Disarming the Prairie

Disarming the Prairie
Author :
Publisher : JHU Press
Total Pages : 96
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0801859352
ISBN-13 : 9780801859359
Rating : 4/5 (52 Downloads)

Synopsis Disarming the Prairie by : Terry Evans

This collection of haunting and hopeful images shows the transformation of a former military base into a unique nature preserve. 53 photos, 50 in color. 2 color maps.

Ecomedia

Ecomedia
Author :
Publisher : Routledge
Total Pages : 274
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781317670575
ISBN-13 : 1317670574
Rating : 4/5 (75 Downloads)

Synopsis Ecomedia by : Stephen Rust

Ecomedia: Key Issues is a comprehensive textbook introducing the burgeoning field of ecomedia studies to provide an overview of the interface between environmental issues and the media globally. Linking the world of media production, distribution, and consumption to environmental understandings, the book addresses ecological meanings encoded in media texts, the environmental impacts of media production, and the relationships between media and cultural perceptions of the environment. Each chapter introduces a distinct type of media, addressing it in a theoretical overview before engaging with specific case studies. In this way, the book provides an accessible introduction to each form of media as well as a sophisticated analysis of relevant cases. The book includes contributions from a combination of new voices and well-established media scholars from across the globe who examine the basic concepts and key issues of ecomedia studies. The concepts of "frames," "flow", and "convergence" structure a dynamic collection divided into three parts. The first part addresses traditional visual texts, such as comics, photography, and film. The second part of the book addresses traditional broadcast media, such as radio, and television, and the third part looks at new media, such as advertising, video games, the internet, and digital renderings of scientific data. In its breadth and scope, Ecomedia: Key Issues presents a unique survey of rich scholarship at the confluence of Media Studies and Environmental Studies. The book is written in an engaging and accessible style, with each chapter including case studies, discussion questions and suggestions for further reading.

Aereality

Aereality
Author :
Publisher : Catapult
Total Pages : 317
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781582439877
ISBN-13 : 1582439877
Rating : 4/5 (77 Downloads)

Synopsis Aereality by : William Fox

William Fox's writing for the last several years has been focused on how we construct aerial views, either physically (by flying) or in our imaginations. In Aereality, he flies over earthworks in Nevada and Utah, soars through the world's largest open pit mine, and surveys Los Angeles, circumnavigating large swaths of true American urban sprawl. On the East Coast, he examines the elevated art of the Hudson River Valley and New York City. And finally, in Australia, Fox examines the history and current practice of both Euro–Australian and Aboriginal aerial views, and searches for the cognitive roots of our aerial imagination. Accompanying Fox throughout his travels is a rolling cast of enlightened fliers: geographers, museum curators, landscape photographers, anthropologists, and artists. He traverses the sky in prop planes, helicopters, and hot air balloons, all with the ultimate goal of knowing and experiencing the earth from the air.

Rescuing the Planet

Rescuing the Planet
Author :
Publisher : Vintage
Total Pages : 337
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780525563945
ISBN-13 : 0525563946
Rating : 4/5 (45 Downloads)

Synopsis Rescuing the Planet by : Tony Hiss

An urgent, resounding call to protect 50 percent of the earth's land by 2050—thereby saving millions of its species—and a candid assessment of the health of our planet and our role in conserving it, from the award-winning author of The Experience of Place and veteran New Yorker staff writer. "An upbeat and engaging account of the remarkable progress being made to preserve vast wild spaces for animals to roam." —The Wall Street Journal Beginning in the vast North American Boreal Forest that stretches through Canada, and roving across the continent, from the Northern Sierra to Alabama's Paint Rock Forest, from the Appalachian Trail to a ranch in Mexico, Tony Hiss sets out on a journey to take stock of the "superorganism" that is the earth: its land, its elements, its plants and animals, its greatest threats--and what we can do to keep it, and ourselves, alive. Hiss not only invites us to understand the scope and gravity of the problems we face, but also makes the case for why protecting half the land is the way to fix those problems. He highlights the important work of the many groups already involved in this fight, such as the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, and the global animal tracking project ICARUS. And he introduces us to the engineers, geologists, biologists, botanists, oceanographers, ecologists, and other "Half Earthers" like Hiss himself who are allied in their dedication to the unifying, essential cause of saving our own planet from ourselves. Tender, impassioned, curious, and above all else inspiring, Rescuing the Planet is a work that promises to make all of us better citizens of the earth.

In Motion

In Motion
Author :
Publisher : Routledge
Total Pages : 275
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781351177443
ISBN-13 : 1351177443
Rating : 4/5 (43 Downloads)

Synopsis In Motion by : Tony Hiss

In this extraordinarily wide-ranging, insightful, and revelatory book, Tony Hiss is the much-praised author of The Experience of Places delves into a unique and instantly recognizable (though previously undescribed) experience that can happen to us when we travel, a special understanding and ability that can leave us feeling exhilarated. He illustrates how throughout human history - from our ancestors walking upright for the first time to astronauts walking on the moon - we have repeatedly availed ourselves of this seemingly elusive quality, which he calls 'Deep Travel.' The sensation of Deep Travel can overtake us, Hiss says, whenever we tap into a sophisticated, wide-awake awareness we all possess. With a wealth of examples - from evocative accounts of his own journeys to celebrated travel writing across the centuries - Hiss identifies and rescues this powerful capacity and sets out simple techniques for accessing it no matter where we are. And this is only a jumping-off point for an original and penetrating explanation of how Deep Travel radically alters our perception of not only where we are but also when we are, by placing us in an 'extended present,' and how it acts as an open-sesame to enlarge and enrich the world around us. Going even further, he investigates how we can remain absolutely still but travel in time itself, as our horizons move backward to include layers of nature and human culture that have gone before, or project us forward to consider what our actions will mean to those who will inhabit our spot on earth a few generations from now. Whether travel takes you around the corner or around the world, once you've read In Motion, no journey will ever feel the same.

Arming and Disarming

Arming and Disarming
Author :
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Total Pages : 377
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781442646391
ISBN-13 : 144264639X
Rating : 4/5 (91 Downloads)

Synopsis Arming and Disarming by : R. Blake Brown

From the École Polytechnique shootings of 1989 to the political controversy surrounding the elimination of the federal long-gun registry, the issue of gun control has been a subject of fierce debate in Canada. But in fact, firearm regulation has been a sharply contested issue in the country since Confederation. Arming and Disarming offers the first comprehensive history of gun control in Canada from the colonial period to the present. In this sweeping, immersive book, R. Blake Brown outlines efforts to regulate the use of guns by young people, punish the misuse of arms, impose licensing regimes, and create firearm registries. Brown also challenges many popular assumptions about Canadian history, suggesting that gun ownership was far from universal during much of the colonial period, and that many nineteenth century lawyers – including John A. Macdonald – believed in a limited right to bear arms. Arming and Disarming provides a careful exploration of how social, economic, cultural, legal, and constitutional concerns shaped gun legislation and its implementation, as well as how these factors defined Canada's historical and contemporary 'gun culture.'

Natural Visions

Natural Visions
Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Total Pages : 280
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780226454245
ISBN-13 : 022645424X
Rating : 4/5 (45 Downloads)

Synopsis Natural Visions by : Finis Dunaway

Walden Pond. The Grand Canyon.Yosemite National Park. Throughout the twentieth century, photographers and filmmakers created unforgettable images of these and other American natural treasures. Many of these images, including the work of Ansel Adams, continue to occupy a prominent place in the American imagination. Making these representations, though, was more than a purely aesthetic project. In fact, portraying majestic scenes and threatened places galvanized concern for the environment and its protection. Natural Visions documents through images the history of environmental reform from the Progressive era to the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, showing the crucial role the camera played in the development of the conservation movement. In Natural Visions, Finis Dunaway tells the story of how visual imagery—such as wilderness photographs, New Deal documentary films, and Sierra Club coffee-table books—shaped modern perceptions of the natural world. By examining the relationship between the camera and environmental politics through detailed studies of key artists and activists, Dunaway captures the emotional and spiritual meaning that became associated with the American landscape. Throughout the book, he reveals how photographers and filmmakers adapted longstanding traditions in American culture—the Puritan jeremiad, the romantic sublime, and the frontier myth—to literally picture nature as a place of grace for the individual and the nation. Beautifully illustrated with photographs by Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, and a host of other artists, Natural Visions will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in American cultural history, the visual arts, and environmentalism.

Land Matters

Land Matters
Author :
Publisher : Routledge
Total Pages : 283
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781000213447
ISBN-13 : 1000213447
Rating : 4/5 (47 Downloads)

Synopsis Land Matters by : Liz Wells

In this major work on landscape photography, extensively illustrated in colour and black & white, Liz Wells is concerned with the ways in which photographers engage with issues about land, its representation and idealisation. She demonstrates how the visual interpretation of land as landscape reflects and reinforces contemporary political, social and environmental attitudes. She also asks what is at stake in landscape photography now through placing critical appraisal of key examples of work by photographers working in, for example, the USA, in Europe, Scandinavia and Baltic areas, within broader art historical and political concerns. This illuminating book will interest readers in photography and media, geography, art history and travel, as well as those concerned with environmental issues.

Photography and Flight

Photography and Flight
Author :
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Total Pages : 149
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781861898470
ISBN-13 : 1861898479
Rating : 4/5 (70 Downloads)

Synopsis Photography and Flight by : Denis Cosgrove

Used for everything from geographic evaluation to secret spy missions, aerial photography has a rich and storied history, ably recounted here in Photography and Flight. Aerial photography is marked by its dependency on technological developments in both photography and aerospace, and the authors chart the history of this photography as it tracked the evolution of these technologies. Beginning with early images taken from hot-air balloons, fixed platforms, and subsequent handheld camera technology, Denis Cosgrove and William Fox then explain how military reconnaissance and governmental projects were instrumental in catalyzing these and other innovations in the field. They examine pivotal historical moments in which aerial photography began to establish itself as essential tool, such as in World War II military strategies, high-altitude photography taken from postwar rockets and aircraft, and the use of aerial photography during the cold war and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The book also explores the advancement of geographic scholarship through aerial photography, ranging from military excursions into Antarctica to the images of the curvature of the earth taken during the Apollo space missions. While digital technology and remote sensing have changed the landscape of photography, Photography and Flight argues that they have not diminished the significance of aerial photography in providing images of the earth. Rather, new technologies and resulting innovations such as Google Earth have enabled the mass democratization of access to such information. Photography and Flight ultimately reveals how the camera lens from far away continues to unearth telling details about the land and those who live upon it.

Prairie Imperialists

Prairie Imperialists
Author :
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages : 349
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780812295641
ISBN-13 : 0812295641
Rating : 4/5 (41 Downloads)

Synopsis Prairie Imperialists by : Katharine Bjork

The Spanish-American War marked the emergence of the United States as an imperial power. It was when the United States first landed troops overseas and established governments of occupation in the Philippines, Cuba, and other formerly Spanish colonies. But such actions to extend U.S. sovereignty abroad, argues Katharine Bjork, had a precedent in earlier relations with Native nations at home. In Prairie Imperialists, Bjork traces the arc of American expansion by showing how the Army's conquests of what its soldiers called "Indian Country" generated a repertoire of actions and understandings that structured encounters with the racial others of America's new island territories following the War of 1898. Prairie Imperialists follows the colonial careers of three Army officers from the domestic frontier to overseas posts in Cuba and the Philippines. The men profiled—Hugh Lenox Scott, Robert Lee Bullard, and John J. Pershing—internalized ways of behaving in Indian Country that shaped their approach to later colonial appointments abroad. Scott's ethnographic knowledge and experience with Native Americans were valorized as an asset for colonial service; Bullard and Pershing, who had commanded African American troops, were regarded as particularly suited for roles in the pacification and administration of colonial peoples overseas. After returning to the mainland, these three men played prominent roles in the "Punitive Expedition" President Woodrow Wilson sent across the southern border in 1916, during which Mexico figured as the next iteration of "Indian Country." With rich biographical detail and ambitious historical scope, Prairie Imperialists makes fundamental connections between American colonialism and the racial dimensions of domestic political and social life—during peacetime and while at war. Ultimately, Bjork contends, the concept of "Indian Country" has served as the guiding force of American imperial expansion and nation building for the past two and a half centuries and endures to this day.