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Sensing and Resisting Environmental Crises Through Visual Culture explicates the role of the senses in perceiving and dealing with urgent environmental concerns. Situated at the crossroads of sensory studies, the environmental humanities, and visual culture studies, it makes a unique contribution to the ongoing research on environmental problems. Such a perspective on environmental crises through the humanities lens offers a complementary framework to the wider field of study, enriching the discourse through interdisciplinary scholarship.
While focusing on visual culture, the book insists that every sense—not just sight—is crucial for recognizing and responding to environmental harm. It explores how visual materials actively engage different senses to communicate environmental concerns and advocate for justice, and how emotions shape our perception of environmental crises, acting as a catalyst for resistance and social action. The chapters offer a global range of examples foregrounding environmental visual activism as a form of resistance and scholarly engagement, from images of pollution in Delhi, the Zambian Copperbelt, and Pueblo’s Salt Creek, to the role of cartoons, eco-cinema, and science fiction video games in rendering environmental distress visible, to investigations into other-than-visual experiences, such as the politics of smell, and the use of sonic/haptic practices in Canadian media.
Deepening understandings of the unfolding environmental crises by emphasizing their sensory dimensions, the contributions consider how visual culture addresses the challenges posed by these crises, working toward restoration of environmental justice. This volume is essential reading for students and researchers in the environmental humanities, sensory studies, and visual culture studies.
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).
Introduction: The Senses, Emotions, and Visual Cultures of Environmental Crises Tatiana Konrad
Part 1: Visual Aesthetics of Environmental Crises
1. Sentarism: An Environmental Episteme on Sulphur Dioxide Pollution A. Chukwudumebi Obute
2. Choke: Cartoons That Take Your Breath Away Ritu Gairola Khanduri
3. The Materiality of Grassroots Activism: Collecting and Documenting Water Pollution in Pueblo’s Salt Creek Maggie L. McNulty and Amy Renee Haines
4. ‘Brighter Better Days’: Relating (to) Toxic Images Through Attuned Visual Practices Laurence Butet-Roch
Part 2: Smelling and Otherwise Sensing Environmental Harm
5. Beyond Eco-Visualization: Olfactormativity and the Politics of Sensing Environmental Harm Silke Felber
6. Scented Candles and the Politics of Smell: Mediating Spaces, Senses, and Environmental Harm Savannah Schaufler
7. Beyond the Visual: Reintegrating the Self and the Climate-Changing World Coryna Ogunseitan
Part 3: Resisting Environmental Crises Through the Senses
8. Playing with Environmental Crises: Sense, Emotion, and Slow Violence in Stray, Eastward, and Cloudpunk Daria Romanoff
9. The Cochabamba Water Crisis Narrated Through Eco-Cinema Arón Montenegro
10. Sensing the Aporia: Environmental Crises and the Toxic Sensorium in Canadian Visual Media John Wilfred Bessai
11. Minor Feelings in the Arctic: Colonial Affects and Their Relation to the Degradation of Indigenous Cultures and Climate Baylee J. Bronnenberg