American Studies, Ecocriticism, and Citizenship

This collection closely examines the relationship between American Studies scholarship and twenty-first century environmental studies’ expanded attention to transnational and transcultural concepts of ecological citizenship and belonging. Visiting literary, historical, and cultural examples from the 19th century to the 21st, contributors examine notions of the common—namely, "common humanity, common wealth, and common ground" as foundational to concepts of global citizenship, civil society, and cosmopolitan democracy. The book engages in scholarly ecological analysis via the lens of various human groups—ethnic, racial, gendered, coalitional—that are shaping twenty-first century environmental experience and vision and contributing to new concepts of citizenship and belonging. Diverse human groups are mobilizing around new concepts of ecological citizenship and belonging catalyzed not only by nuclear meltdowns, oil spills, hurricanes, climate change, and histories of privilege or social and environmental injustice, but by hopes for a common future that will ensure the right of both humans and the more-than-human world to exist, maintain, and regenerate life cycles and evolutionary processes. The collection illustrates how each of us, as members of diverse groups and as inhabitants of planet Earth have a stake in imagining and producing a common future.