Preface

Professor Catrin Gersdorf holds the Chair of American Studies at Universität Würzburg, Germany. From 2017 to 2021 she was the Executive Director of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA/GAAS). She is the author of The Poetics and Politics of the Desert: Landscape and the Construction of America (Rodopi, 2009). Her research is located at the intersection of American studies and the Environmental Humanities. She is particularly interested in conceptual links between literature, democracy, modernity and ecology. Further areas of research and teaching include the literature and culture of the Anthropocene, space and landscape in American art and literature, the history and theory of the novel, contemporary poetry, and the literary and cultural history of emotions.