Reading Group Research Network Reading Group: Screen Ecologies Hjorth et al and Ali Nobil Ahmad

Images of environmental disaster and degradation have become part of our everyday media diet. This visual culture focusing on environmental deterioration represents a wider recognition of the political, economic, and cultural forces that are responsible for our ongoing environmental crisis

– Hjorth, Pink Sharp and Williams

Following our recent Research Network event Film and Political Ecology in the South, join us as we read “Screen Cultures in the Asia-Pacific.” A chapter from the Hjorth, Pink Sharp and Williams’ book Screen Ecologies, exploring how mobile media visually represents environmental disasters in the region through different practices and how camera phones help us capture and document our understanding of our relationship with the environment.

As humanity enters a new era of climate‐induced unpredictability, research into the role of religion in shaping perceptions of, and responses to disaster will become increasingly important

– Ali Nobil Ahmad

Focusing specifically on the mobilization of flood affectees in the aftermath of the 2010 floods in Southern Punjab, we will also read how curator and journalist Ali Nobil Ahmad presents research into cosmologies of disaster within a religious and socio-political framework in the article “Disaster cosmologies in comparative perspective: Islam, climate change and the 2010 floods in Pakistan’s Southern Punjab”.

Please bring along your own ideas for how mobile and screen media has captured changes in our relationship with the environment.

This group is open to all; it is a supportive and peer-led space for thinking and learning together. It is a space for constructive disagreements and critical engagement that is always based on mutual respect, interest and care.

All texts are read together in the group, you don’t need to read them in advance. Please contact the library if you have any questions or wish to pick up a copy of the texts in advance: library@iniva.org