Pre-conference Workshops and Seminars » Ecological Media & Ecocriticism Seminar

Ecological Media & Ecocriticism Seminar

The term “ecological media” surprisingly has not been formally defined. Despite this there has been a move within ecocriticism to understand ecological media (or its contraction “ecomedia”) as the study of non-print media as it applies to environmental discourse and action. This was first suggested at ASLE 2009’s pre-conference seminar “Ecological Media” and has since been articulated at the Ecomedia Studies website. As non-print media, ecomedia encompasses a broad array of media technologies from still photographs to cinema to music and a host of hybrid audio-visual platforms and new media. In essence, the purview of ecological media is vast. In this workshop, instead of attempting to tackle it all, we focus on one expression of ecomedia—cinema.

In focusing on ecocinema, we are aware that the boundaries between cinema and other media are blurry. Yet, we also believe that there already exists a rich ecocritical scholarship devoted to cinema that lends itself to theories and practices of “ecocinema studies.” In this seminar, we will explore some of this work and consider the potential directions of future work.

We have organized the workshop in three sections. Part I will discuss readings that describe cinema and ecocriticism’s intersections broadly. Part II will take three critical directions of the concerns, its interest in “materiality,” its intersections with animal studies, and its interest in risk narratives, and consider these aspects more closely. Part III will be a discussion of participants work.

Starting Questions

Part I: Ecocinema Broadly

What is ecocinema? What are some of its theories and practices and how do we evaluate both ecocinema and these critical frameworks of engaging it?
Does ecocinema need to be further categorized/defined based on genre (for example, eco-fiction versus eco-documentary?) or based on intentionality and motives for screening (for example, Hollywood blockbuster profits versus independent avant-garde screenings?)

Part II: Critical Approaches

What are ecocinema’s materialities? How do we study these and why? How do films engage EJ, narratives of risk, and global-local dialogue? How might animal studies and film studies intersect? To what effect?

Part III: Ecocinema’s Directions

How do you frame your work within “ecocinema studies”?

Bibliography

Part I

Dobrin, Sidney, and Sean Morey, eds. Ecosee: Image, Rhetoric, Nature. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2009. Print. Read Introduction, Chapter 1, and Conclusion.
During, Lisa. "Film Theory." The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory 2009 17.1 (2009): 87-124. Print.
Garrard, Greg. "Ecocriticism." The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory 17 (2009): 1-35. Print.
Heise, Ursula. Sense of Place, Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print. Read Chapter 4.
Ivakhiv, Adrian. "Green Film Criticism and its Futures." Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 15.2 (2008): 1-28. Print.
Lu, Sheldon. Chinese Ecocinema: In the Age of Environmental Challenge. University of Washington P, 2010. Read the Introduction.
Shoard, Catherine. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/oct/15/eco-documentaries-cove-vanishing-bees
Willoquet, Paula, ed. Framing the World: Explorations in Ecocriticism and Film. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2010. Print. Read Introduction and Chapter 2: Shifting Paradigms.

Part II

Ecocinema’s Materialities

Cubitt, Sean. Eco Media. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2005. Print. Read the Introduction, and Conclusion.
Murray, Robin, and Joseph Huemann. Ecology and Popular Film: Cinema on the Edge. Albany, NY: State University of New York, 2009. Print. Read the Introduction.
Maxwell, Richard and Toby Miller. “Ecological Ethics and Media Technology.” International Journal of Communication 2 (2008): 331-358.
Ivakhiv, Adrian. "Green Film Criticism and its Futures." Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 15.2 (2008): 1-28. Print.

Risk, Environmental Justice, Eco-cosmopolitanism, and the Global-Local Nexus

Hageman, Andrew and Sharada Balachandran-Orihuela. "The Virtual Realities of U.S./Mexico Border Ecologies in Maquilapolis and Sleep Dealer" Environmental Communication: The Journal of Nature and Culture. (forthcoming; and hopefully out by June)
Willoquet-Marcondi, Paula. Framing the World: Explorations in Ecocriticism and Film. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2010. Print. Read Part II, Cory Shaman’s “Testimonial Structures” and Rachel Stein’s “Disposable Bodies.”

Animal Studies
- Jeong, Seung-Hoon and Dudley Andrew. “Grizzly ghost: Herzog, Bazin and the cinematic animal.” Screen (2008) 49 (1): 1-12.
- Ladino, Jennifer K. “For the Love of Nature: Documenting Life, Death, and Animality in Grizzly Man and March of the Penguins.” Interdisciplinary Study of Literature and Environment (2009) 16 (1): 53-90.
- Neimanis, Astrida. “Becoming-Grizzly: Bodily Molecularity and the Animal that Becomes.” PhaenEx, 2.2 (2007)

Part III

Participants’ papers

Workshop Leaders

Sidney I. Dobrin is Associate Professor of English at the University of Florida, where for ten years he directed the writing program. He teaches courses in writing theory, visual rhetoric, and environmental rhetoric. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books and numerous articles about those subjects. His current research involves the intersection of visual rhetoric and posthumanism. Forthcoming and recent publications include articles in Environmental Education Research, Defining Composition Studies: Research, Scholarship, and Inquiry for the Twenty-First Century (ed. Kelly Ritter), and Ecosee: Image, Nature and Visual Rhetoric (co-edited with Sean Morey).

Salma Monani is Assistant Professor at Gettysburg College’s Environmental Studies department. As a humanities scholar her research and teaching include explorations in literary ecocriticism and cine-ecocriticism. She is also interested in the pragmatics of just sustainability. Current projects include a special edited collection, “Coloring the Environmental Lens: Cinema, New Mediaand Just Sustainability,” for Environmental Communication: The Journal of Nature and Culture; a variety of other projects that analyze the representation of minorities in ecomedia; as well as “Just Food?” A Community Rethinks Sustainability,” an examination of the developing local foods movement in Adams County, an agricultural rich rural area that also suffers from high food insecurity. She is film review editor for Green Theory & Praxis and moderator for the online scholarly community, Ecomedia.

To pre-register for this workshop, please contact Greta Gaard: greta.gaard uwrf.edu. A fee will be due at regular registration, price is TBD but in the $15-20 range.