This chapter provides an overview of the theme and contents of this anthology. It introduces the main ideas, theories, and methods related to research on eco-anxiety, including its appearance in the anxieties people experience in relationship to the crises of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. There are several ways to categorize these various anxieties, but in general, eco-anxiety is here used as an overarching term that includes climate anxiety and coronavirus anxiety. This introductory chapter highlights the psychological, phenomenological, existential, and artistic perspectives explored in the book, and indicates how these perspectives on eco-anxiety provide grounds for hope in a time of crisis. The chapter concludes by providing a brief summary of each of the book’s chapters.

Non peer reviewed