RMeS Summer School 2024: Environmental Media: Imagination, Infrastructure, and Intervention
Environmental Media: Imagination, Infrastructure, and Intervention
When: 19, 20 & 21 June 2024
Where: Utrecht University
Organizers: Adele Bardazzi, Ani Encheva, Eggo Müller, Luka Hattuma, Margherita Passoni, Philipp D. Keidl, Sorcha Brennan, Laura op de Beke & Karin van Es
For PhD Candidates and Research master students who are a member of a Dutch Graduate Research School (onderzoekschool). Students who are members of RMeS will have first access.
ECTS 2 ECTS (for participation and attendance) / 5 ECTS (for participation, attendance and writing a 3500 word paper, see details below)
Registration via THIS LINK. When registering, please specify if you intend to obtain 2 or 5 EC.
THE SUMMER SCHOOL IS FULLY BOOKED, please send an e-mail to rmes@rug.nl with your name, university and research school. We will put you on our waiting list.
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The keynotes are open to RMa students, PhD Candidates and Staff members. Please register VIA THIS LINK.
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Confirmed Keynote speakers:
- Susanne Knittel (Utrecht University)
- Rachel W. Jenkanowski (Memorial University of Newfoundland)
- Sebastian Scholz (VU University)
Workshops and Seminars by:
- Sophie Allerding & Jana Romanova (artists, Rotterdam/Hamburg)
- Judith Keilbach (Utrecht University)
- Jo van Caneghem (KU Leuven)
- Jeff Diamanti (University of Amsterdam)
- Patrick Brodie (UC Dublin)
- Benedetta Brevini (New York University)
- Laura op de Beke & Stefan Werning (Utrecht University)
In our media-saturated environments, media take on omnipresent, rapidly transforming, and transformative roles, shaping our interactions and imaginations. Against the backdrop of today’s climate emergency, which lies at the heart of a variety of related political, social, and ecological crises, the interdisciplinary field of Environmental Media Studies engages with diverse approaches addressing the role of media, among other things, in shaping our perception and understanding of environmental issues, transforming the relationship between humans and nonhuman animals, creating extractive infrastructures and processes that overconsume elemental resources, providing avenues for imaginative artistic and activist interventions, and generating data through sensory infrastructures in unprecedented ways and volumes. As articulated by the editors of the inaugural issue of the Journal of Environmental Media Studies, Meryl Shriver-Rice and Hunter Vaughan, “Environmental media studies includes efforts to identify, assess, describe and work towards the solutions of environmental problems of the digital era – problems, ultimately, of resource use and allocation, that are complicated by overarching differences in political ecology, such as access to technology and natural resources, position in processes of decolonization, social notions of gender and cultural concepts of Nature.” (Vol. 1, nr. 1, p. 4)
The upcoming Summer School 2024 will explore this raising, transformative sub-field in Media Studies and address a range of diverse topics and approaches to Environmental Media. It will feature keynote lectures by leading international scholars addressing themes such as extraction, ecocide, and sensory media, alongside a variety of workshops focusing on topics including impact documentaries and eco-games, the sustainability of film industries and data centers, media activism, and excursions involving performative artistic interventions in the built environment.
Reading materials for the keynote lectures and workshops will be distributed beforehand. Participants aiming to earn 5 ECTS credits are encouraged to present their paper ideas during the corresponding workshops. A detailed programme will be accessible in the first week of March 2024.
