Salzburg Global Fellow Nina De Bettin Padolin discusses her vision for the future of American studies
This op-ed piece is part of a series, written by Fellows of the Salzburg Global Seminar program "Democracy on the Front Lines: Polarization, Culture and Resilience in America and the World."
From the mainstream radicalization by right-wingers to the incessant pumping of fossil fuels into the air, American Studies scholars have virtually anticipated such developments and provided tools to critically evaluate our prospects on the future and to suggest solutions in the next step. The field has always been good both at holding up a mirror to the world and examining extant injustices and at simultaneously pointing out exactly what can be done to counteract these tendencies, systemic predicaments, and institutional shortcomings.
Climate change and its impacts are one of the greatest crises humanity has faced, and will undoubtedly fuel our discussions in the decades to come. This year’s Salzburg Global Seminar session, Democracy on the Front Lines: Polarization, Culture and Resilience in America and the World, asked how scholars are dealing with a term that is currently in an unwelcome state of flux: democracy. As democracy and understanding(s) of national belonging will continue to change in the coming decades, American Studies must necessarily grapple with issues of economic hardship, the changing political landscape, and the role of humans on a planet that may become partially uninhabitable.
Activist scholarship and political discourse oriented toward strong foci on democracy are needed more than ever before. Non-Eurocentric ways of perceiving and structuring the world are being approached already and will become even more recognized. Research on and with Indigenous ecological epistemologies, conceived by and with Indigenous scholars and peoples in the Americas, provides a glimpse of future multidisciplinary focus areas in our field. This scholarship has been vocal about the fact that states and countries cannot operate in the future as they do today.
A brief glimpse into the achievements of American Studies’ past reveals that scholars’ critical perspective on U.S. shortcomings has helped shape the nation’s current landscapes.
America’s self-portrayal as the land of the free has been critically evaluated in recent decades by American Studies scholars. Furthermore, BIPOC scholarship is outspoken about the construction of nations, borders, and other “bounded wholes” (Levine 2015).
In recent decades, we have seen American Studies develop new fields when a changing world demanded it. The discussion of borders and nations has evolved into a much-needed discourse of planetary connections among people. Conceptualizing the existing rhizomic connections between humans and nature is one of the steps American Studies has taken to find viable solutions to an uncertain future. To give one example, some scholars have argued that relationships are becoming more reciprocal as opposed to material and technical. The solution to prevailing doomsday scenarios may, to some extent, be to conceive of a planetary future based on equality and equity.
Even if the future of our field sometimes seems uncertain, especially as funding becomes more difficult every year, the production of knowledge is undoubtedly essential for humanity’s future. Therefore, the relevance of our discipline will not diminish over the next 75 years, as it plays an important role in communicating social and institutional critique, particularly in times of geopolitical change and political uncertainty.
Which role, then, can American literary studies play? Literature and broad ranges of performances are powerful vehicles to communicate and encourage democratic values. The recent literary landscape has been characterized by democratizing developments. Two examples of this would be the successful coexistence of multiple canons and the constant updating of those with works by non-white, non-male authors. Despite recent bans on books in many states that predict other restrictions for the future, scholars of American Studies address the problematic and undemocratic aspects of these measures and will do so in the next 75 years.
Literature is, and always has been, a powerful means of conveying and approximating democratic values. Therefore, I see the next 75 years as bringing an even greater focus on the interconnectedness and interrelatedness of cultural and literary studies. Inclusive scholarship that addresses previously silenced voices and epistemology is a field that will matter more than ever in light of the crises afflicting the planet. With one eye on the past and our undivided attention to a more equal and reciprocal future, American Studies are strong contributors to assessing and shaping the future.
Nina De Bettin Padolin is a Ph.D. candidate in American literature and a project assistant at the Institute of American Studies at the University of Graz. Her dissertation explores ecocritical theater with a focus on planetarity and indigenous ecological knowledges. During the academic year 2020/2021, she served as a foreign language teaching assistant at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. In November 2021, she was awarded the "Talentförderungsprämie" (a stipend geared towards recognizing young talents) by the state of Upper Austria in the category "cultural studies and the humanities." She graduated from the University of Graz with a joint master's degree in English and American studies with honors and a master's degree in interdisciplinary gender studies.
