Interested in the history of environmentalism and the power the media has to shape our beliefs? Dr. Finis Dunaway’s latest book, Seeing Green: The Use and Abuse of American Environmental Images, explores just that. In the book, Professor Dunaway, a History professor at Trent University, examines the role images in the media, across a wide array of mediums, have played in the making of popular environmentalism, and the ways they’ve obscured environmental truths. 

Seeing Green is turning heads, recently being presented the John G. Cawelti Award for the best scholarly book in Popular and American Culture from the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association but also Honorable Mention for the PROSE Award in Media and Cultural Studies from the Association of American Publishers.

“I am honored and thrilled to receive this recognition for Seeing Green. I am particularly delighted that both awards—one in popular and American culture, the other in media and cultural studies—relate to key interdisciplinary areas that the book addresses,” expresses Prof. Dunaway. “Trent has proven to be an ideal environment in which to pursue such interdisciplinary scholarship. Indeed, while working on Seeing Green, I also had the great privilege to teach courses that explore broad issues in media history, visual culture, and environmental studies. For example, I shared some of the research in progress with students in a History/Environmental and Resource Studies course on The Environmental Crisis: From the Atomic Bomb to Global Warming. Meanwhile, students in a History/Public Texts graduate course on visual culture have engaged with the larger theoretical and methodological issues concerning the use of images in history.”