e²mc

Students and faculty at the University of Vermont are making outstanding strides in the field of ecological media studies. Recently, students in Adrian Ivakhiv’s “Media Ecologies and Cultural Politics” course have  started a new blog called e²mc: evolving ecological media culture(s). Ivahkiv, a contributor to this site and a leading scholar scholar in the field (whose own research blog Immancence is linked in our blogroll), hopes e²mc will be a major step toward the establishment of an Ecomedia Studies Lab to showcase the work being done across the UV campus where they are building a “critical mass” of faculty and students interested in studying media and/as ecology.

Below is an excerpt from the e²mc “About Us” page:

“We live in a different world than did previous generations of humanity.  Billions of humans can access a vast ocean of information at their fingertips. Digital media have helped construct a sphere of thickly networked, hypermediate, and interactive communication links that span all levels of human society around the globe.

How do these new media environments affect and interact with the social and biophysical environments that preceded them, and that continue to undergird them?

…

e₂mc seeks to explore the relationships between media and ecologies: material, social, and perceptual ecologies within which mediations play an increasingly powerful, complex, and transformative role. It is devoted to the idea of “evolving ecological media culture”: an evolution of a media culture that is cognizant of its multiple ecological contours and connections.

e₂mc begins as an experiment, a class exercise for ENVS 204 “Media Ecologies and Cultural Politics,” a senior undergraduate class at the University of Vermont. But it will not limit itself to traditional pedagogical constraints. Where it leads we will see. We invite any and all to share in the adventure.”