Browsing by Subject "Environmental Communication"

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    Art, Activism and Sundarbans: A case study of Musical Environmental Movement through Film
    (2021-07) Roy, Elja
    Art, Activism and Sundarbans: A case study of Musical Environmental Movement through Film is a case-based study of ecocinema. Ecocinema studies involves the ecocritical reading of films with or without overt environmental messages. Scholars in the relatively new, yet the burgeoning field of ecocinema studies primarily critique fictional and documentary films. However, I am among a subset of scholars (Seymour, 2014; Pedelty, 2017) who are bringing a more directly engaged, field-based, and production-oriented focus to ecocinema studies and environmental communication. My research in the Sundarbans (India-Bangladesh) involves artists-activists who use music and performing arts to communicate ongoing environmental issues. I used a field-to-media method to film, study and analyze an environmental movement that advocates for the mangrove forest. That work is presented and framed partially through writing, but more fully through the documentary film, Musical Mangrove. The written sections of this dissertation are in conversation with ecocinema scholars such as Rust, Monani and Cubitt (2012), von Mossner (2014), Macdonald (2004, 2012), and Ingram (2005) to suggest a more collaborative and production-based approach to the study of ecocinema. Additionally, this work points out the need for similar participatory approaches to environmental communication and starts a dialogue between ecocinema studies and environmental communication. Ultimately, my goal is to bring together production-based experience as a field researcher with the broader field of film criticism, especially in terms of environmentally themed film and film studies, for sake of making a distinct, experimental, and integral contribution to ecocinema studies, media studies, and environmental communication more broadly.
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    Paddling-with the Mississippi River: An Exploration of Building Relationships With Place
    (2023-04) Warren, Natalie
    It is not guaranteed that we will notice or care when life-supporting relationships between humans and more-than-humans are severed or imbalanced. In this dissertation, I argue that moving with a landscape—rooted in place-based ways of knowing—can make visible the complex interconnectedness of relationships with all others that often go ignored or unseen. Through personal narratives and theoretical reflections, I explore how paddling-with the length of the Mississippi River encouraged me to know, feel, and care for the river; to build perspective that, like the river, is capable of holding many tensions and contradictions. Embodied encounters with human, nonhuman, and more-than-human others along the 2,300-mile river directed my attention toward the water and its many uses and identities in ways that challenged the discursive binary of human-nature. I reflect on the transformative power of paddling-with the river to learn from place, reveal histories and practices that are often hidden from the public eye, and expose the vast interconnectedness of living and nonliving entities. I argue that emotionally-charged encounters with different others were vital to my experience building a relationship with the river. Feelings like shame and grief revealed my care and love for the water and propelled me to take action toward more reciprocal, balanced, and life-supporting relationships. Rooted in subjective storytelling and rhetorical analysis, this work explores one of the myriad ways we might be moved to care for earthly coexistence.