University of Exeter Press

Sensory Aesthetics of the More-than-Human in Crisis

    • 212 Pages

    This urgent book foregrounds the role of the senses in understanding the more-than-human. It explicates the aesthetics of the more-than-human, emphasizing the critical situation it faces today through multiple environmental crises, including pollution, climate change, and species extinction. 

    Drawing on perspectives from the environmental humanities, sensory studies, and visual culture studies, Sensory Aesthetics of the More-than-Human in Crisis contributes to ongoing scholarly attempts to understand the more-than-human in a time of profound change. The volume brings together case studies focused on air, fire, plants, and animals, demonstrating how sensory engagement can mobilize human action and promote a new philosophy toward the more-than-human world. Additionally, the book adds to climate-conscious research methodologies and ethical approaches, with each chapter helping to formulate frameworks for building a better understanding of such crises, and forging community solidarities from an interdisciplinary perspective within sensory studies.

    This essential volume is intended for researchers across more-than-human studies, the environmental humanities, sensory studies, and visual culture studies, as well as policymakers and the public seeking to understand how the senses relate to environmental harm and how to productively address our ongoing crises.


    List of Contributors

    Introduction: Sensing the More-than-Human Tatiana Konrad

    Part I: Sensing Air
    1. Discovering the Air Above the Blood in the Land: Overcoming Percepticide Through More-than-Human Popular Media Andrew Kettler
    2. Breathing Islands: Wind, Air, and Archipelagic Grief in the Work of John Pule Steve 4. Tu

    Part II: Sensing Fire
    3. Unbounded Visual Narratives as a Medium to Invite Viewers to Cultivate Embodied, Affective Responses to Fire Megan Lolley
    4. “Burning Aesthetics” and Ecological Feeling: Photography after the 1910 Big Burn Carolin Görgen

    Part III: Sensing Plants
    5. Aesthetics, Parks, and Gardens Nicole A. Hall
    6. Ecology at Bay: Situating New Delhi in the Recovery of the “Sensuous” Parul Singh

    Part IV: Sensing Species Extinction
    7. Sensing Danger: Representing, Perceiving, and Feeling the Extinction Crisis Through Marine Mammal Portrayals in North American Visual Cultures Kathryn M. Hudson
    8. The Vaquita and the Digital Afterlife: Cryptographic Conservation and the Aesthetics of Occlusion Ruth Y. Y. Hung

    Index

    Tatiana Konrad is the PI of “Air and Environmental Health in the (Post-) COVID-19 World” and “Citizen Science for Environmental Awareness in Vienna,” and a postdoc in the Department of English and American Studies, University of Vienna, Austria. She is the editor of two book series—Environment, Health, and Well-being (Michigan State UP) and Environment, Senses and Emotions (UEP)—and Section Editor for Disability, Sustainability, and Environmental Justice (Oxford University Press).

     

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      • 212 Pages
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