[Commlist] Call for book chapters: Disturbed ecologies: geopolitics and the northern landscape in the era of environmental crisis

*Call for book chapters: **/Disturbed ecologies: geopolitics and the 
northern landscape in the era of environmental crisis/***

Editors: Darcy White, Julia Peck, Chris Goldie

We seek abstracts for chapters (6,000-8,000 words) to be considered for 
inclusion in an edited collection, for publication in Summer 2022. The 
proposed book is the third of a series published by Transcript Verlag, 
following /Northern Light: Landscape, Photography and Evocations of the 
North,/ Chris Goldie / Darcy White (eds.), (2018), and /Proximity and 
Distance in Northern Landscape Photography: Contemporary Criticism, 
Curation, and Practice/, Darcy White/ Chris Goldie (eds.) (2020).

This book will consider a range of approaches examining the critical 
role of visual culture in shaping and interrogating conceptions of 
ecological crisis in relation to the northern landscape. The book will 
address the geopolitics of visual culture within debates concerned with 
the politics of climate change and ecological crisis. Its aim is to 
engage critically with recent debates about the Anthropocene: arguments 
concerned with identifying the socioeconomic and political causes of 
environmental crisis, and the problem in regarding the latter as the 
consequence of undifferentiated human activity.

At its most challenging and critical the visual culture of place is able 
to represent a complexity and heterogeneity frequently absent or 
displaced within dominant discourses of environmental catastrophe. 
Conversely, many images of landscape and place within fine art practice, 
commercial and popular forms play a role in supporting a more 
conventional interpretation of environmental crisis. It is our argument 
that images of northern places and landscapes have a pivotal function 
within the geopolitics of visual representation, whether through their 
exclusion and displacement of other locations and the everyday 
consequences of ecological crisis for heterogeneous populations; through 
familiar images of pristine wilderness; through melancholic 
representations of man-altered landscapes and environmental damage; or 
through an alternative sublime of eco-catastrophe in which scenes of 
ecological violence are invested with an awe-inspiring, perverse beauty. 
We suggest that the visual culture of northern places has not remained 
static in the era of ecological crisis but has played a dynamic role 
within the latter’s broad discursive field: northern landscape 
photography can still give visual form to historically settled 
conceptions of a natural world, but these images are frequently placed 
within a context of human mastery and thus sanction the latter’s 
purported achievements; and ubiquitous representations of environmental 
disaster can also reinforce the notion of its techno-utopian resolution.

While the medium of photography / photographic practice will be 
foregrounded in this anthology the discussions may also range into 
related practices within the wider terrain of visual culture, where 
examples may be identified that facilitate useful critiques of 
the conventional or enhanced understanding of new developments in this 
field of enquiry. Contributions to the book will explore this visual 
field, presenting wide-ranging critical appraisals of landscape 
photography and its related practices, as traditionally conceived, as 
well as more recent developments in art and visual culture in relation 
to the representation of place. Authors may question the validity of 
images where they function as vehicles for the consolidation of the 
global world order around enhanced networks of power, but also consider 
where visual culture is part of an emancipatory project in the era of 
global warming.

Chapters can address original work or themes, or the work of particular 
photographers, genres, collections. Both historical and contemporary 
approaches will be considered. We welcome proposals from anyone working 
within this broad field, including theorists, practitioners, curators 
and archivists.

Please submit a 500 word abstract and a short bio by Friday 16^th 
October, 2020. Please send your submission *TO ALL* of the following:

Darcy (White-d.white /at/ shu.ac.uk) <mailto:(d.white /at/ shu.ac.uk)>

Julia Peck -(jpeck /at/ glos.ac.uk) <mailto:(jpeck /at/ glos.ac.uk)>

Chris Goldie -(c.t.goldie /at/ shu.ac.uk) <mailto:(c.t.goldie /at/ shu.ac.uk)>

We look forward to receiving your proposals.

Darcy White, Sheffield Hallam University

Julia Peck, The University of Gloucestershire

Chris Goldie, Sheffield Hallam University


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