The Futures of the Present: New Directions in (American) Literature

The Futures of the Present: New Directions in (American) Literature seeks to map the future of the American novel by identifying emergent trends within its form and content. It engages with such issues as the impact of new media, the rise of environmental fiction, the nonhuman turn, and other social and aesthetic developments that shape the future of literature. This book was originally published as a special issue of Studia Neophilologica.

It has become a critical commonplace that postmodernism no longer serves as an adequate designation for contemporary literature. But what comes after postmodernism? What are the tendencies and directions within contemporary American literature that promise to shape its future?

The contributions to this book are written in the shadows of ‘new media’, a turn towards the nonhuman in critical thinking, and a surge in environmental and apocalyptic thought. Engaging with such contemporary debates, the authors map the rapidly changing ecosystem of contemporary literary genres and forms and attend to transformations in the production, reception, and circulation of books. This book takes for granted that American literature does have a future, although whatever this future holds, it is unlikely to be what we expect. At this historical juncture, the American novel seems to carve its future though an engagement with issues at the forefront of our present, thereby ensuring its own ongoing contemporaneity. This book was originally published as a special issue of Studia Neophilologica.