The Environment in Sustainable American Studies Powered by Nature

Introduction: The Environment in Sustainable American Studies
FRANK MEHRING

PART I: Ecological Poetics, Culture, and Power
1 Suspended Agency and Animated Infrastructures in Ling Ma’s Severance
MICHAEL BOYDEN

2 Limit and Scale: Robert Creeley’s Ecological Poetics
NICK SELBY

3 “We are now in the mountains and they are in us”: Solastalgia, Trump’s Environmental Legacy, and the Rhetoric of the “Alt‑Right” Ecological Movement
JENNIFER COWE

4 Dwelling upon a Remembered Earth: Relational Aesthetics and Consensuality in N. Scott Momaday’s Earth Keeper
DORO WIESE

PART II: Environmental Justice and American Studies
5 “We’ll be watching you”: Past, Presence, and Future in Greta Thunberg’s Environmental Rhetoric
JELTE OLTHOF

6 “We Are Not Protecting ‘the Environment’”: Unist’ot’en Pipeline Resistance as Resistance against Settler Colonialism
MARIJE VAN LANKVELD AND LAURA M. DE VOS

7 Waterways of Power: Plantations, Oil, and Environmental Justice in the Mississippi River Delta
GAETANO DI TOMMASO

8 Mapping the Limits of the Geography of Hope along the Colorado River
ERIC J. SANDEEN

PART III: Sustainable American Studies in the Anthropocene
9 Grounding Art in Times of Climate Change: Topophilia Reimagined as a Multisensory and Material Practice
FRANK MEHRING

10 “The Monkey King” of New York: Henry Trefflich and America’s Mid‑Century Mania for Exotic Pets
BARRIE BLATCHFORD

11 An Ecocritical Approach to Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue”
SCOTT T. ZUKOWSKI

12 The Wisdom of Trees: Robert Bringhurst on the Persistence of Poetry and the Destruction of the World
LEONOR MARÍA MARTÍNEZ SERRANO

PART IV: Art and Climate Change: A Call to Action
13 Sound Tree: Art and Climate Change on University Campuses
DANIEL MAURICE ZIEGLER AND FRANK MEHRING

14 Save the Forest! Eco‑Art, Activism, and Collective Imagination
ANNE BERK

15 Enduring Earth: Imagining Post‑Human Futures through Miniature Landscapes
LORI NIX AND KATHLEEN GERBER

16 100,000 Trees and a Threaded Forest: A Shared Work of Art, Ecology, and Care
SARA VRUGT

Biography

Frank Mehring is Professor of American Studies at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. His research focuses on cultural transfer, migration, intermediality, and the global circulation of American music. A founding member of the EAAS Digital Studies Network and the journal AmLit—American Literatures, he has received several distinctions for his scholarship, including the EAAS Rob Kroes Award. Frank currently serves as President of the Netherlands American Studies Association, sits on the board of the European Association for American Studies, and acts as Regional Director of the German Atlantic Association. His major publications include Sphere Melodies (2003), The Democratic Gap (2014), The Soundtrack of Liberation (2015), Sound and Vision: Intermediality and American Music (2018, with Erik Redling), The Multicultural Modernism of Winold Reiss (2022), and Beuys Land (2024, with Gerd Ludwig). Deeply committed to public engagement, Frank has curated concerts featuring Marshall Plan and liberation songs, organized traveling exhibitions, and presented his work on national radio and television.