Table of Contents

Introduction: Crossing Boundaries. Natural History of a Contaminant. Dangerous Attractions: Mercury in Human History. Mercury in the Environment through Sculpture, Film, and Theatre. Writing as Environmental Stewardship. A Sociological perspective: Is Tuna Safe? Mercury by the Numbers. Mercury in the Media. Fact or Fiction? Engaged Scholarship: Environmental Service. Environmental Politics. Conclusion: Through Your Eyes.

About the Author

As codirector of the Mercury Global Inquiry Group, Sharon L. Zuber organized faculty and student exchanges with Central China Normal University and the 2010 International Mercury EXPO, as well as mentored undergraduate student research video projects about mercury pollution. In 2006 she was invited to speak at a Symposium on Teaching and Research in Academic Writing at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. In 2008 she was area chair for “Environmental Documentaries” for the Film & History Conference. She teaches writing-intensive courses and works with faculty across the curriculum teaching freshman seminars. Her research interests focus on nonfiction writing and documentary filmmaking and include a comparison between New Journalist writers and Direct Cinema filmmakers, movements that emerged in the 1960s in the United States Her documentary films include They Live in Guinea (1996), a video about the Gloucester, Virginia, watermen; Master of the Flame (2004), a documentary about glass artist Emilio Santini; Mercury on the Move (2008), a short about the research about mercury in songbirds by Professor Daniel Cristol; and Mercury: A Hazard without Borders (2009), a film about the history and issues surrounding mercury pollution. She has published in College English, Post Script, and Film & History.

Michael C. Newman is currently the A. Marshall Acuff, Jr. Professor of Marine Science at the College of William and Mary's School of Marine Science where he also served as Dean of Graduate Studies from 1999 to 2002. Previously, he was a faculty member at the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. His research interests include quantitative ecotoxicology, environmental statistics, risk assessment, population effects of contaminants, metal chemistry, and bioaccumulation and biomagnifications modeling.