The cartography of nuclear bombings and nuclear waste can be understood and visualized in different ways depending on who is drawing the map. This is a chapter of the virtual exhibition “Representing Environmental Risk in the Landscapes of US Militarization” by literary scholar Hsuan L. Hsu.

In this chapter of the virtual exhibition “Representing Environmental Risks in the Landscapes of US Militarization,” literary scholar Hsuan Hsu discusses the emergence and controversial politics of US military bases on foreign soil.

This is the introductory page of the virtual exhibition “Representing Environmental Risks in the Landscapes of US Militarization”—written and curated by literary scholar Hsuan Hsu.

Hsuan L. Hsu is an associate professor of English at the University of California, Davis and the author of Literature and the Production of Space in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Cambridge) and Sitting in Darkness: Mark Twain’s Asia and Comparative Racialization (NYU, forthcoming).

This exhibit considers how different forms of representation have been used to influence public perceptions of environmental harm associated with US military bases and activities worldwide. Instead of attempting a comprehensive survey of all the images, monuments, and narratives that have been devoted to these environmental impacts, I have focused on significant modes of representation including maps, films, literature, photographs, and monuments.

Documentary films can be a means to disclose the elusive long-term effects of nuclear and chemical contamination. This is a chapter of the virtual exhibition “Representing Environmental Risk in the Landscapes of US Militarization,” written and curated by literary scholar Hsu Hsuan.