Environmental Humanities Series

Wilfrid Laurier University Press

Series editor:

Cheryl Lousley, English and Film Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University

Editorial committee:

Adrian J. Ivakhiv, Environmental Studies, University of Vermont

Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands, Tier 1 CRC in Sustainability and Culture, Environmental Studies, York University

Susie O’Brien, English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University

Laurie Ricou, English, University of British Columbia

Rob Shields, Henry Marshall Tory Chair and Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta

Description:

Environmental thought pursues with renewed urgency the grand questions of the humanities: who we think we are, how we relate to others, and how we live in the world. But unlike most humanities scholarship, it explores these questions by crossing the lines demarcating human from animal, social from material, and objects and bodies from techno-ecological networks. Humanistic accounts of political representation and ethical recognition are re-examined in consideration of other species. Social identities are studied in relation to conceptions of the natural, the animal, the bodily, place, space, landscape, risk, and technology, and in relation to the material distribution and contestation of environmental hazards and pleasures.

The Environmental Humanities Series features research that adopts and adapts the methods of the humanities to clarify the cultural meanings associated with environmental debate. The scope of the series is broad: film, literature, television, web-based media, visual arts, and physical landscapes are all crucial sites for exploring how ecological relationships and identities are lived and imagined. The Environmental Humanities Series publishes scholarly monographs and essay collections in environmental cultural studies, including popular culture, film, media, and visual cultures; environmental literary criticism; cultural geography; environmental philosophy, ethics, and religious studies; and other cross-disciplinary research that probes what it means to be human, animal, and technological in an ecological world.

Bringing research and writing in environmental philosophy, ethics, cultural studies, and literature under a single umbrella, the series aims to make visible the contributions of humanities research to environmental studies, and to foster discussion that challenges and re-conceptualizes the humanities.

For more information, contact:

Lisa Quinn

Acquisitions Editor

Wilfrid Laurier University Press

75 University Avenue West

Waterloo, ON N2L 3C5

519) 884-0710 ext.2843

Email: quinn@press.wlu.ca

This is a periodic reminder that Planetary was created as a community blog, intended to host a group of bloggers. Should you feel moved to post, please comment on this post or email me at anthony.lioi_at_gmail_dot_com. I’ll send an official invitation to get you in the system.

Y’all come back now, hear?

Given my penchant for teaching the environmental humanities through popular culture, I could not resist recommending these two movies, currently in theaters, as films that contain smart perspectives on the environmental crisis.

Wall-E

Wall-E, the latest Pixar offering, is about a trash-compacting robot whose discovery of a green plant holds the key to the human return to Earth. Though I cringed at the previews that I saw months ago, my fears of a sugar overload–cute robots in space save the world!–went unfulfilled. Wall-E is not only a sophisticated, lovely piece of digital animation, it is also a smart critique of the way consumer media distract us from what really sustains a good life. (Yes, the animators get the irony.) Though it is a film Wendell Berry could love, it is neither cranky nor pastoral: the key to Earth’s future lies in knowing which artificial intelligences to trust. Once that decision is made, it allows humanity to clear away the garbage of the past and “go down to the ground,” as Peter Gabriel’s theme song says.

(Note: The review of this movie on Slate takes it to task for being anti-fat. While the demonization of fat is a serious problem, I think the reviewer misses the point. Humans have become infantilized by life in space, where low gravity and automated services have turned them into big babies. The movie makes this point visually in several places. The problem is not that people have become fat, but that they’ve become incapable of standing on their own feet, literally. When they finally realize what’s happened, they don’t behave like stereotypical fat people in Hollywood movies, who are lazy, stupid, and ridiculous. They react with resolve, courage, and intelligence.)

I plan to try this movie with my students as soon as possible because if fits their interesting combination of low level of denial and high frustration with apocalyptic rhetoric. They want stories that show them how to behave toward a world that is already less than pristine, but still beautiful and valuable. Wall-E provides an excellent model of beginning again after you’ve tried to run from your garbage. “Stiller Life, with Robots.”

Hellboy II

This film is more subtle in its green issues, but as A.O. Scott of the New York Times has pointed out, it borrows environmental themes from J.R.R. Tolkien and Hayao Miyazaki. The action begins as an elf prince denounces modern human civilizations as rapacious and destructive, repudiating the ancient truce between us and his people. Essentially, he goes to war for environmental reasons, and much of what he does would be classified as ecoterrorism by the current administration if it weren’t otherworldly in origin. At one point, Hellboy is forced to choose between saving a human infant and a rampaging plant elemental that is, he is told, the last of its kind. Though he chooses to save the infant and, ultimately, oppose the prince, Hellboy is left at the end of the movie wondering whether he chose the right side.

Like Wall-E, this film is a brilliant visual exposition of the world under our feet that we take for granted at our own peril. Instead of robots and spaceships, Hellboy has cthonic creatures and magical objects, but in both cases the fantastic, as a mode, is used to represent the nonhuman powers–technological and ecological–that we exile from consciousness even as we depend on them to sustain the world.

It’s interesting to see how the environmental crises are forcing sci-fi and fantasy together as both genres comment on our inability to escape responsibility, despite their common reputation as escapism par excellence. When I teach these films, the problem of escapism and responsibility is the angle I would hit first.

I’d be interested in hearing about anyone else’s approach to teaching these films, or films like them.

I teach one of the core classes in Juilliard’s humanities curriculum–Ethics. Last semester, I included a big helping of environmental ethics and animal rights in this class, and students responded well to these questions from the final exam, so I thought I’d share them.

Personhood, Equality, and Social Change

1. An advanced alien species, the Gas Bags of Jupiter, arrives in Central Park looking for new creatures to populate Jovian zoos. The Gas Bags are sentient and intelligent, but they do not resemble humans in any physical way, being bags of hot air, as their name suggests. How can you convince these creatures that humans are persons who don’t belong in a zoo? Write a letter to the Lord of the Gas Bags, Supreme Commander Oi Li, explaining the idea of the person and the status of humans as persons. Refer to any of the relevant readings, such as Singer, Midgley, Griffin, etc. Hope for your sake that Oi Li understands English.

2. In “All Animals Are Equal,” Peter Singer writes: “A liberation movement demands an expansion of our moral horizons and an extension or reinterpretation of the basic moral principle of equality” (26). To what extent are domestic or wild animals an “oppressed” group in our society? Must they be “liberated” in some way? Do they deserve “equality” in Singer’s sense of the word? Discuss. If you wish, you may use intelligent machines or “AI” as a point of comparison.

3. Can virtuous behavior help to create social change? In “Why Bother?”, Michael Pollan writes about a “chain reaction of behavioral change” (5) in which a critical mass of individuals influences whole societies to change. To what extent is this possible? In addressing this question, you may discuss climate change, as Pollan does, or another contemporary social issue of your choice.

At an ecocriticism conference several years ago, a Japanese scholar asked why so few American academics were paying attention to the great filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. Today, my class is going to talk about Spirited Away. Here are the discussion questions. I hope they get conversation started for you and your classes.

1. Spirited Away incorporates many elements from classical Western literature and folklore: people who magically turn into pigs (the Odyssey); the hero’s quest; the prohibition against eating the food of the Faerie (Irish folkore); a girl who goes to Grandma’s house (”Red Riding Hood”); the need to solve riddles. Do these familiar elements make the story easier to understand, or does their appearance in a Japanese film make them too alien to be helpful?

2. Through Chihiro’s transformation from miserable little girl to courageous adventurer, the film suggests that the world of the spirits is necessary to help us live in the everyday world, that spiritual development is part of the solution to environmental crises. What do you think about this?

3. Many of the film’s characters are related to fresh water: Haku, the Sludge Monster, Yubaba. The main action of the film takes place in a bathhouse, where spirits come to relax and refresh themselves in water. Chihiro’s family enters the spirit world by crossing a body of water. Chihiro and Haku first met at an incident in a river. How can the film’s preoccupation with water help us to understand the planetary water crisis?

4. Can you draw any connections between Spirited Away and Ishimure’s Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow or Kurosawa’s Dreams? What do these works tell us about a particularly Japanese approach to nature and environmental issues, if anything? What do these works have to say to an international audience?

5. The character No Face (the one with the white mask who eats everything) can easily be taken as a critique of consumer society, but No Face earns a happy ending. What do you think of Miyazaki’s solution to the endless appetite of the modern world?

6. Does it make sense to think of bodies of water as possessing spirit? Have you ever had a relationship with a river, a pond, an ocean, or the rain that prompted you to speak to water? Have you ever been rescued by a body of water? Have you ever cleaned a body of water?

7. The turning point of Spirited Away occurs when Chihiro cleans the Sludge Monster. The film’s creator, Miyazaki, based this incident on his own experience as a volunteer at a river cleanup, where he actually pulled a bicycle out of a river. What does this incident (in the film and in real life) suggest about the power of individual and communal action in environmental recovery?

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR A SPECIAL ISSUE

Teaching the City

The editors of Transformations seek articles (5,000 – 10,000 words) and media reviews (books, film, video, performance, art, music, etc. – 3,000 to 5,000 words) that explore the city in a variety of pedagogical contexts and disciplinary perspectives—literature, women’s and gender studies, urban studies, architecture, anthropology, folklore, history, psychology, sociology, art, photography, geography, religion, working-class studies, ethnic studies, cultural studies, science, and others. Essays should raise questions concerning, for example,

Topics might include: defining urban spaces; gendering the city; the history and interpretation of public spaces; global and transnational contexts and issues; racism, classism, and sexism in the construction and representation of cities; the politics of urban education; economics and gentrification; urban violence; environmental education; communities and cultural identities; architecture and urban planning; public history in/and the city; urban geography; suburbia and small cities; representations of the city in literature, visual, and popular culture; im/migration and transnational labor; teaching the city in K-12 and higher education.

Send a hard copy in MLA format (6^th ed.): Jacqueline Ellis and Edvige Giunta, Editors, Transformations, New Jersey City University, Hepburn Hall Room 309, 2039 Kennedy Boulevard, Jersey City, NJ 07305 OR email submissions and inquiries to: transformations@njcu.edu. Email submissions should be sent as attachments in MS Word or Rich Text format. For submission guidelines go to www.njcu.edu/assoc/transformations.

Published semi-annually by New Jersey City University

Deadline: 30 November 2007

Tuesday last, I had lunch with Dr. Eric Sanderson, the head of the Mannahatta Project, at the Bronx Zoo. (Yes, my job has some perks, if you’re willing to travel an hour roundtrip on the 2 Line to get to them.) The project, sponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Society, aims “to reconstruct the ecology of Manhattan when Henry Hudson first sailed by in 1609 and compare it to what we know of the island today. The Mannahatta Project will help us to understand, down to the level of one city block, where in Manhattan streams once flowed or where American Chestnuts may have grown, where black bears once marked territories, and where the Lenape fished and hunted. Most history books dispense with the pre-European history of New York in only a few pages. However, with new methods in geographic analysis and the help of a remarkable 18th-century map, we will discover a new aspect of New York culture, the environmental foundation of the city.”

Sanderson wants Manhattanites to think of the future of the city by understanding its past. We at Planetary find this laudable in the extreme. Because the Mannahatta Project plans to coordinate its rollout with the quadricentennial of the European discovery of Manhattan in 1609, there is a strong possibility that it will make future appearances in this here blog.

I just returned from the Code Conference sponsored by the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (The SLSA, aka “Salsa”). The SLSA is another example of what I called “strong interdisciplinarity” in the post directly below: a real cooperation across major divisions of knowledge based on real dialogue and a common, pragmatic set of goals. At the Code Conference, I talked with ecologists, programmers, ethicists, new media artists, and, of course, good ol’ literature scholars. I heard presentations about the representation of animals in nature faking and graphic novels, the ethics of wolf-human interaction, and media installations that project translations of bird calls (using real United Nations translators!) into the woods. I heard Kate Hayles talking about “intermediated” digital literature, and Brian Massumi on the emotional logic of the war on terrorism. I learned that “moron” is the word most often found in the code comments of the Microsoft Windows XP operating system. (Naturally.) My own presentation, “Stupid Ontology Tricks, or, The Code of Unknowing,” stimulated both proponents and detractors. (As Bridget Jones would say, “V. Good!”)

Special thanks to Susan McHugh of the University of New England, Arielle Saber of Bowdoin College, and Aden Evens of Dartmouth University for organizing such a smashing affair!

The next SaLSA Conference in the USA will be in 2009 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Bless their hearts. See y’all there.

I encountered the fine people of the Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy at the Code Conference sponsored by the Society for Science, Literature, and the Arts (see above).

This center is a new example of what the environmental humanities can be: in this case, a fusion of ecology, ethics, and public policy. This kind of interdisciplinarity, which has a scientific wing, a philosophical and cultural wing, and a policy wing, seems to be an excellent model for a strong interdisciplinarity, where all the pistons fire together to move us toward a common goal, rather than the typical, weak model, where one method comes to dominate the others. (Sorry Edward O. Wilson, I think consilience is a crappy, not to say epistemically imperialist, idea.)

My students have begun to response to the questions below by posting to our class blog, “Perfect Storms.” If you’d like to see their responses, by all means, see.