This book is primarily for university media teachers and K–12 media literacy
educators who are unfamiliar with how media and ecology connect, and is meant
to raise awareness about pertinent ideas and literature that can enrich teaching
about media and the environment. The book can be used in different ways.
For university media teachers, I have in mind the kind of community you find
in the Teaching Media Facebook group or readers of Teaching Media Quarterly.
Many of the chapters are written as stand-alone introductions that can be assigned
in university courses as supplementary to a regular media studies or production
course so that students can have a basic introduction to the main themes of media
and the environment and ecological ethics. For media literacy educators, this
book serves as an action plan for promoting and designing ecomedia projects and
curriculum and also for promoting ecomedia literacy within the global media
literacy discussion. It can also be read as a map for gathering more materials and
for thinking about curriculum design. I acknowledge that what’s presented here
is incomplete with gaps, unfinished inquiry, and some overly generalized summaries of deeper debates. There is always more to write and research, such as more
attention to critical animal studies, queer ecocriticism, ecological economics, and
artistic practices. But at a certain point, one has to stop and finish. My hope is to
get the conversation going and to continue an open discussion beyond the pages
of this book.