American Studies Ecocriticism and Citizenship

<p>This collection reclaims public intellectuals and scholars important to the foundational work in American Studies that contributed to emerging conceptions of an ecological citizenship advocating something other than nationalism or an exclusionary ethics of place. Co-editors Adamson and Ruffin recover underrecognized field genealogies in American Studies (i.e. the work of early scholars whose scope was transnational and whose activism focused on race class and gender) and ecocriticism (i.e. the work of movement leaders activists and scholars concerned with environmental justice whose work predates the 1990s advent of the field). They stress the necessity of a confluence of intellectual traditions or interdisciplinarities in meeting the challenges presented by the anthropocene a new era in which human beings have the power to radically endanger the planet or support new approaches to transnational national and ecological citizenship. Contributors to the collection examine literary historical and cultural examples from the 19<sup>th</sup> century to the 21<sup>st</sup>. They explore notions of the <em>common</em>-namely common humanity common wealth and common ground-and the relation of these notions to often conflicting definitions of who (or what) can have access to citizenship and rights. 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. Read together the essays included in <i>American Studies Ecocriticism and Citizenship</i> create a methodological commons where environmental justice case studies and interviews with activists and artists living in places as diverse as the U.S. Canada Haiti Puerto Rico Taiwan and the Navajo Nation can be considered alongside literary and social science analysis that contributes significantly to current debates catalyzed by nuclear meltdowns oil spills hurricanes and climate change but also by hopes for a common future that will ensure the rights of all beings--human and nonhuman-- to exist maintain and regenerate life cycles and evolutionary processes</p>