BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
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National parks occupy a prominent place in the Canadian imagination, yet we are only beginning to understand how their visual representation has shaped and continues to inform our perceptions of ecological issues and the natural world. J. Keri Cronin draws on historical and modern postcards, advertisements, and other images of Jasper National Park to trace how various groups and the tourism industry have used photography to divorce the park from real environmental threats and instead package it as a series of breathtaking vistas and adorable-looking animals. Manufacturing National Park Nature demonstrates that popular forms of picturing nature can have ecological implications that extend far beyond the frame of the image.
J. Keri Cronin is an assistant professor in the Visual Arts Department at Brock University. She is also a faculty affiliate in Brock’s Social Justice and Equity Studies graduate program and the editor of The Brock Review.
The book is brief, and lavishly illustrated…it makes a real contribution to the literature by analyzing the cultural and physical impacts of tourism in an iconic environment…the author has deftly woven together a convoluted web of images and ideologies, uniquely focused on one location. This work will appeal to readers interested in parks, tourism and leisure, in cultural concepts of landscape, and in the management of wilderness areas… while it engages deeply with theoretical issues, Manufacturing National Park Nature is highly comprehensible, and appropriate for any intelligent, interested reader.
Manufacturing National Park Nature is highly recommended to scholars and students of environmental studies and history, recreation and tourism, as well as those of media and marketing. It is an accessible way of challenging taken-for-granted conceptions of both wilderness landscapes and photography.
This book is specifically about Jasper National Park, yet its theoretical discussions, analyses, and conclusions can be applied broadly to visual representations in any managed, “wild” area...this text is a valuable contribution to the growing field of visual-culture-based ecological criticism.