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Feature | Book Series “Environment, Senses and Emotions” (UEP)

“Environment, Senses and Emotions” (University of Exeter Press) was included in Michael Bull and David Howes’s “Sensory Studies 2026: A State-of-the-Art Review” published in The Senses and Society (2025). The article outlines the emergence and development of sensory studies and highlights key book series, journals, research centers, and networks in the field.

Call for Book Chapters "Environment, Senses and Emotions"

© University of Exeter Press

EDited Collection | UNiversity of Exeter Press

Out Now!
Materiality of Air
Edited by Tatiana Konrad 

Exploring air, airborne phenomena, and elemental representation, this book dissects the materiality of air, which comes to the fore ever more vigorously given the ongoing environmental and health crises. Understanding air’s materiality is essential to outlining clear solutions to the current challenges and to generating new meanings of what constitutes an environmentally safe and healthy future. The dual nature of air makes it a rich field for metaphor and a potent subject to think with: as space that contains and engages with other elements, particles, and beings; and as matter that moves, envelopes, and penetrates objects, spaces, and time.

Each chapter offers new perspectives on air’s material qualities, treating air as a literal and figurative element that provides an important lens on climate change, toxicity, pollution, capitalism, violence, and transmission, among other issues. The volume also highlights future directions for engaging with the all-important medium of air.

This edited collection responds to the growing scientific and scholarly explorations of elements and the elemental, as well as the complex environmental, sociopolitical, economic, and cultural issues that emerge through these elements. Bringing together experts from the environmental humanities, health humanities, cultural studies, literary studies, art, and history, the chapters consider the intricate relationships between humans, more-than-humans, and the environment more broadly.

Description provided by University of Exeter Press.

Book Cover Materiality of Air

© University of Exeter Press

Edited Collection | Michigan State University Press

Out Now!
Race and Environmental Justice
in the Era of Climate Change and COVID-19

Edited by Tatiana Konrad 

Informed by transdisciplinary research in social and environmental justice, Race and Environmental Justice in the Era of Climate Change and COVID-19 is a contribution to the scholarly discourse as well as a form of activism for environmental, climate, and health justice. Using race and Indigeneity as an analytical lens, the book explores how justice in the era of climate change and COVID-19 is envisioned, depicted, and achieved. With a focus largely on humans and environments, its explorations of (in)justice illustrate the wide health and safety gaps between individuals, communities, and even nations living under different environmental conditions. The volume also moves beyond the human toward justice for all beings. This book foregrounds voices from world communities, provides solutions to environmental and health crises, and advances environmental justice.

Description provided by Michigan State University Press

Book Cover Race and Environmental Justice in the Era of Climate Change and COVID-19

© Michigan State University Press

INTERVIEW | MARCH 5, 2025

Reading Climate Fiction with Tatiana Konrad
By Sebastian Deiber

In the interview about her book, Climate Change Fiction and Ecocultural Crisis: The Industrial Revolution to the Present (University of Nevada Press, 2024), Tatiana Konrad told Rudolphina how popular narratives reflect, interpret, and respond to climate change. Through the lens of climate fiction, Tatiana Konrad demonstrates that these stories are more than just fiction—they serve as a powerful tool to imagine, understand, and even forecast climate crisis. Although devoted primarily to the topic of climate change, the book also addresses such issues as environmental pollution and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tatiana Konrad presenting her new book "Climate Change Fiction and Ecocultural Crisis: The Industrial Revolution to the Present"

© Alexander Bachmayer

BOOK SERIES | UNIVERSITY OF EXETER PRESS

Environment, Senses and Emotions
https://www.exeterpress.co.uk/collections/environment-senses-and-emotions

Environment, Senses and Emotions aims to provide a comprehensive exploration of how environmental crises are represented, perceived and understood through the senses and emotions and the human impulse to make sense of the world. The series encourages diverse theoretical approaches to understanding the interrelations among environmental crises, the senses and emotions, and welcomes contributions from scholars in a variety of disciplines, including the environmental humanities, anthropology, sensory studies, media studies, geography, history, the health humanities, sociology and philosophy. 

To discuss your book proposal, please contact:
the Series Editor: Tatiana Konrad, University of Vienna, tatiana.konrad@univie.ac.at
or Commissioning Editor: Becky Taylor, b.taylor@exeterpress.co.uk

Call for Book Chapters "Environment, Senses and Emotions"

© University of Exeter Press

Click here to download the flyer for additional information

SPECIAL ISSUE | OPEN CULTURAL STUDIES

Out Now!
Cultures of Airborne Diseases
Edited by Tatiana Konrad and Savannah Schaufler

Examining airborne diseases from the perspectives of literary studies, cultural studies, environmental humanities, and health humanities, among other fields, “Cultures of Airborne Diseases” platforms significant discourse engaging with air, pollution, viruses, and health. The articles that constitute this special journal issue consider representations of airborne diseases, directly interrogating how such representations help us better understand the complexity of air in the context of epidemics and pandemics. The contributors address topics inclusive of, but not limited to, contagion and transmission, air, air pollution, environmental crisis, cultural representations of disease and health, and questions of protection in an era of pandemics.

Description provided by FWF E-Book Library.

Cover of the journal "Open Cultural Studies" featuring a special issue titled "Cultures of Airborne Diseases," edited by Tatiana Konrad and Savannah Schaufler

© Open Cultural Studies 

EDited Collection | UNiversity of Exeter Press

Out Now!
Imagining Air: Cultural Axiology and the Politics of Invisibility
Edited by Tatiana Konrad 

Imagining Air tackles air as a cultural, medical, and environmental phenomenon. Its major aim is to explore air’s visibility and invisibility within the environment through the investigation of such phenomena as pollution and pandemics.

The book provides environmental and medical perspectives on air, in particular how it has historically been envisioned in U.S., Canadian and British cultural and literary narratives. The authors explore how these representations and the constructed meanings of air can help us understand the complex nature of air as it pertains to the COVID-19 pandemic, air pollution and broader environmental degradation.

Description provided by University of Exeter Press.

© University of Exeter Press

Book Series | Michigan State University Press

Environment, Health, and Well-being
https://msupress.org/environment-health-and-well-being/

Environment, Health, and Well-being welcomes projects from new and established scholars, in and outside of academia, which make visible for audiences the timeliness and necessity of interdisciplinary research on the relationships between humanity and environments.

Submissions and Questions?
Please email the series editor Tatiana Konrad at
tatiana.konrad@univie.ac.at

Book Series Flyer "Environmnet Health, and Well-Being" edited by Tatiana Konrad

© Michigan State University Press

Click here to
download the flyer

Logos from left to right: Air and Environmental Health in the (Post-)COVID-19 World, FWF (Austrian Science Fund), University of Vienna