Heike Hartung is an independent scholar who has earned her PhD in English studies at Freie Universit�t Berlin and her PhD habil. at Universit�t Potsdam, Germany. She is affiliated as senior researcher at the Center for Inter-American Studies at Universit�t Graz, Austria. In her publications she applies the methods of literary theory and cultural studies to the interdisciplinary fields of ageing, disability and gender studies. She is a founding member of the European Network in Aging Studies (ENAS). Roberta Maierhofer is a professor of American studies and Director of the Center for Inter-American Studies at Universit�t Graz, Austria. Her research focuses on (Inter)American literature and culture, gender and age/aging. Christian Schmitt-Kilb is a professor of English literature at Universit�t Rostock. He received his MA from the University of Keele (UK), PhD from the Goethe-Universit�t Frankfurt am Main on early modern rhetoric and poetics and habilitated at Universit�t Rostock with a thesis that resulted in a monograph on the theme of absent fathers in the contemporary novel. His current research interests, editorships and essay publications are in the field of ecocriticism, ecopoetry and New Nature Writing.