PUBLIC BOOKS | Go to September 1 Issue

An interdisciplinary journal of transnational cultural studies

• Articles

  Featured from recent journal issues

  Plasmatic Nature: Environmentalism and Animated Film

  Long neglected as an object of serious study, animated film has attracted a great deal of attention over the past decade and a half in a whole range of studies that engage with its history, aesthetics, and politics. The astonishing breadth of visual styles that digital animation has made possible (including the crisp photorealism of many wholly imaginary worlds), the engagement with serious historical and political issues, and the global fascination with Japanese anime have no doubt all contributed to this surge of interest. Rather than light entertainment for children, animation now presents itself to the public as a mature visual genre that is able to address issues ranging from war and discrimination to technological innovation and environmental crisis.

  • by Ursula K. Heise
  • in Volume 26, Number 2

• Visualizing the Anthropocene

  Anthropocene is the name given by scientists to the new era in geology caused by human intervention, primarily the burning of fossil fuels. It is only 250 years old, a mote in the eye of geological time, which can barely register the ephemeral 10,000 years of the preceding Holocene, whose unusually stable climatic conditions made human agriculture and civilization possible. No more can humans see the Anthropocene, extending across centuries, through dimensions and across time. It can only be visualized. This task is further complicated because it affects everything from the lithosphere to the upper atmosphere and all the biota in between.

  • by Nicholas Mirzoeff
  • in Volume 26, Number 2

• Environmental Visualization in the Anthropocene: Technologies, Aesthetics, Ethics

  In 1996 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) semi-declassified a series of satellite images taken, primarily, of the earth’s Northern Hemisphere during the second half of the Cold War. These planetary images were the result of programmatic US investments in technology development intended to secure the nation’s political and economic interests around the world. Aimed at documenting covert Soviet military maneuvers, the program involved not only extensive photographing of territory but also prototyping of new image-making technologies. The satellite images were semi-declassified in that they were made available only to a select group of “patriotic” environmental scientists working on the then nascent issue of climate change.

  • by Allison Carruth and Robert P. Marzec
  • in Volume 26, Number 2

• Images

  From our articles and photoessays

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