Publications

Over the past century, the Italian landscape has undergone exceedingly rapid transformations, shifting from a mostly rural environment to a decidedly modern world. This changing landscape is endowed with a narrative agency that transforms how we understand our surroundings. Situated at the juncture of Italian studies and ecocriticism and following the recent “material turn” in the environmental humanities, Elemental Narratives outlines an original cultural and environmental map of the bel paese.

Giving equal weight to readings of fiction, nonfiction, works of visual art, and physical sites, Enrico Cesaretti investigates the interconnected stories emerging from both human creativity and the expressive eloquence of “glocal” materials, such as sulfur, petroleum, marble, steel, and asbestos, that have helped make and, simultaneously, “un-make” today’s Italy, affecting its socio-environmental health in multiple ways. Embracing the idea of a decentralized agency that is shared among human and nonhuman entities, Cesaretti suggests that engaging with these entangled discursive and material texts is a sound and revealing ecocritical practice that promises to generate new knowledge and more participatory, affective responses to environmental issues, both in Italy and elsewhere. Ultimately, he argues that complementing quantitative, data-based information with insights from fiction and nonfiction, the arts, and other humanistic disciplines is both desirable and crucial if we want to modify perceptions and attitudes, increase our awareness and understanding, and, in turn, develop more sustainable worldviews in the era of the Anthropocene.

Elegantly written and convincingly argued, this book will appeal broadly to scholars and students working in the fields of environmental studies, comparative literatures, ecocriticism, environmental history, and Italian studies.

Este ensayo propone analizar cómo Jordi Bernadó y Óscar Carrasco fotografían los espacios desechados por la supermodernidad española. Ambos artistas se enfocan en las ruinas modernas, aquellos espacios decadentes, arruinados, post-industriales ubicados en las periferias madrileñas y barcelonenses. Inspirado en parte por la obra de Neil Brenner y su concepto del “paisaje operacional,” el ensayo explora la semiótica de la fotografía del espacio desperdiciado e indaga en cómo estos fotógrafos contemporáneos visualizan las ruinas modernas que existen en las afueras de las grandes urbes peninsulares. El arte visual de Bernadó y Carrasco llama la atención sobre estas geografías desechadas a través de la práctica de lo que denomino, en este ensayo, una arqueología fotográfica.

This essay analyzes how Spanish photographers Jordi Bernadó and Óscar Carrasco have lensed the wasted spaces produced by Spanish supermodernity. Both artists focus on modern ruins, the decaying or ruined post-industrial spaces of Madrid, Barcelona, and their exurbs. Inspired in part by Neil Brenner’s notion of “operational landscapes,” the essay explores the semiotics of place-based photography of wasted exurban spaces, and how contemporary Spanish photographers have visualized modern ruins and post-industrial landscapes that exist beyond the country’s urban centers. The visual art of Bernadó and Carrasco draws attention to Spain’s wasted geographies through the activation of what I am calling an archaeological photographic practice.

Laudato si' attempts simultaneously to disrupt prevailing global environmental discourse and to reorient central concepts in Catholic moral tradition by requalifying the meaning of dominion and by ecologically expanding human dignity. The image of Earth crying out to humans from within a kinship relation plays a central role in both arguments. However, the political consequences of those shifts remain vague because the “voice” of Earth remains silent in crucial loci of the encyclical's argument.

The moral values and interpretive systems of religions are crucially involved in how people imagine the challenges of sustainability and how societies mobilize to enhance ecosystem resilience and human well-being.

The Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology provides the most comprehensive and authoritative overview of the field. It encourages both appreciative and critical angles regarding religious traditions, communities, attitude, and practices. It presents contrasting ways of thinking about "religion" and about "ecology" and about ways of connecting the two terms. Written by a team of leading international experts, the Handbook discusses dynamics of change within religious traditions as well as their roles in responding to global challenges such as climate change, water, conservation, food and population. It explores the interpretations of indigenous traditions regarding modern environmental problems drawing on such concepts as lifeway and indigenous knowledge. This volume uniquely intersects the field of religion and ecology with new directions within the humanities and the sciences.

This interdisciplinary volume is an essential reference for scholars and students across the social sciences and humanities and for all those looking to understand the significance of religion in environmental studies and policy.