College of Arts and Sciences

Assistant Professor
Phone: (239)590-7250
E-Mail: eotto@fgcu.edu
Office: RH 228

Assistant Professor of Environmental Humanities and English

Ph.D., University of Florida, 2006
M.A., University of Florida, 2002
B.A., Florida Gulf Coast University, 2000

Eric Otto joined the Florida Gulf Coast University Communication & Philosophy faculty in the Fall of 2007 after holding a one-year lectureship in English at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. Professor Otto teaches, among other courses, Environmental Humanities, the First-Year Humanities Seminar, and the Integrated Core Senior Seminar. An ecocritical humanities scholar, Professor Otto researches human-nature relationships as represented in literature, music, visual art, film, and so forth. He is most active in pursuing the intersections between environmentalist thinking and science fiction.

Selected Publications

• “Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy and the Leopoldian Land Ethic,” in Mapping the Unimaginable: Kim Stanley Robinson and the Critics, ed. William Burling (McFarland, forthcoming).
• “Environmental Science Fiction” and “Gearhart, Sally Miller,” in Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy: An Encyclopedia, ed. Robin Reid (Greenwood, forthcoming).
• “Science Fiction and Transformative Ecological Politics: Biocentric Wisdom in Three Early Works,” in The Uses of the Science Fiction Genre, ed. Michael Berman (Cambridge Scholars, forthcoming).
• “Ecocomposition, Activist Writing, and Natural Ecosystems: A Response to Janisse Ray,” in Writing Environments, eds. Sidney I. Dobrin and Christopher J. Keller (State U of New York P, 2004): 143-148.
• Selected Presentations
• “New Worlds to Conquer: An Ecocritical Look at The Space Merchants,” presented at the Science Fiction Research Association’s Annual Conference in Kansas City, Missouri, July 2007.
• “Invasive Species: Preserving the Ecology of Discourse,” presented at the Northeast Modern Language Association’s Annual Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, March 2007.
• “Science Fiction and the Subversive Subject of Ecology,” presented at The Uses of the Science Fiction Genre: An Interdisciplinary Symposium at Brock University in Ontario, Canada, October 2005.
• “Frank Herbert’s Dune and Ecological Literacy,” presented at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association’s Annual Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, November 2003.