Looking Earthward: The US Space Program and its influence on depictions of the Earth

Habilitationsprojekt: I am currently working on a book project that investigates corre-lations between the US space program and depiction of the Earth in diverse media. When completed, my book will provide a comprehensive study of how antecedents to and events within the US space program and their media artifacts (photographs, films, articles, interviews, ... ) influenced the depiction and description of the Earth in both depictive media such as illustrated children’s books, movies, television shows and art as well as in partially-image based media such as newspaper & journal articles and image-free narrative space travel works of both fact and fiction. I will also have been able to show the influence that these had on the ecology movement and the growing human consciousness of the Earth as a fertile and vulnerable oddity in the barrenness of space, and will have, inversely – and crucially – shown that previous fictive and fantastical descriptions and depictions of the Earth in stories and art had an influence on the contextualization, interpretation, and usage of the artifacts of the space program.