Ecosee: Image, Rhetoric, Nature

Examines the rhetorical role of images in communicating environmental ideas.

How do supporters of the environmental movement manipulate and promote images of "nature" to achieve support and sympathy? From the Sierra Club's use of Ansel Adams's stark and pristine portraits of the western United States to close-ups of plastic bottles and dead fish floating in Rust Belt waterways, visual depictions of landscapes and the degradation caused by humans have profoundly shaped popular notions of environmentalism and the environment. Despite the rhetorical power of images connected with the environmental movement over the past forty years, scholarship in environmental communication has focused almost exclusively on verbal rather than visual rhetoric. Ecosee offers a deeper and fuller understanding of the communicative strategies and power of the environmental movement by looking closely at the visual rhetorics involved in photographs, paintings, television and filmic images, video games, and other forms of image-based media.

Sidney I. Dobrin is Associate Professor of English at the University of Florida and has written or edited many books, including (with Christopher J. Keller) Writing Environments and (with Christian R. Weisser) Natural Discourse: Toward Ecocomposition, both also published by SUNY Press. Sean Morey is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Florida.