The Environment in Sustainable American Studies

The Environment in Sustainable American Studies offers a multifaceted exploration of the environment within American Studies, featuring contributions that scrutinize the intricate relationship between culture, power, and the environment. This book presents a cutting-edge exploration of the current landscape of environmental American studies from transatlantic perspectives. It investigates this field through diverse lenses—interdisciplinary, transnational, and activist—bringing together scholars and artists from both sides of the Atlantic. Structured in four parts, this book opens with an in-depth analysis of ecological poetics intertwined with settler colonialism in regional fictions, revealing the nuanced complexities of environmental interconnectedness in literature. Further topics include environmental justice, Indigenous activism, the role of the humanities and the arts in addressing climate change, and the impact of flora and fauna in the Anthropocene. It also examines literature’s engagement with environmental concerns and the integration of local and global ecologies within the American Studies curriculum. This book concludes with a part dedicated to art and climate change, in which artists, curators, and activists provide critical insights into how art can reorient our focus toward pressing environmental challenges and inspire transformative shifts in our ways of living. Providing a holistic approach to the environment in American studies, this book is suitable for students, researchers, and academics across a range of disciplines, including American studies, literary studies, environmental studies, cultural studies, and politics.