Introduction

Environmental and global outlooks are currently at the center of the most lively and urgent international scholarship. This volume seeks to overcome the self-reference of American Studies by intersecting the study of American literature and history with the questions and concerns raised by these perspectives. It aims at re-conceptualizing the mutual and shifting positions of center(s) and margin(s), subject(s) and object(s) in terms of relation and particularly of an inclusive structure of relations based on an ecological ethics. The essays explore many methodological hypotheses, ranging from Christa Greve-Vollp’s work on eco-cosmopolitanism to Peter Bardaglio’s report on US climate activism to the ecocritical and ecofeminist viewpoints of Scott Slovic and Greta Gaard respectively. In addition to contributing to academic discourse, the essays – written both by young and by established international scholars and coherently arranged in four thematic sections – explore topics that are in some measure of interest to the broader public: identity and new forms of belonging; migration and environment; ecolanguage, ecopoetry and ecopoetics; translation and multilingualism; animal studies; environmental activism; shifting geographies; ecofeminism.