Sensing and Resisting Environmental Crises Through Visual Culture

This book explicates the role of the senses in perceiving and dealing with urgent environmental concerns. Chapters thoroughly investigate the aesthetics of the ongoing crises through different vectors, emphasizing the role of the senses in recognizing environmental harm and in the work to reduce it.

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.

Introduction: The Senses, Emotions, and Visual Cultures of Environmental Crises Tatiana Konrad DOI:10.47788/KZQN4559 Part 1: Visual Aesthetics of Environmental Crises 1. Sentarism: An Environmental Episteme on Sulphur Dioxide Pollution A. Chukwudumebi Obute  DOI:10.47788/AXPI1450 2. Choke: Cartoons That Take Your Breath Away Ritu Gairola Khanduri DOI: 10.47788/ZABP3301 3. The Materiality of Grassroots Activism: Collecting and Documenting Water Pollution in Pueblo’s Salt Creek Maggie L. McNulty and Amy Renee Haines DOI: 10.47788/NGZM3805 4. ‘Brighter Better Days’: Relating (to) Toxic Images Through Attuned Visual Practices Laurence Butet-Roch DOI: 10.47788/IHLY8328 Part 2: Smelling and Otherwise Sensing Environmental Harm 5. Beyond Eco-Visualization: Olfactormativity and the Politics of Sensing Environmental Harm Silke Felber DOI: 10.47788/AIAL7728 6. Scented Candles and the Politics of Smell: Mediating Spaces, Senses, and Environmental Harm Savannah Schaufler DIO: 10.47788/GVVK3597 7. Beyond the Visual: Reintegrating the Self and the Climate-Changing World Coryna Ogunseitan DOI: 10.47788/VLJF4415 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 DOI: 10.47788/SXCP4968 9. The Cochabamba Water Crisis Narrated Through Eco-Cinema Arón Montenegro DOI: 10.47788/GFEC6468 10. Sensing the Aporia: Environmental Crises and the Toxic Sensorium in Canadian Visual Media John Wilfred Bessai DOI: 10.47788/FVJB4763 11. Minor Feelings in the Arctic: Colonial Affects and Their Relation to the Degradation of Indigenous Cultures and Climate Baylee J. Bronnenberg DOI: 10.47788/UJWX7677

• Edited by Tatiana Konrad