Joseph K. Heumann – författare

This book explores the transformative power of comedy to help connect a wider audience to films that explore environmental concerns and issues.

This book offers a space in which to explore the complex ways environmental comedies present their eco-arguments. With an organizational structure that reveals the evolution of both eco-comedy films and theoretical approaches, this book project aims to fill a gap in ecocinema scholarship. It does so by exploring three sections arranged to highlight the breadth of eco-comedy: I. Comic Genres and the Green World: Pastoral, Anti-Pastoral, and Post-Pastoral Visions; II. Laughter, Eco-Heroes, and Evolutionary Narratives of Consumption; and III. Environmental Nostalgia, Fuel, and the Carnivalesque. Examining everything from Hollywood classics, Oscar winners, and animation to independent and international films, Murray and Heumann exemplify how the use of comedy can expose and amplify environmental issues to a wider audience than more traditional ecocinema genres and can help provide a path towards positive action and change.

Ideal for students and scholars of film studies, ecocriticism, and environmental studies, especially those with a particular interest in ecocinema and/or ecocritical readings of popular films.

This book explores the transformative power of comedy to help connect a wider audience to films that explore environmental concerns and issues.

This book offers a space in which to explore the complex ways environmental comedies present their eco-arguments. With an organizational structure that reveals the evolution of both eco-comedy films and theoretical approaches, this book project aims to fill a gap in ecocinema scholarship. It does so by exploring three sections arranged to highlight the breadth of eco-comedy: I. Comic Genres and the Green World: Pastoral, Anti-Pastoral, and Post-Pastoral Visions; II. Laughter, Eco-Heroes, and Evolutionary Narratives of Consumption; and III. Environmental Nostalgia, Fuel, and the Carnivalesque. Examining everything from Hollywood classics, Oscar winners, and animation to independent and international films, Murray and Heumann exemplify how the use of comedy can expose and amplify environmental issues to a wider audience than more traditional ecocinema genres and can help provide a path towards positive action and change.

Ideal for students and scholars of film studies, ecocriticism, and environmental studies, especially those with a particular interest in ecocinema and/or ecocritical readings of popular films.

Illuminating the impacts of environmental disasters and climate crises globally, this book examines the experiences of teens grappling with eco-disasters and issues in films of the twenty-first century.

With an emphasis on teen activism, international settings and filmmakers, and marginalized perspectives, this book showcases teens on film that are struggling with present and future everyday eco-disasters amplified by climate change. By highlighting and interrogating diverse genres of teen films in which young adults encounter, address, and battle environmental issues and calamities while also struggling with adolescent development, this book acknowledges the young adult point of view missing from most critical ecocinema research and underlines connections between the more complex ‘coming-of-age’ themes found in teen films with ecocinema themes and approaches. The films examined navigate increasingly realistic conditions, even in fantastical settings, as they showcase teens’ relationships with and responses to environmental issues and eco-disasters. Emphasizing teen activism and under-represented intersectional perspectives outside Hollywood, it establishes the eco-teen film as a notable subgenre.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of film studies, ecocriticism, and environmental studies, especially those with a particular interest in ecocinema and/or ecocritical readings of films.

Illuminating the impacts of environmental disasters and climate crises globally, this book examines the experiences of teens grappling with eco-disasters and issues in films of the twenty-first century.

With an emphasis on teen activism, international settings and filmmakers, and marginalized perspectives, this book showcases teens on film that are struggling with present and future everyday eco-disasters amplified by climate change. By highlighting and interrogating diverse genres of teen films in which young adults encounter, address, and battle environmental issues and calamities while also struggling with adolescent development, this book acknowledges the young adult point of view missing from most critical ecocinema research and underlines connections between the more complex ‘coming-of-age’ themes found in teen films with ecocinema themes and approaches. The films examined navigate increasingly realistic conditions, even in fantastical settings, as they showcase teens’ relationships with and responses to environmental issues and eco-disasters. Emphasizing teen activism and under-represented intersectional perspectives outside Hollywood, it establishes the eco-teen film as a notable subgenre.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of film studies, ecocriticism, and environmental studies, especially those with a particular interest in ecocinema and/or ecocritical readings of films.

In Ecocinema in the City, Murray and Heumann argue that urban ecocinema both reveals and critiques visions of urban environmentalism. The book emphasizes the increasingly transformative power of nature in urban settings, explored in both documentaries and fictional films such as Children Underground, White Dog, Hatari! and Lives Worth Living. The first two sections—"Evolutionary Myths Under the City" and "Urban Eco-trauma"—take more traditional ecocinema approaches and emphasize the city as a dangerous constructed space. The last two sections—"Urban Nature and Interdependence" and "The Sustainable City"—however, bring to life the vibrant relationships between human and nonhuman nature. Ecocinema in the City provides a space to explore these relationships, revealing how ecocinema shows that both human and nonhuman nature can interact sustainably and thrive.

In Ecocinema in the City, Murray and Heumann argue that urban ecocinema both reveals and critiques visions of urban environmentalism. The book emphasizes the increasingly transformative power of nature in urban settings, explored in both documentaries and fictional films such as Children Underground, White Dog, Hatari! and Lives Worth Living. The first two sections—"Evolutionary Myths Under the City" and "Urban Eco-trauma"—take more traditional ecocinema approaches and emphasize the city as a dangerous constructed space. The last two sections—"Urban Nature and Interdependence" and "The Sustainable City"—however, bring to life the vibrant relationships between human and nonhuman nature. Ecocinema in the City provides a space to explore these relationships, revealing how ecocinema shows that both human and nonhuman nature can interact sustainably and thrive.