Buell, Lawrence2017-04-172016Buell, Lawrence. 2016. Anthropocene Panic: Contemporary Ecocriticism and the Issue of Human Numbers. Frame 29 (2).http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:32192699Environmental humanists rightly believe they have valuable contributions to make to rethinking and redressing Anthropocene Age excess. Ecocriticism’s recent maturation as an interdiscipline has put it in a stronger position to do so than ever before. Its “material” turn in the 2000s bears this out up to a point, but its interventions also seem somewhat self-limiting. This essay argues that ecocritics and environmental humanists more generally have foregone a promising opportunity by avoiding the controversial issue of unsustainable human population growth as a sociohistorical phenomenon and an impetus to creative imagination.en-USJournal Article2017-03-2920162017-04-17