Artistic, literary, and technological depictions of the climate crisis and how they influence humanity’s response
What does it mean to watch a disaster unfold? Does exposure to a source of dread spur people to action or lull them into fatalism and complacency? Andrew Kalaidjian takes up these and other vital questions in Spectacle Earth, a lively and wide-ranging consideration of media engagement, passivity, and virtual environments in relation to ecological crises and climate change.
Kalaidjian begins by tracing the long trajectory of environmental aesthetics and natural sciences that have led up to the Anthropocene. He then looks at the lessons learned from artist and activist movements of the 1960s and 1970s before laying out the new challenges in the digital age of artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and virtual reality. The result is groundbreaking, offering readers a new media literacy that goes beyond individual therapeutic experience to provide forms of expression that can lead to the sorts of solidarity and connection needed to change the planet for the better.
By:
Andrew Kalaidjian Imprint: University of Virginia Press Country of Publication: United States Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 13mm
ISBN:9780813952710 ISBN 10: 0813952719 Pages: 208 Publication Date:30 April 2025 Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format:Hardback Publisher's Status: Active
Andrew Kalaidjian is Associate Professor of English at California State University, Dominguez Hills, and the author of Exhausted Ecologies: Modernism and Environmental Recovery.