[Commlist] Call for Abstracts: The Intellect Handbook of Cinema and the Anthropocene

**Call for Abstracts: **/**The Intellect Handbook of**/****/**Cinema and 
the Anthropocene**/

We are pleased to announce a forthcoming edited volume, //The Intellect 
Handbook of////Cinema and the Anthropocene//, to be published by 
Intellect Books. The volume will bring together original scholarship 
that examines the relationship between cinema and the Anthropocene from 
a variety of perspectives. It is intended as a resource for scholars 
interested in film, media, and environmental studies.

Chapter proposals are now invited for consideration. Please also consult 
Intellect’s guidelines for reference on the kind of contributions we are 
seeking, available here: 
https://www.intellectbooks.com/intellect-handbooks 
<https://www.intellectbooks.com/intellect-handbooks>

_**Deadline for submission of abstracts is November 15: invited 
contributors will submit full chapters by June 30, 2026**_

**Editors:**Luca Barattoni (Clemson University), Massimiliano L. Delfino 
(Northwestern University)

In 2024, the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) almost 
unanimously rejected the proposal to declare an Anthropocene epoch. 
Professor Jan Zalasiewicz of Leicester University lamented the “missed 
opportunity to recognize and endorse a clear and simple reality, that 
our planet left its natural functioning state, sharply and irrevocably, 
in the mid-20th century.” Nonetheless, the IUGS report acknowledged that 
the Anthropocene concept “will continue to be widely used…by social 
scientists, politicians and economists, as well as by the public at 
large. It will remain an invaluable descriptor” of human–environment 
interactions.


This controversy itself underscores a profound shift: the notion that 
the “physical world as previously conceived” has ended challenges 
Darwinian uniformist assumptions and demands a rethinking of dualities 
such as nature/culture, alive/dead, human/animal, and organic/inorganic. 
In this new reality, the ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ collapse into 
unsettling assemblages, as humans increasingly appear as hybrids of 
flesh and machine whose bodily extensions (from prosthetics to digital 
avatars) both liberate new expressive potentials and entangle us in the 
neoliberal “entrepreneurship of the self.” Cinema, as both archive and 
speculative laboratory, offers a privileged space to visualize these 
entanglements and to dramatize the promises and perils of machinic 
agency in a world where human intervention has folded the past into the 
future and altered the collective horizon of expectations.

Cinema engages the Anthropocene on multiple levels. As an industry, 
filmmaking itself demands enormous energy. At the same time, cinema can 
reveal environmental realities and imaginaries. Documentaries and sci-fi 
films routinely use cinematic tools (time-lapse photography, satellite 
footage, CGI montages) to represent climate transformation. For example, 
projects like //Chasing Ice //(2012) employ time-lapse sequences to 
render visible the slow melting of glaciers that would otherwise elude 
our perception. In these ways, film both helps to construct a 
“climate-change imaginary” and exposes how our visual cultures are 
intertwined with global networks of energy and waste.

We invite proposals for an edited volume - //The Intellect Handbook of 
Cinema and the Anthropocene//- that examines the Anthropocene through 
the lens of film studies and media theory. Recent scholarship urges 
rethinking the human–planet relationship: Dipesh Chakrabarty, for 
example, argues that we must simultaneously adopt a human-centered 
“global” perspective and a decentered “planetary” perspective to frame 
the Anthropocene. In this spirit, we seek contributions grounded in the 
latest theoretical currents (posthumanism, ecocriticism, new 
materialism, deep time, Gaia theory, biopolitics, postcolonial climate 
critique, etc.) that illuminate how cinema engages with Earth’s changing 
environment.

In accordance with Intellect Handbook guidelines, requiring 
“comprehensive overviews and in-depth analyses of established theories, 
emerging debates, and contemporary developments across a wide range of 
academic disciplines” we are especially interested in work that 
emphasizes conceptual and philosophical insights (e.g. Latour, Haraway, 
Barad, Chakrabarty, Bennett, Braidotti, Alaimo, Weik von Mossner, etc.) 
rather than film case studies alone. The volume will explore the 
different ways in which film can enact new ways of seeing and feeling 
our entanglement with nonhuman life. Drawing on recent ecocritical and 
affect-theoretical scholarship, which portrays cinema as a site for 
“arts of noticing” nonhuman vulnerability and agency, this handbook aims 
to map key debates and open new directions at the nexus of film and the 
Anthropocene.

**Core Themes**

Contributions may address (but are not limited to) the following core 
themes:

  * Posthuman/Multispecies Perspectives: Theorizing cinema beyond the
    human subject. Drawing on Haraway, Braidotti, Bennett, Kagan, and
    others, this theme interrogates how filmic texts depict humans as
    co-constituted with nonhuman agents (animals, plants, machines,
    atmospheres) and breaks down human/non-human binaries.
  * Ecocritical and New Materialist Approaches: Engaging new materialism
    and ecocritique in film analysis. How do Barad’s agential realism,
    Coole & Frost’s materialisms, Alaimo’s trans-corporeality, etc.
    reconfigure cinematic narratives? We welcome analyses that treat
    matter (water, earth, technology, filmic images) as vibrant and
    agentive, challenging inert “nature” models. Topics include
    affective ecologies, the role of nonhuman objects, experimental
    forms that collapse nature/culture divides as well as early film
    found footage reinterpreted as post-extinction testimonies.
  * Intersectional and Feminist Perspectives: Feminist, queer,
    antiracist and decolonial approaches to cinema and the Anthropocene.
    For example, ecofeminist analyses might critique the gendered and
    colonial legacies of environmental exploitation. Contributors might
    examine how films encode masculinist visions of technoscience versus
    more relational modes of human. This section invites proposals that
    interrogate gendered dimensions of environmental crisis, including
    how race, class, disability, and nonhuman difference intersect in
    cinematic worlds.
  * Temporalities and Deep Time: Examining cinematic representations of
    time in the Anthropocene. This includes “deep time” and geological
    temporality as conceptualized by Chakrabarty and others.
    Contributions might consider how films use nonlinear or
    long-duration formats, montage of past/future, or other devices to
    evoke planetary history or futures. Scholarship on collapsed or
    multiple time scales (e.g.Tsing’s “arts of noticing”) can be applied
    to film.
  * Gaia Theory and Earth Systems: Investigating cinema’s relation to
    Earth as a living system. Inspired by Lovelock/Margulis and Latour’s
    political turn on Gaia, how do films reflect or contest the idea of
    Earth’s self-regulating feedback loops? Lovelock famously described
    the Earth as “more like a living organism than an inanimate
    machine”. Chapters might analyze ecological visuals (the “planetary
    sublime”), earth-bound narratives, or critiques of technology vs.
    organism paradigms.
  * Biopolitics, Geontopolitics, and Climate Justice: Addressing power,
    governance, and inequality in Anthropocene cinema. Inspired by
    Foucault and thinkers like Povinelli, we consider how biopolitical
    regimes and their counterparts (so-called “geontopolitics” or
    “necropolitics”) appear on screen. For example, films may depict
    surveillance/regulation of life, catastrophe and rescue, climate
    refugees or sacrificial victims. We especially encourage
    contributions with postcolonial and climate-justice insights:
    Chakrabarty notes that climate change is “mediated by the global
    inequities we already have”, so colonial histories and uneven
    vulnerabilities are crucial. Discussions might draw on writers such
    as Chakrabarty, Yusoff, Spivak, Mbembe, or Povinelli.
  * Cinematic Realism, Genre and Representation: Exploring shifts in
    film aesthetics and genre under the Anthropocene. How do
    documentary, science-fiction, disaster and speculative genres
    respond to ecological concerns? For instance, “cli-fi” and
    eco-disaster films grapple with planetary crisis, while so-called
    ecocinema imagines more-than-human empathy. Chapters might examine
    how realism is unsettled (e.g. CGI nature, VR, multisensory
    aesthetics) or how narrative conventions (e.g. utopian/dystopian
    tropes) encode climate consciousness. Emphasis should remain on
    theoretical framing (ecocriticism, posthumanism, etc.), not mere
    film summaries.
  * AI, Machinic Vision, and the Digital Anthropocene: Investigating
    artificial intelligence, computation, and machine perception as they
    intersect film and ecology. The “digital Anthropocene” raises new
    environmental issues (data center energy use, e-waste) and aesthetic
    questions (algorithmic vision, CGI ecologies, virtual nature).
    Recent studies estimate that training one large AI model can emit
    tens of thousands of kilograms of CO 2. We welcome essays on how AI
    and machine learning – from camera automation to deepfake
    environments – pose both ecological threats and opportunities for
    cinema. How do machine “ways of seeing” challenge human-centric
    cinematography? How might cinema address the hidden materiality of
    digital media? This section bridges traditional Anthropocene
    concerns with emerging tech and its critique.

**Submission Details**
Please submit an abstract of ~500 words (not exceeding 600 words) 
outlining your proposed chapter and its key argument, along with a brief 
author bio (max. 150 words) to the editors.

Deadline: November 15, 2025. Selected authors will be invited to submit 
full chapters (~7.000–8.000 words) by June 30, 2026.

Style: Manuscripts should be in US English, Intellect Harvard style (see 
<https://www.intellectbooks.com/asset/1748/house-style-guide-6th-ed..pdf>https://www.intellectbooks.com/asset/1748/house-style-guide-6th-ed..pdf 
<https://www.intellectbooks.com/asset/1748/house-style-guide-6th-ed..pdf>), 
with consistent citations.

Contact: Send proposals or inquiries jointly to the volume editors: Luca 
Barattoni [(lbaratt /at/ clemson.edu) <mailto:(lbaratt /at/ clemson.edu)>] and 
Massimiliano Delfino [(m.delfino /at/ northwestern.edu) 
<mailto:(m.delfino /at/ northwestern.edu)>]. Include “Intellect Handbook” in 
the email subject.


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