And another Ecocinema Book from Pat Brereton
Adding to the growing list of ecocinema studies books, Pat Brereton’s most recent contribution, Environmental Ethics and Film published by Routledge’s series in Environmental Communication and Media  will also be out soon.
Here’s its blurb as advertised on the publisher’s website:
“Environmental ethics presents and defends a systematic and comprehensive account of the moral relation between human beings and their natural environment and assumes that human behaviour toward the natural world can and is governed by moral norms. In contemporary society, film has provided a powerful instrument for the moulding of such ethical attitudes.
Through a close examination of the medium, Environmental Ethics and Film explores how historical ethical values can be re-imagined and re-constituted for more contemporary audiences. Building on an extensive back-catalogue of eco-film analysis, the author focuses on a diverse selection of contemporary films which target audiences’ ethical sensibilities in very different ways. Each chapter focuses on at least three close readings of films and documentaries, examining a wide range of environmental issues as they are illustrated across contemporary Hollywood films.
This book is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of environmental communication, film studies, media and cultural studies, environmental philosophy and ethics.”
The table of contents promises a broad breadth:
1.Environmental Ethics – Literature Review
2. Environmental Ethics and Ecocinema: Core Textual Readings
3. Indigenous Cultures and Ethical Food Consumption: from Hunter Gatherers to Avatars
4. Ecofeminism, Environmental Ethics and Active Engagement in Science Fiction Fantasies
5. Social Responsibility and Anthropomorphising Animals
6. Third World Injustice, Environmental Sustainability and Frugality: A Case Study of Contemporary Hollywood films set in Africa
7. Business Ethics: Sustainability, Frugality and the Environment 8
. End of the World Scenarios and the Precautionary Principle
9. Environmental Ethics: Concluding Remarks
Pat Brereton is Chair of the School of Communications at Dublin City University, Ireland.  His Hollywood Utopia: Ecology in Contemporary American Cinema (2005) has been much cited in the growing field of ecocinema studies.
