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\u2019s work on eco-cosmopolitanism to Peter Bardaglio\u2019s 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 \u2013 written both by young and by established international scholars and coherently arranged in four thematic sections \u2013 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