From Text to Ecosystem: The Triple Convergence of Digital Humanities, Transnational Flows, and Environmental Narrative

Abstract

This article proposes a critical framework for understanding the intersection of three dynamic fields: Digital Humanities (DH), studies of transnational mobility, and environmental narrative. Moving beyond the traditional confines of textual analysis, it argues that the methodological toolkit of the Digital Humanities-including geospatial mapping, network analysis, and large-scale text mining-provides the essential means to trace, visualize, and analyze the complex relationships between human movement and environmental imagination across national and cultural boundaries. The article first establishes the theoretical underpinnings of this convergence, drawing from ecocriticism, postcolonial theory, and mobility studies. It then presents a conceptual "Three-Dimensional Analysis Framework" that integrates spatial, relational, and semantic layers of inquiry. Through illustrative case studies, the article demonstrates how DH methods can map the "eco-geographies" in transnational novels, uncover the networked agencies in climate change discourse, and track the semantic shifts in environmental rhetoric across different cultural contexts. The analysis reveals that this triple convergence not only expands the scale and precision of literary and cultural analysis but also fosters a more nuanced, systemic understanding of the global ecological crisis as a narratively constructed and materially consequential phenomenon. The article concludes by addressing the ethical and methodological challenges of this approach and posits its potential for fostering a more planetary, interdisciplinary mode of humanistic inquiry.