New Book by Adam O’Brien on New Hollywood and Ecocriticism

Looks like we have another monograph of ecocinema studies to celebrate – congratulations to Adam O’Brien on the upcoming publication of Transactions with the World: Ecocriticism and the Environmental Sensibility of the New Hollywood.

Here’s a blurb and table of contents from the book’s homepage through publisher Berghahn Books. Preorder your copy and fill out the online library recommendation form using the link provided in the previous sentence.

“In their bold experimentation and bracing engagement with culture and politics, the “New Hollywood” films of the late 1960s and early 1970s are justly celebrated contributions to American cinematic history. Relatively unexplored, however, has been the profound environmental sensibility that characterized movies such as The Wild Bunch, Chinatown, and Nashville. This brisk and engaging study explores how many hallmarks of New Hollywood filmmaking, such as the increased reliance on location shooting and the rejection of American self-mythologizing, made the era such a vividly “grounded” cinematic moment. Synthesizing a range of narrative, aesthetic, and ecocritical theories, it offers a genuinely fresh perspective on one of the most studied periods in film history.“

Contents

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements

Prologue: A Typical Love Scene

Introduction

Chapter 1. Four Faces of New Hollywood
Chapter 2. Resisting Abstraction
Chapter 3. Rooting In and Lighting Out: New Hollywood and Genre
Chapter 4. Regional Frames
Chapter 5.  Conditions, Technologies and Presence

Conclusion: Coming to Terms with Mr. Meek

Bibliography
Index

Adam O’Brien teaches film studies at the universities of Bristol and Reading. He has published articles on ecocriticism and film in a number of journals, including Film Criticism, Journal of Media Practice, and ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment.