This volume explores how to engage audiences both beyond and within the academy more deeply in environmental research through arts-based forms. It builds on a multi-pronged case study of scripts for documentary film, audio-visual and stage formats, focusing on how the identity of a place is constructed and contested in the face of environmental concerns around fossil-fuel extraction in a globalized, visual society--and specifically on the rising, international public-relations war over Alberta's stewardship of the tar sands. Each script is followed by discussion of the author's choices of initiating idea, research sources, format, voices, world of the story, structure and visual style, and other notes on the convergence of synthesis, analysis and (re)presentation in the script. Included are lively analysis and commentary on screenwriting and playwriting theory, the creation and dissemination of the scripts, and reflections to ground a proposed framework for writing eco-themed scripts for screen, audio-visual and stage formats.

After tough assignments as a Canadian diplomat abroad, Nicholas Coghlan and his wife Jenny unwind by sailing Bosun Bird, a 27foot sailboat, from Cape Town, South Africa, across the South Atlantic and into the stormy winter waters around Tierra del Fuego, South America. Coghlan recounts earlier adventures in Patagonia when, taking time off from his job as a schoolteacher in Buenos Aires in the late 1970s, he and Jenny explored the region of southern Argentina and Chile over three successive summers. This time, as they negotiate the labyrinth of channels and inlets around snow-covered Fireland, he reflects on voyages of past explorers: Magellan, Cook, Darwin, and others. Sailing enthusiasts and readers of true adventures will want to add Coghlan's world-wise narrative to their libraries.

This volume explores how to engage audiences both beyond and within the academy more deeply in environmental research through arts-based forms. It builds on a multi-pronged case study of scripts for documentary film, audio-visual and stage formats, focusing on how the identity of a place is constructed and contested in the face of environmental concerns around fossil-fuel extraction in a globalized, visual society--and specifically on the rising, international public-relations war over Alberta's stewardship of the tar sands. Each script is followed by discussion of the author's choices of initiating idea, research sources, format, voices, world of the story, structure and visual style, and other notes on the convergence of synthesis, analysis and (re)presentation in the script. Included are lively analysis and commentary on screenwriting and playwriting theory, the creation and dissemination of the scripts, and reflections to ground a proposed framework for writing eco-themed scripts for screen, audio-visual and stage formats.

Tar Wars offers a critical inside look at how leading image-makers negotiate escalating tensions between continuous economic growth mandated by a globalized economic system and its unsustainable environmental costs. As place branding assumes paramount importance in an increasingly global, visual, and ecologically conscious society, an international battle unfolds over Alberta's bituminous sands. This battle pits independent documentary filmmakers against professional communicators employed by government and the oil industry. Tar Wars engages scholars and students in communications, film, environmental studies, social psychology, PR, media and cultural studies, and petrocultures. This book also speaks to decision makers, activists, and citizens exploring intersections of energy, environment, culture, politics, economy, media and power.

Alberta writing has a long tradition. Beginning with the pictographs of Writing-on-Stone, followed by Euro-Canadian exploration texts, the post-treaty writing of the agrarian colonization period, and into the present era, Alberta writing has come to be seen as a distinct literature. In this volume Melnyk and Coates continue the project of scholarly analysis of Alberta literature that they began with Wild Words: Essays on Alberta Literature (2009). They argue that the essays in their new book confirm that Alberta's literary identity is historically contingent with a diverse, changing content, that makes its definition a work-in-progress. The essays in this volume provide contemporary perspectives on major figures in poetry and fiction, such as Robert Kroetsch, Sheila Watson, Alice Major, and Fred Stenson. Other essays bring to light relatively unknown figures such as the Serbian Canadian writer David Albahari and the pioneer clergyman Nestor Dmytrow. Writing Alberta: Building on a Literary Identity offers a detailed discussion of contemporary Indigenous writers, an overview of Alberta historiography of the past century, and the fascinating autobiographical reflections of the novelist Katherine Govier on her literary career and its Alberta influences. This Collection demonstrates that Alberta writers, especially in the contemporary period, are not afraid to uncover, re-think, and re-imagine parts of Alberta history, thereby exposing what had been lain to rest as an unfinished business needing serious re-consideration.