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Articles 1 - 19 of 19
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The Rise Of An Eco-Spiritual Imaginary: Ecology And Spirituality As Decolonial Protest In Contemporary Multi-Ethnic American Literature, Andrew Michael Spencer
The Rise Of An Eco-Spiritual Imaginary: Ecology And Spirituality As Decolonial Protest In Contemporary Multi-Ethnic American Literature, Andrew Michael Spencer
English Theses and Dissertations
The Rise of an Eco-Spiritual Imaginary reveals a shared ecological aesthetic among contemporary U.S. ethnic writers whose novels communicate a decolonial spiritual reverence for the earth. This shared narrative focus challenges white settler colonial mythologies of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism to instantiate new ways of imagining community across socially constructed boundaries of time, space, nation, race, and species. The eco-spiritual imaginary—by which I mean a shared reverence for the ecological interconnection between all living beings—articulates a common biological origin and sacredness of all life that transcends racial difference while remaining grounded in local ethnicities and bioregions. The novelists representing …
The Other Side Of Silence: The Productive Limits Of Human Awareness And The Novel, Aven Elaina Williams
The Other Side Of Silence: The Productive Limits Of Human Awareness And The Novel, Aven Elaina Williams
Senior Projects Spring 2022
Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.
"Wand'ring This Woody Maze": Deciphering The Obscure Wilderness Of Paradise Regained, Brooke Johnson
"Wand'ring This Woody Maze": Deciphering The Obscure Wilderness Of Paradise Regained, Brooke Johnson
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The setting of Milton’s great sequel is puzzling, being called a desert and a “waste wild” (IV. 523) repeatedly and at the same time including descriptions of protective oaks and woody mazes. These conflicting descriptions conjure up several questions: In which environment does the epic take place? Because Milton is so detailed in his adaptations of biblical narrative the inclusion of trees is quite perplexing. While he does tend to expand biblical narrative quite frequently – e.g. Paradise Lost – he rarely initiates a change without just cause. The crux of this particular change centers on what this just cause …
The Picturesque And Its Decay: The Travel Writing And Journals Of Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft, And Mary Shelley, Gabrielle Kappes
The Picturesque And Its Decay: The Travel Writing And Journals Of Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft, And Mary Shelley, Gabrielle Kappes
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This project puts forth the argument that when the late eighteenth century’s taste for nature and picturesque tourism had peaked, writers following in the picturesque tradition grappled with the limitations and confines of these aesthetic categories. In the chapters that follow, I present three authors, Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Shelley, who are all dissatisfied with the conventions of the picturesque. Dorothy Wordsworth’s Alfoxden Journal (1798) demonstrates the nuances of the picturesque instability where distinctions between nature and the cultural production of nature have become muddied. I then examine three tour narratives in order to draw attention to how …
Enclosures And Dichotomies: Coexistence Vs. Distance In The Poems Of John Clare, Jordan P. Finn
Enclosures And Dichotomies: Coexistence Vs. Distance In The Poems Of John Clare, Jordan P. Finn
Theses and Dissertations
John Clare’s poetry emphasizes an affinity with environment by suspending the distinction between the inside (subject) and the outside (object). Clare’s identification with objects and perception rather than subjects and aesthetics renders his work as a prescient and radical example of ecological poetry in the Romantic period. Raymond Williams’ “green language” and Timothy Morton’s ambient poetics both cite Clare as an ideal figure for their above theories and evoke Clare as a writer who positions the environment as governing thought rather than thought governing the environment. This thesis especially relates Clare to Morton’s Ecology without Nature, a study of …
Emily Dickinson's Echology: A Listener's Reconceptualization Of Citizenship, Consciousness, And The World, Beth Ann Staley
Emily Dickinson's Echology: A Listener's Reconceptualization Of Citizenship, Consciousness, And The World, Beth Ann Staley
Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports
What I call Emily Dickinson’s “echology” combines the terms “echo” and “ecology” to understand how Dickinson’s work echoes – and is an echo – of the world and how, consequently, her work resides not just in her handwritten documents and their publication in various editions but in an ecology that’s tied to the earth that hosted her, the air that faced her, and the sea kept her listening. To assess the critical value of Dickinson’s echology, this dissertation begins by apprehending how the story of the echo is a story about sound masking, specifically about how the echo that is …
Toward A Posthuman Ecology: Evolutionary Aesthetics In Transatlantic Romanticism, Kaitlin Mondello
Toward A Posthuman Ecology: Evolutionary Aesthetics In Transatlantic Romanticism, Kaitlin Mondello
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
My dissertation traces the vibrant interchange between Romantic literature and science in the nineteenth century that necessitated new forms of aesthetics. I argue that Romantic writers and scientists co-created a new way of understanding nature that moved away from hierarchical anthropocentrism toward what I call “posthuman ecology.” This work explores shared scientific, literary, and philosophical sources for Erasmus and Charles Darwin, Mary and Percy Shelley, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Emily Dickinson. I connect aesthetic innovation to ethics to ask more broadly how literature can provide an affective and effective space to represent and engage scientific discourse. I conclude that understanding …
Wild Abandon: Postwar Literature Between Ecology And Authenticity, Alexander F. Menrisky
Wild Abandon: Postwar Literature Between Ecology And Authenticity, Alexander F. Menrisky
Theses and Dissertations--English
Wild Abandon traces a literary and cultural history of late twentieth-century appeals to dissolution, the moment at which a text seems to erase its subject’s sense of selfhood in natural environs. I argue that such appeals arose in response to a prominent yet overlooked interaction between discourses of ecology and authenticity following the rise and fall of the American New Left in the 1960s and 70s. This conjunction inspired certain intellectuals and activists to celebrate the ecological concept of interconnectivity as the most authentic basis of subjectivity in political, philosophical, spiritual, and literary writings. As I argue, dissolution represents a …
The Waiting House, Erika Marie Mueller
The Waiting House, Erika Marie Mueller
Theses and Dissertations
The poems in this collection, The Waiting House, use techniques associated with an evolving elegiac tradition in their portrayal of anticipatory grief born of terminal illness and impending loss. Like the melancholic mourning of modern elegies described by Jahan Ramazani, my poems often resist consolation even as they borrow from elegiac conventions like poetic substitution and repetition. Additionally, they utilize strategies and patterns of literary anger outlined by Alicia Suskin Ostriker as common in postwar American women’s poetry, to express anger that is also anticipatory grief. Finally, this collection uses illness metaphors to question the well being of a larger …
"Discursion And Excursion:" Poetry Of Bodies, Place, And Landscape In The Ecocritical Movement, Haley N. Littleton
"Discursion And Excursion:" Poetry Of Bodies, Place, And Landscape In The Ecocritical Movement, Haley N. Littleton
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
My thesis project focuses on the current literary field of Ecocriticism, its historical transmutations, and the correlation of the pastoral genre, as one begins to understand current human understandings of "nature." By applying a deeper understanding of the Deep Ecology movement, along with shifting understandings of the human and the non-human, specifically in our usage and attention to landscape and wilderness, I hope to explore the role that the aesthetic, and the function of the poem, can play a crucial role in the environmental movement. By building a foundational understanding of our cultural context and critical theories of Environmental criticism, …
The Philosophy Of Ecology In John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath, Stephanie A. Steinbrecher
The Philosophy Of Ecology In John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath, Stephanie A. Steinbrecher
Scripps Senior Theses
This thesis explores the possibilities for ecocritical study in fiction through John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath. Major ecocritical interpretation has yet to gain much traction in novels; by focusing on human nature, this form’s “anthropocentric” posture seems itself to be antithetical to ecocritical efforts, which aim to unseat humans as the center of the moral universe. However, by analyzing The Grapes of Wrath’s formal, narratorial, and thematic valences, I argue that principles of social justice concurrently imply environmental justice in the philosophical currents of the text. Tenets of deep ecology and Aldo Leopold’s “land ethic” …
Insomniac Of The Soil: A Collection Of Poetry And Essays, Sarah E. Golibart
Insomniac Of The Soil: A Collection Of Poetry And Essays, Sarah E. Golibart
Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019
“Insomniac of the Soil” is a homage to a landscape that has deeply informed Sarah Golibart's life and her artistic voice – the tidewater flatlands of Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay peninsula where her family lives and where Golibart has worked on farms since high school. Both her poems and essays are earthy, imagistic, and grounded – quite literally – in the soil as well as in a sensibility of ecological ethics and sustainability. “Insomniac of the Soil” is also a love song to the fervent and fallow cycles of the soil.
Of Wilderness, Forest, And Garden: An Eco-Theory Of Genre In Middle English Literature, Barbara L. Bolt
Of Wilderness, Forest, And Garden: An Eco-Theory Of Genre In Middle English Literature, Barbara L. Bolt
Theses and Dissertations
“Of Wilderness, Forest, and Garden: An Eco-Theory of Genre in Middle English Literature” proposes a new theory of genre that considers the material elements of the natural environment in Middle English literature composed between 1300-1450 CE. Instead of treating the setting as just a backdrop for human activity, I posit that the components of the environment play a role in the deployment of the narrative by shaping the characters and influencing the action. More than an acknowledgement of the particular natural features, this study explores the role that these components play and how they give us a deeper understanding of …
Facing The Wreck: Death, Optimism, And The Fragmented Form, Rachael Marie Schaffner
Facing The Wreck: Death, Optimism, And The Fragmented Form, Rachael Marie Schaffner
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Walter Benjamin described history as a winged angel who faces backwards, staring perpetually into the past as the violent winds of destiny carry him into the future (Illuminations). Despite a western, post-enlightenment myth of eternal progress, the wreckage of human contributions to history is clearly evident in our 21st-century understanding of anthropogenic impact on global ecology. In the context of these ecological crises (and the resulting political and economic questions), postmodern novels reveal a powerful ability to imagine different ways of living and interacting with the world. This thesis traces the relationship between fragmentation, death, and liminal experiences …
From Pastorals To Paterson: Ecology In The Poetry And Poetics Of William Carlos Williams, Daniel Edmund Burke
From Pastorals To Paterson: Ecology In The Poetry And Poetics Of William Carlos Williams, Daniel Edmund Burke
Dissertations (1934 -)
Modernist poet William Carlos Williams died in 1962 - a landmark year in the history of the modern environmentalist movement. He did not live to see contemporary culture come to the deeper appreciation of humanity's place in the world which we now know as ecology. This dissertation will argue, however, that supporting his entire oeuvre of poetry are philosophical and poetic underpinnings which resonate strongly with - and usefully anticipate - our modern understanding of the interpenetrative relationship between natural and culture, human and nonhuman. I begin by tracing the roots of Williams's "ecopoetics" back to the father of Williams's …
"Radiant Imperfection": The Interconnected Writing Lives Of Robert Bringhurst, Dennis Lee, Tim Lilburn, Don Mckay, And Jan Zwicky, Kostantina Northrup
"Radiant Imperfection": The Interconnected Writing Lives Of Robert Bringhurst, Dennis Lee, Tim Lilburn, Don Mckay, And Jan Zwicky, Kostantina Northrup
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
Over the course of the past two decades, Robert Bringhurst, Dennis Lee, Tim Lilburn, Don McKay, and Jan Zwicky have come to be known as a coterie of ecological writers and ethicists. All five poets have inhabited the Canadian university at various points throughout their careers, and by discussing their ecopoetics in light of their commentary on academic epistemologies and contemporary education in the humanities, this dissertation observes how the poets’ respective approaches to aesthetics, philosophy, and pedagogy are intimately intertwined. By contextualizing the group’s ecopoetics in light of their academic interventions, I argue that their public reputations as ecological …
A New Way Of Living: Bioeconomic Models In Post-Apocalyptic Dystopias, Margaret A. Wells
A New Way Of Living: Bioeconomic Models In Post-Apocalyptic Dystopias, Margaret A. Wells
Theses and Dissertations--English
The objective of this thesis is to explore the relationship between moralities and bioeconomies in post-apocalyptic dystopias from the Victorian era to contemporary Young Adult Fiction. In defining the terms bioeconomy and biopolitics, this works examines the ways in which literature uses food and energy systems to explore morality and immorality in social orders and systems, including capitalism and our modern techno-industrial landscapes. This work examines science fiction portrayals of apocalypses and dystopias, including After London: Or, Wild England and The Hunger Games, as well as their medieval and contextual influences. These works are analyzed in light of genre …
Ecocritical Theology Neo-Pastoral Themes In American Fiction From 1960 To The Present, Joan Anderson Ashford
Ecocritical Theology Neo-Pastoral Themes In American Fiction From 1960 To The Present, Joan Anderson Ashford
English Dissertations
Ecocritical theology relates to American fiction as it connects nature and spirituality. In my development of the term “neo-pastoral” I begin with Virgil’s Eclogues to serve as examples for spiritual and nature related themes. Virgil’s characters in “The Dispossessed” represent people’s alienation from the land. Meliboeus must leave his homeland because the Roman government has reassigned it to their war veterans. As he leaves Meliboeus wonders why fate has rendered this judgment on him and yet has granted his friend Tityrus a reprieve. Typically, pastoral literature represents people’s longing to leave the city and return to the spiritual respite of …
Revisiting The Desert Sublime: Billy's Ecotheological Journey In Cormac Mccarthy's The Crossing, Michael J. Riding
Revisiting The Desert Sublime: Billy's Ecotheological Journey In Cormac Mccarthy's The Crossing, Michael J. Riding
Theses and Dissertations
While McCarthy studies have emphasized elements of the sacred in his writing, this thesis adds a new historical perspective and synthesis to reading paradigms of Cormac McCarthy. The Crossing combines the patterns of the ancient pre-Hebraic genre of the desert sublime with the basic formula of the American Western genre to interrogate McCarthy's question of whether in the postmodern moment one can still divest oneself in the desert and find access to the sublime. In an era of an invisible or absent God where post-humanist thought erases the anthropocentric supremacy of human over animal and the earth itself, the one …