Bringing an ethnomusicological perspective to the front lines of environmental conservation, this dissertation is a multispecies ethnography conducted at the Gibbon Conservation Center in Southern California-a facility dedicated to the care of gibbons, severely endangered, arboreal ape species endemic to the threatened rainforests of South and Southeast Asia. Gibbons are known for the complex and coordinated vocalizations they sing each day, understood by primatologists to facilitate bonding amongst monogamously mated pairs and/or define territorial boundaries. Grounded in over a year's ethnographic fieldwork among a small group of conservationists and the approximately forty gibbons for which they care, this dissertation examines the ways in which sound-sometimes as a material force, and sometimes as a metaphor-suffuses the practical, ethical, and political aspects of saving a species from extinction. It traces how the ubiquity of gibbon song, and its importance to the sustenance of gibbon sociality, translates into the work of gibbon caretakers. Not only does the ear figure as a crucial tool in the daily work of monitoring gibbon welfare; more broadly, the acoustic provides both motivational and methodological tools with which to sound an emergent human-gibbon interface. At the same time, the dissertation considers the problems that sonic models pose for gibbon conservation and multispecies relations more broadly. Demonstrating ethnomusicology's ability to participate within larger intellectual conversations regarding the material and theoretical implications of the Anthropocene, this dissertation concludes that gibbon conservation's elision of the otological and the ontological is precisely the fraught medium through which the future of each gibbon species will be realized.

Hylobatids (gibbons and siamangs) are the smallest of the apes distinguished by their coordinated duets, territorial songs, arm-swinging locomotion, and small family group sizes. Although they are the most speciose of the apes boasting twenty species living in eleven countries, ninety-five percent are critically endangered or endangered according to the IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species. Despite this, gibbons are often referred to as being 'forgotten' in the shadow of their great ape cousins because comparably they receive less research, funding and conservation attention. This is only the third book since the 1980s devoted to gibbons, and presents cutting-edge research covering a wide variety of topics including hylobatid ecology, conservation, phylogenetics and taxonomy. Written by gibbon researchers and practitioners from across the world, the book discusses conservation challenges in the Anthropocene and presents practice-based approaches and strategies to save these singing, swinging apes from extinction.

Combining personal stories of motivation with new research this book offers a holistic picture of primate conservation in the Anthropocene.

A vital contribution to environmental humanities that explores artistic responses to the plastic age Since at least the 1960s, plastics have been a defining feature of contemporary life. They are undeniably utopian—wondrously innovative, cheap, malleable, durable, and convenient. Yet our proliferating use of plastics has also triggered catastrophic environmental consequences. Plastics are piling up in landfills, floating in oceans, and contributing to climate change and cancer clusters. They are derived from petrochemicals and enmeshed with the global oil economy, and they permeate our consumer goods and their packaging, our clothing and buildings, our bodies and minds. Plastic reshapes our cultural and social imaginaries. With impressive breadth and compelling urgency, the essays in Life in Plastic examine the arts and literature of the plastic age. Focusing mainly on post-1960s North America, the collection spans a wide variety of genres, including graphic novels, superhero comics, utopic and dystopic science fiction, poetry, and satirical prose, as well as vinyl records and visual arts. Essays by a remarkable lineup of cultural theorists interrogate how plastic—as material and concept—has affected human sensibilities and expression. The collection reveals the place of plastic in reshaping how we perceive, relate to, represent, and re-imagine bodies, senses, environment, scale, mortality, and collective well-being. Ultimately, the contributors to Life in Plastic think through plastic with an eye to imagining our way out of plastic, moving toward a postplastic future. Contributors: Crystal Bartolovich, Syracuse U; Maurizia Boscagli, U of California, Santa Barbara; Christopher Breu, Illinois State U; Loren Glass, U of Iowa; Sean Grattan, U of Kent; Nayoung Kim, Brandeis U; Jane Kuenz, U of Southern Maine; Paul Morrison, Brandeis U; W. Dana Phillips, Towson U in Maryland and Rhodes U in Grahamstown, South Africa; Margaret Ronda, UC-Davis; Lisa Swanstrom, U of Utah; Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor, Pennsylvania State U; Phillip E. Wegner, U of Florida; Daniel Worden, Rochester Institute of Technology.