About Us
Mission
The primary mission of the Ecomedia Studies community is to facilitate interdisciplinary scholarship by offering forums for cross-disciplinary communication.
This site is a first step as it is designed to:
- Generate dialogue through discussions
- Post news on the current state of Ecomedia Studies
- Advertise pertinent Calls for Papers
- Provide resources such as scholarly bibliographies and teaching syllabi
- Identify journals of interest and organizations that welcome ecomedia scholarship.
History
For many of us, our first sense of community began to crystallize at the 2009 Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) conference in Victoria, British Columbia. It was evident that non-print media had captured the ecocritical imagination – not only was there a special session devoted to Ecological Media, which was attended by fifteen participants, but multiple panels were also devoted to ecomedia. There were enough panels on film to elicit a category designation (along with other more traditional ASLE categories such as “Science and the Humanities” and “Creative Nonfiction”).
While the surging ecocritical interest in non-print media is exciting, the conference also afforded a space for considering the current status and future of the scholarship. Forums such as the Ecological Media seminar generated the following questions, among others:
- How do we define ecomedia?
- What are forms and functions?
- What might we expect from ecomedia as a form of art, advocacy, and/or activism?
- How do we articulate theories and practices of ecomedia studies?
Similarly, panels such as “(Un)Natural Visions: Ecocritical Perspectives on Film and Visuality”, “Toward an Ecological Film Criticism: Gender, Genre, and Form in American Cinema,” “Cinematic Ecologies,” and “Animals and Animality on Screen” probed questions of theory and practice through diverse theoretical angles and subjects of analysis.
As the Ecomedia Studies community emerges, we look forward to a continuously developing and rigorous field of interdisciplinary study.
Contributors (we always welcome more)
Matt Beehr, Institutional Research Analyst, Hamline University
I’m an occasional contributor to Ecomedia Studies. I’ve collaborated with Salma Monani on an article exploring ecological themes in John Sayles’s Honeydripper, and enjoy discussions of environmental justice and activism. In my other academic life, I perform institutional research, which includes looks at environmental initiatives on campus.
Mark Bernard, Bowling Green State University. Dr. Bernard received his Ph.D in American Culture Studies, with a specialization in Film, Media, and Culture, from Bowling Green State University. His scholarship has appeared in Food, Culture & Society, The Projector: Film and Media Journal, and Contemporary Literary Criticism.
Joseph Clark, PhD candidate in Environmental Communication and Associate in Online Course Development, Florida State University.
I’ve always looked at environmental messages in the media with a critical eye, but I happened to be taking a course on Environmental Communication in the Media at the same time I was discovering multiuser virtual environments, and I became fascinated with the many ways “nature” and “virtual” intertwine. Embodiment, visual rhetoric, remediation, and political economies seem to be recurrent themes. My academia.edu page has more about my research interests.
Cathy Fitzgerald, PhD Candidate at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin, Ireland
I am a rural-based experimental filmmaker / visual artist with a background in research biology. Born in New Zealand, I am looking at experimental cinema (practice and theory) and ecology in this age of biospheric crisis. research work can be seen at www.ecoartflm.com
Andrew Hageman, Ph.D. candidate, University of California, Davis
My approach to ecocriticism and ecomedia studies takes shape at the intersections of machines, ideology, ecology and media. I am fascinated by the diverse ways machines and ecological crises and challenges have been ideologically bundled together from the Industrial Revolution to the present moment. To analyze these historical bundlings, I work with precise figures (such as cogs) and how they function within an individual medium and as they cross media. My work is just as likely to deploy Karl, Graucho, and/or Harpo as it is to reference Leo Marx.
Jennifer Ladino, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Idaho.
My research and teaching interests include twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literature, American Indian literatures, Western literatures of the U.S., and green cultural studies, including animal studies and film studies. I have published on Grizzly Man and March of the Penguins, and I’m currently working on an essay about species identity in documentaries that depict working relationships between human and nonhuman animals.
Salma Monani, Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies, Gettysburg College.
My forage into ecomedia was through unconventional pathways as a PhD project that started out contemplating science (specifically geology) communication in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge debate soon morphed into considerations of Native Alaskan representations, indigenous film, and from there on to ecocinema.
Steve Rust, Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of Oregon. Co-editor, Ecocinema Theory and Practice (AFI/Routledge, 2012).
Carter Soles, Assistant Professor and Director of Film Studies, English Department SUNY-Brockport
John Tinnell, PhD Student & Instructor, English, University of Florida
My interest in ecomedia studies is a by-product of my research in new media, environmental rhetoric, and film aesthetics. Currently, I’m especially drawn to thinking back and forth between the ecological and the digital in continuum with Felix Guattari’s unfinished theoretical projects, namely ecosophy and post-media.
Paula Willoquet-Marcondi, Professor and Chair, Media Arts Department, Marist College. Co-Chair of Campus Sustainability Advisory Committee.
Founding Members
Salma Monani, Gettysburg College (Site Moderator)
Stephen Rust, University of Oregon (Site Moderator)
Adrian Ivakhiv, University of Vermont
Andrew Hageman, Luther College
David Ingram, Brunel University, West London
Carter Soles, University of Oregon
Matt Beehr, Hamline University (Site Copy Editor)
We welcome others to this forum.