ABOUT THIS BOOK

These days, earthly coexistence often feels bad. As environmental crises amass, they cast a shadow over an imagined future and the promises of better—or at least predictable—days to come. In times of climate chaos, mass extinction, and rampant environmental injustice, it is easy to despair. But, here and there, a glimmer of joy or optimism shines forth and reminds us that it is possible—even necessary—to love and to hope amid the ruins. The contributors to this volume grapple with a plurality of interrelated ecological feelings: care, concern, contempt, empathy, fear, grief, hope, joy, numbness, optimism, possessiveness, regret, and saudades. Informed by a rhetorical perspective, the essays collected here reveal what sets our ecological feelings into motion. Crucially, they also uncover some of the rhetorical practices through which we might collectively feel our way into a more harmonious earthly coexistence.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Joshua Trey Barnett is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at the Pennsylvania State University. An interdisciplinary scholar, he traverses the fields of rhetoric, critical theory, and the environmental humanities. His book Mourning in the Anthropocene: Ecological Grief and Earthly Coexistence won the 2022 Tarla Rai Peterson Book Award in Environmental Communication.

REVIEWS

“Ecological Feelings is a beautiful, multifaceted conversation on the role of feeling in our relations with the more-than-human world. Each essay has its finger on a different affective pulse of the current moment, which is often reduced to a binary choice between hope and despair. Deeply moving and honest, timely and timeless, this book is bound to become a classic text of environmental rhetoric.” —Jenell Johnson, author of Every Living Thing: The Politics of Life in Common

“Breaking through binaries of despair and hope, this collection reveals a wider spectrum of emotions around planetary existence, from contempt to numbness to joy. Its diverse essays employ impressively creative forms ranging from the spell to the playlist to tell us how such emotions are both made possible and make possibilities. Ecological Feelings should be your close companion as you navigate the wild mood swings of life in environmental crisis.” —Nicole Seymour, professor of English at California State University, Fullerton, and author of Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age

“The breadth of material and the critical and theoretical interventions proposed make Ecological Feelings a valuable book for anyone examining environmental media.”—John A. Lynch, Professor of Communication at University of Cincinnati, and author of The Origins of Bioethics: Remembering When Medicine Went Wrong

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Introduction

Care, Joshua Trey Barnett

Concern, Chris Ingraham

Contempt, Eric S. Jenkins and Peter K. Bsumek

Empathy, Ariel K. McK. Burgess

Fear, Emma Frances Bloomfield

Grief, Jessica Chaplain

Hope, Jennifer Clary-Lemon

Joy, Mariko O. Thomas

Numbness, Jeremy G. Gordon

Optimism, Dustin A. Greenwalt

Possessiveness, Elizabeth Brunner

Regret, T. Jake Dionne

Saudades, Joanne Marras Tate

Contributors

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