Teaching my film course (especially in its current rendition as “Ecology Film Philosophy”) and the book that goes with it (Ecologies of the Moving Image, which will be publicly available in July) — and especially teaching the Andrei Tarkovsky film Stalker, which serves as a sort of template for the book — makes me feel like the Stalker in the film.
“Stalkers” are guides to the Zone View full article »
Composing a worthwhile Earth Day post takes more energy than I have today, so instead I’ll link to Jeremy’s Earth post at Struggle Forever! It articulates a thought I often feel on this day (surrounded as I get by students eager to maternalize the planet) but in a way that resonates with the weirdness of the last week, with its bombs, explosions, and highly mediated manhunts.
A few snippets:
The Earth is not your mother . . . S/h/it is a monstrous assemblage . . . Earth Day is a dark holiday. It is a reminder, not of the beauty of nature or the miracle of life, but of the horrors that we have wrought upon the rocky surface of this planet . . .
And the picture says a great deal:
Here’s what I’m slated to teach this summer, for 3 weeks beginning May 20.
Ecology – Film – Philosophy
The list of advisors for this new book series in Ecocritical Theory and Practice shows just how the field of ecocriticism has internationalized over the last two decades. I’m pleased to be part of it.
Ecocritical Theory and Practice Book Series
Lexington Books, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group
Ecocritical Theory and Practice highlights innovative scholarship at the interface of literary/cultural studies and the environment, seeking to foster an ongoing dialogue between academics and environmental activists. Works that explore View full article »
Says NASA:
“It turns out that roughly 70% of the Universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 25%. The rest – everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter – adds up to less than 5% of the Universe. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t be called “normal” matter at all, since it is such a small fraction of the Universe.” [italics added]
The following provides an updated diagram and some further notes pertaining to my three-part article “What A Bodymind Can Do.” The earlier parts can be read here: part 1, part 2, part 3. (Please note that this version has corrected a minor error in the originally posted article, and added a bit more information at the end.)
“What A Bodymind Can Do” was an attempt to map the possibilities of human perception, action, and realization by synthesizing Shinzen Young’s systematization of mindfulness meditation practices (primarily Buddhist, but with reference to others) with a process-relational framework rooted in Whiteheadian process metaphysics and the triadic phenomenology of C. S. Peirce.
While it’s been out for several months now, the current issue of Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies, a special issue on Sighting Oil, deserves more press than it’s gotten.
The journal is housed at the University of Alberta, which makes it particularly well situated to critically observe the development of Alberta’s infamous Tar Sands. The issue features several critical as well as visual essays on oil (including one by Allan Stoekl on peak oil), tar sands and pipeline politics, visual representation, “dark ecology,” BP and its Gulf Oil Spill, and much else.
(And here’s one thing we’ve been doing about it: Vermont towns say no to Tar Sands oil.)
In Media Res is calling for guest curators on the theme of the representation of environmental issues in the media. The deadline (alas) is March 11.
See the call here.
H/t to Ecomedia Studies.
Here are my introductory comments to the 2010 documentary Waste Land, delivered yesterday at the Fleming Museum in Burlington and shown in connection with the exhibition High Trash, which runs until May 19.
