from the editor

ECOCRITICISM AND AMERICAN environmental history share a common ancestor. Many of the pioneering scholars in both fields were inspired by such works of intellectual, cultural, and literary history as Perry Miller's Nature's Nation, Henry Nash Smith's Virgin Land, and Leo Marx's The Machine in the Garden. The early issues of Environmental Review—one of Environmental History's predecessors—often included articles about literature. Yet ecocriticism and environmental history have grown apart. Each field now has its own society and its own journal. To bring the two closer together, I asked Michael Cohen to reflect on the state of ecocriticism today. His essay is a wonderful example of scholarly introspection: He looks critically at the fundamental assumptions of his field.      Paolo Squatriti asks a seemingly simple question: What were the environmental impacts of a massive dike constructed by the Anglo-Saxon ruler Offa in the eighth century? His answers are fascinating. Yet his work is more than a neat case study. Squatriti invites us to pay more attention to the environmental history of medieval Europe. Though we might imagine that the pre-industrial landscape was static, Squatriti writes, Offa's earthworks make clear that medieval Europeans "lived in environments that they modified, sometimes spectacularly, and not always in intended ways." . . .