circuitous route: Malaysia, Australia, Finland, the UK, Hong Kong, mainland China, Malaysia again, and, finally, Ontario. I was born and raised in Malaysia, attended university in Australia, and then worked at a number of universities around the world. I’ve remained curious about different perspectives, cultures, approaches, and experiences throughout.

As a result of my travels, I’ve made many scholarly connections that I value deeply. I’m an Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong, an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool, and an Adjunct Professor at Monash University Malaysia. I’m also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in the UK. From 2011 to 2015, I was President of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment UK and Ireland (ASLE UKI), and, in 2012, was a Visiting Research Fellow in the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University. 

My research interests lie mainly in the environmental humanities, particularly the relationship between climate and literature. I was, however, trained as a Romanticist and wrote my PhD thesis on women’s writing and epic poetry in the British Romantic period. I am writing a study of the life and writings of the Romantic poet Eleanor Anne Porden in the context of poethood, science, and the gendering of knowledge. I am also researching comparative cultural histories of climate.

I am currently editing, with Kiu-wai Chu, the section on “Narratives of the Future”, for Oxford University Press’s new online resource, the Oxford Intersection on Climate Adaptation, and I’m a founding editor, with Nicole Seymour and Sam Solnick, of the book series, Liverpool Studies in Literature and Environment, for Liverpool University Press.

I welcome enquires from graduate students interested in supervision in ecocriticism, especially questions around climate and the Anthropocene, in British Romanticism and gender, and in the epic form from the eighteenth century onwards.

Research Interests

Ecocriticism, Climate fiction, British Romantic women’s writing, The epic

Selected Publications

• “Climate Fiction at the End of Speculation”, ELH: English Literary History, vol. 93, no. 3, 2026, pp. 683-702.
• “Climate and Empire". The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Literature and the Environment, edited by Dennis Denisoff, Cambridge UP, 2026, pp.261-272.
• With Xi Liu, Loredana Cesarino, Guohong Mai, and Yue Zhou. “Whose World? Whose World Literature? Looking for Climate Fiction in China”. Literature and the Work of Universality, edited by Alice Duhan, Stefan Helgesson, Christina Kullburg, and Paul Tenngart, De Gruyter, 2024, pp. 315-32.
• With Kelly Sultzbach. The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Climate, Cambridge UP, 2022.
• Climate and Literature, Cambridge UP, 2019.
• Climate Change and the Contemporary Novel, Cambridge UP, 2019.
• With Axel Goodbody. Cli-Fi: A Companion. Peter Lang, 2018.
• “The Rest is Silence: Postmodern and Postcolonial Possibilities in Climate Change Fiction”. Studies in the Novel, vol. 50, no.1, 2018, pp. 26-42.
• With John Parham and Louise Squire. Literature and Sustainability: Concept, Text, and Culture, 2017.
• “‘My Job is to Take Care of You’: Climate Change, Humanity, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road”. MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 62, no.3, 2016, pp. 519-540.
• “Climate Change in Literature and Literary Studies: From Cli-Fi, Climate Change Theater and Ecopoetry to Ecocriticism and Climate Change Criticism”. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, vol. 7, 2016, pp. 266-282.
• “Historicizing the Networks of Ecology and Culture: Eleanor Anne Porden and Nineteenth-Century Climate Change”. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 21, 2015, pp. 27-46. 
• “Eleanor Anne Porden’s Cœur de Lion: History, Epic, and Romance”. Women’s Writing, vol. 19, no. 3, 2012, pp. 351-71. 
• “‘Blending Science with Literature’: The Royal Institution, Eleanor Anne Porden, and The Veils”. Nineteenth-Century Contexts, vol. 33, no.1, 2011, pp. 35-52. 
• With Adam Trexler. ”Climate Change in Literature and Literary Criticism”. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, vol. 2, no.2, 2011, pp. 185-200. 
• “Ecocriticism, Genre, and Climate Change: Reading the Utopian Vision of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Science in the Capital Trilogy”. English Studies, vol. 91, no.7, 2010, pp.744-760. 
• With Catherine Brace. Process: Landscape and Text, Rodopi, 2010.
• The History of the Epic, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006..