Cohen Margaret - The Aesthetics of the Undersea

Among global environments, the undersea is unique in the challenges it poses and the opportunities it affords for sensation, perception, inquiry, and fantasy. The Aesthetics of the Undersea draws case studies in such potencies from the subaqueous imaginings of Western culture, and from the undersea realities that have inspired them. The chapters explore aesthetic engagements with underwater worlds, and sustain a concern with submarine sense, in several meanings of that word: when submerged, faculties and fantasies transform, confronting human subjects with their limitations while enlarging the apparent scope of possibility and invention. Terrestrially-established categories and contours shift, metamorphose, or fail altogether to apply. As ocean health acquires an increasing share of the global environmental imaginary, the histories of submarine sense manifest ever-greater importance, and offer resources for documentation as well as creativity.

The chapters deal with the sensory, material, and formal provocations of the underwater environment, and consider the consequences of such provocations for aesthetic and epistemological paradigms. Contributors, who hail from the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, include scholars of literature, art, new media, music and history. Cases studies range from baroque and rococo fantasies to the gothic, surrealism, modernism, and contemporary installation art. By juxtaposing early modern and Enlightenment contexts with matters of more recent and indeed contemporary importance, The Aesthetics of the Undersea establishes crucial relations among temporally remote entities, which will resonate across the environmental humanities.

Margaret Cohen is Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French Language, Literature, and Civilization at Stanford University, where she teaches in the Departments of Comparative Literature and English.

Killian Quigley is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Sydney Environment Institute at the University of Sydney.

Routledge Environmental Humanities

Series editors: Paul Warde (University of Cambridge, UK) and Libby Robin (Australian National University)

Editorial Board

Christina Alt, St Andrews University, UK

Alison Bashford, University of New South Wales, Australia

Peter Coates, University of Bristol, UK

Thom van Dooren, University of New South Wales, Australia

Georgina Endfield, Liverpool, UK

Jodi Frawley, University of Western Australia, Australia

Andrea Gaynor, The University of Western Australia, Australia

Christina Gerhardt, University of Hawaii at Mnoa, USA

Tom Lynch, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA

Iain McCalman, University of Sydney, Australia

Jennifer Newell, Australian Museum, Sydney, Australia

Simon Pooley, Imperial College London, UK

Sandra Swart, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

Ann Waltner, University of Minnesota, US

Jessica Weir, University of Western Sydney, Australia

International Advisory Board

William Beinart, University of Oxford, UK

Jane Carruthers, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa

Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago, USA

Paul Holm, Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland

Shen Hou, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China

Rob Nixon, Princeton University, Princeton NJ, USA

Pauline Phemister, Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, UK

Deborah Bird Rose, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Sverker Sorlin, KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

Helmuth Trischler, Deutsches Museum, Munich and Co-Director, Rachel Carson Centre, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt, Germany

Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University, USA

Kirsten Wehner, University of London, UK

The Routledge Environmental Humanities series is an original and inspiring venture recognising that todays world agricultural and water crises, ocean pollution and resource depletion, global warming from greenhouse gases, urban sprawl, overpopulation, food insecurity and environmental justice are all crises of culture.

The reality of understanding and finding adaptive solutions to our present and future environmental challenges has shifted the epicenter of environmental studies away from an exclusively scientific and technological framework to one that depends on the humanfocused disciplines and ideas of the humanities and allied social sciences.

We thus welcome book proposals from all humanities and social sciences disciplines for an inclusive and interdisciplinary series. We favour manuscripts aimed at an international readership and written in a lively and accessible style. The readership comprises scholars and students from the humanities and social sciences and thoughtful readers concerned about the human dimensions of environmental change.

First published 2019

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2019 selection and editorial matter, Margaret Cohen and Killian Quigley; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Margaret Cohen and Killian Quigley to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Cohen, Margaret, 1958- editor. | Quigley, Killian Colm, editor.

Title: The aesthetics of the undersea / edited by Margaret Cohen and Killian Quigley.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. | Series: Routledge environmental humanities | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018030301 (print) | LCCN 2018050437 (ebook) | ISBN 9780429444203 (eBook) | ISBN 9780367001582 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429444203 (ebk)

Subjects: LCSH: Ocean--Miscellanea. | Nature (Aesthetics) | Environment (Aesthetics) | Ocean and civilization.

Classification: LCC BH301.S4 (ebook) | LCC BH301.S4 A37 2019 (print) | DDC 809/.9332162--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018030301

ISBN: 978-0-367-00158-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-44420-3 (ebk)