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

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*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@shu.ac.uk

Julia Peck -jpeck@glos.ac.uk

Chris Goldie -c.t.goldie@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