Rodopi, Amsterdam/New York, NY 2010. 276 pp. (Nature, Culture + Literature 7)
ISBN: 978-90-420-3209-5 Paper
ISBN: 978-90-420-3210-1 E-Book
Online info: http://www.rodopi.nl/senj.asp?BookId=NCL+7
Since the rise of the contemporary ecology movement in the 1960s, American songwriters and composers, from folk singer Pete Seeger to jazz saxophonist Paul Winter, have lamented, and protested against, environmental degradation and injustice. The Jukebox in the Garden is the first book to survey a wide range of musical styles, including folk, country, blues, rock, jazz, electronica and hip hop, to examine the different ways in which popular music has explored American relationships between nature, technology and environmental politics. It also investigates the growing link between music and philosophical thought, particularly under the influence of both deep ecology and New Age thinking, according to which music, amongst all the arts, has a special affinity with ecological ideas. This book is both an exploration and critique of such speculations on the role that music can play in raising environmental awareness. It combines description and analysis of American popular music made during the era of modern environmentalism with a consideration of its wider social, historical and political contexts. It will be of interest to undergraduates and post-graduates in music, cultural studies and environmental studies, as well as general readers interested in popular music and the environment.
Human degradation of the environment has been documented by scholars
across a range of disciplines: the global temperature of the planet
continues to rise, abandoned industrial sites stain once vibrant
communities, and questions about the purity of our water and foods
linger. In the shadow of these material conditions, many have turned to
performance as a means to critique careless consumerism and excessive
lifestyles in! hope of illustrating alternative ways of living. The
World’s a Stage: Performance on Behalf of the Environment explores the
strengths, limitations, and processes of these environmental
performances, a still relatively underexplored area of scholarship. We
invite proposals for original essays addressing topics that may include,
but are not limited to, the following:
-Mediated performances about nature and/or the environment (e.g., No
Impact Man) -Nature used to enhance and/or detract from musical
performances (e.g., outdoor festivals or concerts) -Animal rights
rhetoric (e.g., the television series Whale Wars) -Critiques with
practical suggestions for improving activism (e.g., exploring the
strengths and limitations of environmental protests as “image events”)
-Evaluations of local case studies from a performative framework (e.g.,
community responses to “food deserts”) -Environmental representations on
“stage” (e.g., Blue Man Group and global climate change) -Theoretical
essays on “environmental performance” or the “performance of nature”
We welcome submissions using methodological approaches from a variety
of critical, cultural, performative, (auto)ethnographic, rhetorical,
historical, political, and/or theatrical origins. Five chapter proposals
have already been accepted and a publisher has already expressed
interest in the collection.!
Send your abstract (no more than 500 words) and brief bio to Drs.
Richard D. Besel (rbesel@calpoly.edu
Jnan Blau (jablau@calpoly.edu <mailto:jablau@calpoly.edu>) by March 1,
2011.
The Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences has extended their June conference submission deadline to Sunday, January 23rd. This is the new deadline for proposals for Symposia, Panel Sessions, Workshops, and Roundtable Discussions.
Precipitate, the literary arts journal is currently accepting submissions for its next issue. Of interest to cine-ecocritics, the journal has a new blog with a special feature column called Green Scream, which investigates the use of place, environment, and nature in contemporary horror films.
AAAS’s recent issue of Science has a short little article that I thought I’d share. Computer scientists Robert Bridson and Christopher Batty’s “Computational Physics in Film” reminds us that coupling art and science can make for some “spellbinding” action. While audiences ooh-and-aah at the artistic genius of special effects or marvel at the technological wizardy that enables these creations, the article draws attention to the oft ignored equations, algorithms, and numerical modeling that most often serve as the foundation for simulated cinematic animations. As the authors summarize: “Compared with more traditional animation methods that rely chiefly on artists’ efforts, numerical solutions to the equations of physics allow computers to calculate realistic motion, such of that of smoke, fire, explosions, water, rubble, clothing, hair, muscles, and skin. Algorithmic advances now afford artists a higher-level, more efficient role in guiding the physics as they produce animation. We provide an overview here of current challenges in physics-based animation.”
The authors also include the following example that’s up on youtube (from where you can access more examples).
Ecomedia Studies has seen tremendous growth in 2010.
In January, media scholars gasped at the unprecedented global success of director James Cameron’s AVATAR, which opened in late December, 2009 in more than 100 countries on more than 10,000 theatrical screens. By February, the film had grossed more than $2.7 billion to become the highest earning film of all-time (even when adjusted for inflation).  While some critics claim that the film’s success was entirely the result of 3D visual effects and Hollywood marketing, there is simply no denying that the film’s portrayal of resource exploitation and market-driven social injustice resonated with audiences around the world.  The film’s reception can also be closely tied to the efforts of director James Cameron and star Sigourney Weaver who discussed the film’s environmentalist message at every possible turn, including interviews on MTV, Oprah, and “The View” along with visits to Canada’s oil tar sands, a dam projects in Brazil, and even to the US Congress where they presented testimony on Earth Day. Among scholars, of course, the word is still out. But start looking for special journal editions to hit library shelves in the coming months, including at least one Avatar themed edition of The Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture.
In March, at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Los Angeles, ecological and environmental concerns were the primary focus of at least five panels. Two panels specifically devoted to cinema and ecology brought the field’s leading scholars together. Ecomedia studies is poised to move into the mainstream of film and media scholarship. Expanding beyond cinema has been important this year as well as scholars have turned their attention to the material aspects of the internet and emerging media.
By summer’s end, three new anthologies had hit library and bookstore shelves: ECOSEE, CHINESE ECOCINEMA, and FRAMING THE WORLD. Each of these collections represents a major contribution to the field and will likely lead to the development of new courses at the undergraduate and graduate level. Along with these books, 2010 saw an outpouring of scholarly articles and conference presentations. Thanks to the efforts of hardworking editors and contributors, these anthologies are raising the visibility of ecomedia studies across the scholarly community and around the world. Ecomedia studies is is a truly global undertaking.
Please add your thoughts about key developments in the field.
As a follow up to the Oct 28 posting on Virtual Footprints and particularly the human and environmental health hazards of the production and disposal of (our beloved?!) computers, I was pleased to hear Terry Gross’s interview last night with Jim Puckett of the Basil Action Network (BAN) about the export of toxic e-waste to Asia and Africa.
Alongside the looming water crisis that most seem to know little about, even after the recent flurry of books and documentaries on the subject, this is another one of the dirty little secrets of our high tech culture of convenience and accessibility. At a time when the Internet is revered as holding the answers to all our ills by bringing us interconnectivity, community, infinite amounts of information, democracy, civic engagement, creativity (and yes, amusement and surveillance), how are we to respond to the toxicity of producing and disposing of this technology? Whose responsibility is it to assure that electronic toxic waste does not find its way to poor countries and communities? Is it the poor and often illiterate folks’s who live in these communities, as one of my students recently suggested after we watched Exporting Harm, a 30 minutes activist eco-documentary produced by BAN? Manufacturer’s? Seller’s? Consumer’s? Government’s? All of the above?
As consumers, we can start by taking some responsibility for how we dispose of electronics–phones, i-pods, i-pads, computers . . . I think anyone of us using electronics and teaching with electronics needs to address this issue with our students, particularly since the myth of computers being a clean technology is so persistent. Terry Gross’s piece can be heard at After Dump, What Happens To Electronic Waste?
For information about BAN, the films they produce, and locating an E-Steward near you that recycles computers and electronics responsibly, go to http://www.ban.org/index.html
Following the controversy over her attempt to cancel an environmental documentary critical of agribusiness, Karen Himle, the University of Minnesota’s vice president for university relations, has resigned.
Himle says that her resignation is unrelated to her decision to cancel “Troubled Waters,” and is instead timed to coincide with the end of Robert Bruininks’s term as the president of the U’s Twin Cities campus.
The report from Minneapolis’s Star Tribune covers the controversy in detail. There’s also a report from the U’s general counsel on internal deliberations over the film’s airing.
Moving Environments: Affect, Emotion, and Ecocinema
Conveners: Alexa Weik von Mossner and Arielle Helmick
Location: Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich, Germany
Date: July 22-23, 2011
This workshop is interested in new research projects at the interface of film and media studies and ecocriticism which are concerned with the relation between emotion, affect, environment, and cinema. Emotion, as researchers in environmental psychology, neuroscience, and social anthropology have shown, is the basic mechanism that connects us to our environment, a mechanism that shapes our knowledge and motivates our actions. Given this central importance of affect and emotion in human-environment relationships, ecocinema emerges as a particularly fruitful site for investigation. Of crucial importance to ecocinema studies are both how films represent human emotional relationships to the more-than-human world as well as how such films act upon their viewers’ emotions.
How does ecocinema represent human emotion and affect in relation to different environments? How do these films influence our emotions both during and after viewing, and how do they generate meanings? How do such films affect our relationship to the human and more-than-human world and what can we say about their affective or “passionate†politics? These are some of the questions we hope to address in this workshop.
We invite paper proposals on topics including, but not limited to the following, all in relation to film and related visual media:
• Filmic landscape as emotional space
• Dangerous and endangered environments
• Environment, embodiment, and emotion
• Environmental memory and affect
• Melodrama and sentimentalism
• Affective attachment and animality
• Affective viewer response and the empathic imagination
• Emotional politics of ecocinema
Applications and papers must be written in English. Discussions at the workshop will be based on precirculated papers which will be due approximately six weeks before the workshop.
There are plans to publish an edited collection based on the workshop; selected papers will be considered for inclusion.
The workshop “Moving Environments: Affect, Emotion and Ecocinema†is supported by the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich. Travel and accommodation costs will be met by the organizers.
Detailed abstracts (600-800 words) for papers and a short CV should be submitted by email no later than Jan 31, 2011 to:
Alexa Weik von Mossner:
alexa.weik@carsoncenter.lmu.de
For further information on organizational issues please contact:
Arielle Helmick
arielle.helmick@carsoncenter.lmu.de
The Rachel Carson Center is a joint initiative of LMU Munich and the Deutsches Museum supported by the German Ministry for Education and Research.