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There have always been some uninhabitable places, but in the last century human beings have produced many more of them. These anti-landscapes have proliferated to include the sandy wastes of what was once the Aral Sea, severely polluted irrigated lands, open pit mines, blighted nuclear zones, coastal areas inundated by rising seas, and many others. The Anti-Landscape examines the emergence of such sites, how they have been understood, and how some of them have been recovered for habitation. The anti-landscape refers both to artistic and literary representations and to specific places that no longer sustain life. This history includes T. S. Eliot's Wasteland and Cormac McCarthy's The Road as well as air pollution, recycled railway lines, photography and landfills. It links theories of aesthetics, politics, tourism, history, geography, and literature into the new synthesis of the environmental humanities. The Anti-Landscape provides an interdisciplinary approach that moves beyond the false duality of nature vs. culture, and beyond diagnosis and complaint to the recuperation of damaged sites into our complex heritage. This is the first volume in the new series Studies in Environmental Humanities.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
“The Anti-Landscape”, David E. Nye
I. The Threatened Landscape
“Skyscapes and Anti-Skyscapes: Making the Invisible Visible”, James Rodger Fleming
“Step after Step the Ladder is Ascended. Human Agency in Irrigated (anti) Landscapes”, Maurits W. Ertsen
“Landscape, Anti-landscape and the Western Political Imagination: J. B. Jackson’s Challenge to Environmentalism”, Mark Luccarelli
II. Anti-Landscapes
“Modernism and the Creation of Anti-Landscapes: The Valley of Ashes in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Los Angeles in Chandler’s The Big Sleep”, Anna Flügge
“A Landscape of Fear: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road”, Øyunn Hestetun
“Anesthetic Landscapes: Reflections on the Photography of John Ganis”, Hannes Bergthaller
“Fear and Fascination: Anti-Landscapes between Material Resistance and Material Transcendence”, Werner Bigell
“Lost Landscapes: Degraded Landscape as Anti-Landscape”, Maunu Häyrynen
III. Recoveries
“Landscapes of Waste: Malmberget and Ignalina as Cultural Tools in Heritage Processes”, Anna Storm
“Reinventing New York’s High Line”, Nikolet Jensen
Afterword
“View from the Dump: Stige Ø and the Question of Anti-Landscapes”, Sarah S. Elkind
Contributors
Index
David E. Nye is Professor at the University of Southern Denmark. His books include American Technological Sublime, Narratives and Spaces, America as Second Creation, Technology Matters, and America's Assembly Line. He received the Leonardo da Vinci Medal in 2005 for his life's work.
Sarah Elkind is an environmental historian at San Diego State University. Her most recent work is How Local Politics Shape Federal Policy. She held the 2010-2011 Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Studies at the University of Southern Denmark.
