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Matthias Klestil

African American Literature, Racial Vulnerability, and the Anthropocene: Reading W .E. B. Du Bois's The Quest of the Silver Fleece in the Twenty-First Century

This article discusses W. E. B. Du Bois's first novel, The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911), in the context of the broader debate on the role of race in the Anthropocene and in relation to Judith Butler's theory on corporeal vulnerability. Specifically, this article spotlights three particular ways in which rereading African American literature may enhance a more race-conscious Anthropocene discourse. Initially, this article demonstrates how Du Bois's text gives opportunity to trace African American vulnerabilities through various scales from the local to the planetary. A genealogy of African American racial vulnerability, I argue, can be vital for better understanding and acting against continuing forms of racism in the Anthropocene. This article continues by turning to Du Bois's representation of vulnerabilities as part of power relations, showing how African American epistemologies of resistance negotiate racial vulnerability. Lastly, this article examines how the novel plays with generic conventions to engage racial vulnerabilities, evincing an African American aesthetics of resistance and suggesting alternative forms of storytelling.

Matthias Klestil

Introduction: Versions, Narratives, and American Studies

This introduction lays out the concept of versioning as a cultural practice and highlights key premises and potentials of the analysis of such practices in the context of American studies. Drawing from narrative theory and theories of speculation, it theorizes the notion of a version as a copy with a difference. Moreover, the introduction identifies three forms of versioning in relation to the field of American studies: revisionist versioning, speculation-focused versioning, and code-oriented versioning.

Joshua Parker, Robert A. Winkler

Introduction: Notes on the Relation of Narrative, Environment, and Social Justice

The idea for this JAAAS special issue comes from the 49th Annual Conference of the Austrian Association for American Studies, which took place at the University of Salzburg in Fall 2022. Presentations covered stories we tell about our environment, and about pressing social issues of the past or present. As varied as the presentations were, the common thread was inquiring into how we – as individuals and collectives – frame our experiences in these areas through narratives, to whom we tell them, and when, where, and why. The contributions here range in their treatment of subject matter from speculative prose to theater, from film to poetry, to a history of the advertising industry. They illustrate how issues of social justice, climate change, and storytelling are intimately linked, and explore various manifestations of this nexus in fresh and surprising ways.