Environment in Sustainable American Studies

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.

• Introduction: The Environment in Sustainable American Studies FRANK MEHRINGPART I: Ecological Poetics, Culture, and Power 1 Suspended Agency and Animated Infrastructures in Ling Ma’s Severance MICHAEL BOYDEN2 Limit and Scale: Robert Creeley’s Ecological Poetics NICK SELBY3 “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 COWE4 Dwelling upon a Remembered Earth: Relational Aesthetics and Consensuality in N. Scott Momaday’s Earth Keeper DORO WIESEPART II: Environmental Justice and American Studies 5 “We’ll be watching you”: Past, Presence, and Future in Greta Thunberg’s Environmental RhetoricJELTE OLTHOF6 “We Are Not Protecting ‘the Environment’”: Unist’ot’en Pipeline Resistance as Resistance against Settler Colonialism MARIJE VAN LANKVELD AND LAURA M. DE VOS7 Waterways of Power: Plantations, Oil, and Environmental Justice in the Mississippi River DeltaGAETANO DI TOMMASO8 Mapping the Limits of the Geography of Hope along the Colorado RiverERIC J. SANDEENPART III: Sustainable American Studies in the Anthropocene 9 Grounding Art in Times of Climate Change: Topophilia Reimagined as a Multisensory and Material PracticeFRANK MEHRING10 “The Monkey King” of New York: Henry Trefflich and America’s Mid‑Century Mania for Exotic PetsBARRIE BLATCHFORD11 An Ecocritical Approach to Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” SCOTT T. ZUKOWSKI12 The Wisdom of Trees: Robert Bringhurst on the Persistence of Poetry and the Destruction of the WorldLEONOR MARÍA MARTÍNEZ SERRANOPART IV: Art and Climate Change: A Call to Action 13 Sound Tree: Art and Climate Change on University CampusesDANIEL MAURICE ZIEGLER AND FRANK MEHRING14 Save the Forest! Eco‑Art, Activism, and Collective Imagination ANNE BERK15 Enduring Earth: Imagining Post‑Human Futures through Miniature LandscapesLORI NIX AND KATHLEEN GERBER16 100,000 Trees and a Threaded Forest: A Shared Work of Art, Ecology, and CareSARA VRUGT