Description
Book SynopsisIn Moving Environments: Affect, Emotion, Ecology, and Film , international scholars investigate how films portray human emotional relationships with the more-than-human world and how such films act upon their viewers' emotions. Emotion and affect are the basic mechanisms that connect us to our environment, shape our knowledge, and motivate our actions. Contributors explore how film represents and shapes human emotion in relation to different environments and what role time, place, and genre play in these affective processes. Individual essays resituate well-researched environmental films such as An Inconvenient Truth and March of the Penguins by paying close attention to their emotionalizing strategies, and bring to our attention the affective qualities of films that have so far received little attention from ecocritics, such as Stan Brakhage's Dog Star Man . The collection opens a new discursive space at the disciplinary intersection of film studies, affect studies, and a growing body of ecocritical scholarship. It will be of interest not only to scholars and students working in the field of ecocriticism and the environmental humanities, but for everyone with an interest in our emotional responses to film.
Trade Review"Ably orchestrated by Alexa Weik von Mossner, these essays provide a valuable introduction to studies of the affective and emotional dimensions of those animated, theatrical, and documentary films that focus on nature-human relationships. Placing a premium on theorizing these dimensions especially as such films are received by audiences, the volume can set the stage for future empirically oriented studies of such audience reception. It is well worth consideration for classroom use in environmental and film studies programs." -- Bron Taylor, editor of 'Avatar and Nature Spirituality' (WLU Press, 2013) and author of 'Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future' (2009)
Table of ContentsTable of Contents for Moving Environments: Affect, Emotion, Ecology, and Film , edited by Alexa Weik von Mossner Acknowledgements Introduction: Ecocritical Film Studies and the Effects of Affect, Emotion, and Cognition | Alexa Weik von Mossner PART I: General and Theoretical Considerations 1. Emotion and Affect in Eco-films: Cognitive and Phenomenological Approaches | David Ingram 2. Emotions of Consequence? Viewing Eco-documentaries from a Cognitivist Perspective | Alexa Weik von Mossner 3. Irony and Contemporary Ecocinema: Theorizing a New Affective Paradigm | Nicole Seymour PART II: Anthropomorphism and the Non-Human in Documentary Film 4. On the "Inexplicable Magic of Cinema": Critical Anthropomorphism, Emotion, and the Wildness of Wildlife Films | Bart H. Welling 5. Emotion, Argumentation, and Documentary Traditions: Darwin's Nightmare and The Cove | Belinda Smaill 6. Documenting Animal Rights and Environmental Ethics at Sea | Robin Murray and Joseph L. Heumann PART III: The Effects and Affects of Animation 7. Animation, Realism, and the Genre of Nature | David Whitley 8. What Can a Film Do? Assessing Avatar 's Global Affects | Adrian Ivakhiv 9. Animated Ecocinema and Affect: A Case Study of Pixar's UP | Pat Brereton PART IV: The Affect of Place and Time 10. Moving Home: Documentary Film and Other Remediations of Post-Katrina New Orleans | Janet Walker 11. Evoking Sympathy and Empathy: The Ecological Indian and Indigenous Eco-activism | Salma Monani 12. Affect and Environment in Two Artists' Films and a Video | Sean Cubitt List of Contributors Index
