Ecology, Writing Theory, and New Media
This post is to announce a recently published collection that I contributed to called Ecology, Writing Theory, and New Media: Writing Ecology, edited by Sid Dobrin (part of the Routledge series in Rhetoric and Communication). You can preview the book fairly extensively on Amazon:Â http://www.amazon.com/dp/0415897041/ref=rdr_ext_sb_ti_hist_1
In general, the collection’s engagement with ecology is perhaps closer to work in media ecology than it is to ecocriticism or other approaches that emphasize environmental(ist) themes across various media. In other words, you won’t find much discussion on representations of nature or environmental politics, though a couple chapters deal with specific environmental disasters and institutional/university rhetorics of sustainability. By and large, the collective aim is to incorporate concepts and methodologies from ecological theory (as well as systems theory and complexity theory), in an effort to account for writing — particularly its circulation across new media platforms — as a complex, ecological phenomenon.
I’ve just gone to the Routledge site for the book and recommended it for our librarian. Looking forward to reading it in more detail soon. I appreciate your clarity on the approach this collection takes and its distinction from and shared interest with ecocriticism.
This collection makes me think of Mike Zizer’s chapter “Home Again: Peak Oil…” in Environmental Criticism for the Twenty-First Century (editors Stephanie LeMenager, Teresa Shewry, and Ken Hiltner), if only because that too spoke about the productiveness of considering how media ecology and ecocriticism can converse with each other. I’m keen to see how this collection enables such conversations.