Coral and coralations with Melody Jue and Ann Elias

There's living coral, and then there's Coral—the iconicity and imaginary of living coral. As Melody Jue writes in Coralations, coral alternates between signifying an organism and signifying an environment, all too often imagined as a tourist destination. In rethinking the limitations of Coral, Jue opens up possibilities for a more expansive sense of environmental media, more inclusive goals for multispecies justice, and more nuanced forms of oceanic care work. Here, Jue is joined in conversation with Ann Elias.

Melody Jue is associate professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Jue is author of Coralations and Wild Blue Media: Thinking through Seawater and coeditor of Saturation: An Elemental Politics with Rafico Ruiz.

Ann Elias is professor emerita of visual culture at the University of Sydney. Elias is author of many books including Coral Empire: Underwater Oceans, Colonial Tropics, Visual Modernity.

REFERENCES:

Coral Whisperers (Irus Braverman)

Situated Knowledges (Donna Haraway, in the journal Feminist Studies)

Her Seal Skin Coat (Lauren Beukes, short story)

Sylvia Earle

Jacques Cousteau

California Against the Sea (Rosanna Xia)

Jean Painlevé

Zoological Surrealism (James Leo Cahill)

Alien Ocean (Stefan Helmreich)

Chasing Coral documentary

Coralations by Melody Jue is available from University of Minnesota Press. This book is part of the Forerunners series, and an open-access edition is available to read free online at manifold.umn.edu.