Sensory Aesthetics of the More-than-Human in Crisis

This book urges readers to recognize that the more-than-human is in crisis and offers a framework for sensory environmental sustainability, bringing new perspectives from related disciplines. It also searches for ways to evoke pro-environmental behaviors via the senses, foregrounding the interconnectedness of beings and places.

This 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. Furthermore, 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
DOI:10.47788/FCBE9712

Part I: Sensing Air
1. Discovering the Air Above the Blood in the Land: Overcoming Percepticide Through More-than-Human Popular Media Andrew Kettler
DOI: 10.47788/LLYL5222
2. Breathing Islands: Wind, Air, and Archipelagic Grief in the Work of John Pule Steve 4. Tu
DOI: 10.47788/YZQL3977

Part II: Sensing Fire
3. Unbounded Visual Narratives as a Medium to Invite Viewers to Cultivate Embodied, Affective Responses to Fire Megan Lolley
DOI: 10.47788/CPVP5581
4. “Burning Aesthetics” and Ecological Feeling: Photography after the 1910 Big Burn Carolin Görgen
DOI: 10.47788/MORW1190

Part III: Sensing Plants
5. Aesthetics, Parks, and Gardens Nicole A. Hall
DOI: 10.47788/TCGV2806
6. Ecology at Bay: Situating New Delhi in the Recovery of the “Sensuous” Parul Singh
DOI: 10.47788/BMZV1266

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
DOI: 10.47788/BOZE5406
8. Crypto/Cryptid: The Vaquita, Blockchain Conservation, and the Politics of Occlusion Ruth Y. Y. Hung
DOI: 10.47788/XFZV3096

Index

• Edited by Tatiana Konrad