Picturing the future-conditional: montage and the global geographies of climate change

A growing body of work has explored the effects of visual imagery on shifting forms of environmental consciousness and politics. Circulating images of, for example, the ‘whole Earth’ have been ascribed agency in the emergence of new forms of planetary awareness and political globalism. This essay identifies a new form of global environmental image, in the shape of photographic montage depictions of future places transformed by the effects of climate change. Montage enables artists and designers to import the spatial formations of distant places into more familiar locations, in the process producing novel renderings of the interconnections of global environmental change. The future-conditional –‘if x, then y’– has become a key register of scientific and artistic engagement with climate change, and practices of visual montage have offered means of reconciling the transformations of space and time in the imagination of putative futures. The essay situates such images within a longer lineage of depictions of the tropical and the ruined, and focuses on contemporary montage depictions of climate-change-induced migration. It argues that many of these ‘global montages’ problematically reinforce extant notions of geographical otherness. Yet montage, as a technique, also renders visible the choices, cuts, juxtapositions and arguments which lie behind any representation, thus offering the seed of a more reflexive mode of future-conditional image-making

Course-Based Research Assignment: Decoding Political Claims About the Environment (EVRN/GEOG 371)

This assignment was the product of a Research-Intensive Course Grant through KU’s Center for Undergraduate Research. These grants provide financial support and advising for instructors who want to incorporate larger research and creative projects into their classes.These final project instructions describe the sequential steps that the class followed and identify the objective of each step and what, exactly, is due to complete each step. Providing the full set of instructions for the final project on the first day of class gives students visibility on the kind of work they will be doing and the kinds of questions they will be working with for the class. Separately, we also toured the Writing Center's website to learn about source material and other aspects of written work. Other, weekly writing assignments provided opportunities to see examples of this kind of analysis, to demonstrate an understanding of course material, and to practice writing with a critical approach. These final project instructions describe the sequential steps that the class followed and identify the objective of each step and what, exactly, is due to complete each step. Providing the full set of instructions for the final project on the first day of class gives students visibility on the kind of work they will be doing and the kinds of questions they will be working with for the class. Separately, we also toured the Writing Center's website to learn about source material and other aspects of written work. Other, weekly writing assignments provided opportunities to see examples of this kind of analysis, to demonstrate an understanding of course material, and to practice writing with a critical approach

IN DEFENSE OF SLAVERY: DILEMMA OF A GERMAN-AMERICAN CONFEDERATE IN ANTEBELLUM TEXAS

This thesis challenges previous historians' characterizations of Ferdinand Lindheimer as simply the "Father of Texas Botany" and defender of freedom. Instead, Lindheimer acted out of his own self-interest to preserve his German-American ethnic identity, and by extension the community he helped to build. Only when Anglo-American political and social issues endangered his community in the 1850s, did Lindheimer actively engage in the Anglo-American political sphere. Lindheimer expressed minimal concern for those oppressed by the dominant culture. Lindheimer used his publication, the Neu-Braunfelser Zeitung, as a shield to protect himself and New Braunfels, the physical manifestation of this ethnic identity, from Anglo-American intrusion. In so doing, Lindheimer became the most visible German-American supporter of slavery, secession and the Confederacy in antebellum Texas

Environmental politics : scale and power / Shannon O'Lear.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 208-226) and index.Book fair 2013.ix, 228 p. :"Shannon O'Lear brings a geographer's perspective to environmental politics. The book considers issues of climate change, energy, food security, toxins, waste, and resource conflict to explore how political, economic, ideological and military power have contributed to the generation of environmental issues and the formation of dominant narratives about them. The book encourages the reader to think critically about the power dynamics that shape (and limit) how we think about environmental issues and to expand the reader's understanding of why it matters that these issues are discussed at particular spatial scales. Applying a geographer's sense of scale and power leads to a better understanding of the complexity of environmental issues and will help formulate mitigation and adaptation strategies. The book will appeal mainly to advanced students and researchers from a geography background, but also to social and political scientists who wish to look at the topic from this different perspective"--"This book considers issues of climate change, oil and energy, food security, toxins, waste, and resource conflict to explore how political, economic, ideological, and military power have contributed to the generation of environmental issues and the formation of dominant narratives about them. The book encourages the reader to think critically about the power dynamics that shape (and limit) how we think about environmental issues and to expand the reader's understanding of why it matters that these issues are discussed at particular spatial scales"-

The slow violence of climate security

This paper considers how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) engages in world-making around risk that sets up a harmful basis for thinking about climate security. This inquiry offers a reading of a recent IPCC report chapter as a form of world-making and epistemic violence through its limited portrayal of risk. A core argument made in this paper is that the selective representation of risk sets up the potential for slow violence outcomes and practices can perpetuate unjust harm. It matters how the IPCC portrays risk, because the organization is in a unique position to influence how security practitioners understand connections between climate change and security. This paper draws on concepts of world-making, epistemic violence, and slow violence, and it builds on previous critiques of the IPCC’s selective representation of climate change. It suggests alternative opportunities for understanding human contributions to the current state of our planetary environment through an example of another well-known, world-making representation of the water cycle. Overhauling the way that the water cycle is presented as influenced by human activity offers insights to possibilities to create transformative, less harmful pathways for understanding and engaging with the changing climate