Alison E. Vogelaar is Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Franklin University Switzerland, and co-editor of Changing Representations of Nature and the City: The 1960s-1970s and their Legacies (with Gabriel Lee, Routledge 2018).

Brack W. Hale is Associate Professor of Biology and Environmental Science at Franklin University Switzerland, where he is co-director of the Center for Sustainability Initiatives.

Alexandra Peat is Associate Professor of Literature at Franklin University Switzerland, and author of Travel and Modernist Literature: Sacred and Ethical Journeys (Routledge, 2011).

Lists of figures

List of Contributors

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1: 'Doc' Collapse

Chapter 1: Culture and collapse: Theses on catastrophic history for the 21st century

Michael Egan

Chapter 2: Are dead zones dead? Environmental collapse in popular media about eutrophication in sea-based systems.

Jesse Peterson

Chapter 3: Can photojournalism steer clear of the siren song of collapse?

Joanna Nurmis

Chapter 4: Environmental collapse in comics: Reflections on Philippe Squarzoni's Saison brune

Ann Gardiner

Part II: 'Pop' Collapse

Chapter 5: This is the end of the world as we know it: Narratives of collapse and transformation in archaeology and popular culture

Guy D. Middleton

Chapter 6: Survive, thrive, or perish: Environmental collapse in post-apocalyptic digital games

Jennifer England

Chapter 7: Zooming out, closing in: Ecology at the end of the frontier

Alison E. Vogelaar and Brack Hale

Part III: 'Craft' Collapse

Chapter 8: Imagining the apocalypse: Valences of collapse in McCarthy, Burtynsky and Goldsworthy

I. J. MacRae

Chapter 9: 'Something akin to what's killing bees': The poetry of colony collapse disorder Matthew Griffiths

Chapter 10: Salvaging the fragments: Metaphors for collapse in Virginia Woolf and Station Eleven

Alexandra Peat

In recent years, 'environmental collapse' has become an important way of framing and imagining environmental change and destruction, referencing issues such as climate change, species extinction and deteriorating ecosystems. Given its pervasiveness across disciplines and spheres, this edited volume articulates environmental collapse as a discursive phenomenon worthy of sustained critical attention. Building upon contemporary conversations in the fields of archaeology and the natural sciences, this volume coalesces, explores and critically evaluates the diverse array of literatures and imaginaries that constitute environmental collapse. The volume is divided into three sections- Doc- Collapse, Pop Collapse and Craft Collapse -that independently explore distinct modes of representing, and implicit attitudes toward, environmental collapse from the lenses of diverse fields of study including climate science and policy, cinema and photo journalism.
Bringing together a broad range of topics and authors, this volume will be of great interest to scholars of environmental communication and environmental humanities.