Hélène Schmutz is currently working as a lecturer in the English Department at Université de Savoie (France). She specializes in American cultural studies. The PhD thesis she defended in November 2013 is entitled Towards a Redefinition of Nature in the United States : three Case Studies in the Los Angeles Area. Today, she mostly works on the relationship between the definitions and redefinitions of the "environment", or "nature", in American academia and activist circles, and the evolution of environmental policies in the United States, within a contemporary context.