Environmental Studies Commons^™

Paper: An Ecowomanist View On The Dakota Access Pipeline, Ariana Raya

Womanist Ethics

This paper examines the Dakota Access Pipeline using ecofeminist and ecowomanist philosophies, provides a brief historical background of African American and Native American communities, explains the dangers of the pipeline to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, and offers constructive alternatives.

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review Fall 2018

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review

No abstract provided.

Societal Rebirth: The Importance Of Spirituality, Lauren Rothstein

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This article offers an exploration of what the social consequences are when modernity strips away religious-human relationships to the land. The two texts Black Elk Speaks and Grapes of Wrath both include moments of anonymous forces imposing systematic modernization on society. Particularly, I try to understand the controversial subject of societal rebirths, traditionally defined through employment and steady food source availability. This paper proposes an approach to societal rebirths that emphasizes the importance of spiritual connection to the land through a critical analysis of Bakhtin's theory of Chronotope and Leopold's theory of Land Ethic. On the issue of spiritual connection …

Art Brut & Bricolage: Manifesting Alternate Imaginaries Of The Waste Cataclysm, Dominic Alan Chequer

Communication Studies

Living within a consumer society that boasts increased sustainable consumption as the panacea to large-scale environmental degradation, the social avoidance of waste becomes an interesting psychological battleground in developing an environmentally sustainable future. In light of this situation, I used my participation in the design of a music festival to create a social critique by design. Using artistic techniques of bricolage and aesthetic upcycling, under the visage of art brut. The paper blends theory and practice, ideas with tangible outputs.

"Sounding The Nile" In Nubian Musical Expression, Regan L. Homeyer

Shared Knowledge Conference

Nubians are indigenous peoples of the Nile River Valley whose ancient civilization parallels that of ancient Egypt. In 1964, 50,000 Egyptian Nubians were removed from their homeland along the Nile because of President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s initiative, the Aswan High Dam Project. With fertile lands and sacred temples doomed to inundation by the waters of what is now Lake Nassar, Nubians were resettled in government built villages that promised both preservation of culture and modern conveniences. What these riverine people received, in fact, were poorly constructed, unfinished dwellings located in the desert, more than five miles from the Nile. A …

The Praxis Of Deceleration: Recovery As "Inner Work, Public Act", Marisol Cortez Ph.D.

Academic Labor: Research and Artistry (2017-2022 archives)

Originally published in Deceleration and presented at the 2017 meeting of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, this short essay details the vision and praxis behind an online journal of environmental justice co-edited by the author alongside environmental journalist Gregory Harman. In this essay, I situate the evolution of this project in relation to our precarious institutional positions as writers with disabilities who consequently work in the spaces between academia, journalism, activism, and creative writing. This positionality has in turn placed Deceleration in conversation with degrowth and allied movements around the world, which challenge the disabling …

The Last Oil: Students Respond, Unm Department Of Art

Art and Art History Faculty Publications

In February 2018, the University of New Mexico (UNM) convened the last oil: a multispecies justice symposium on Arctic Alaska and beyond.Twenty-nine artists, activists, attorneys, scientists, conservationists, curators, scholars, and writers from across the United States and Canada, gave talks and/or did creative performances—and ten colleagues from UNM and beyond chaired various sessions. the last oil was the first national convening to apprehend the reckless U.S. federal Arctic policy, and also brought impacts of climate change and Indigenous rights concerns in Alaska into conversation with similar impacts and struggles in New Mexico and the west.

Published on Indigenous …

The Plastic Problem: Plastic Pollution In Bali, Kate Giesler

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

With the fourth highest population and an ever-growing rate of plastic consumption, Indonesia is the second largest plastic polluter in the world (McCarthy, 2018). The country, which has only had plastic since the latter half of the 20th century, has staggeringly high rates of plastic waste which becomes pollution due to various factors. This paper examines the factors that go into why the rates of plastic pollution are so high, what people know about it and what is being done to help combat the problem. The four main topics explored are: laws, disposal methods, education and tourism. The study uses …

“Sanarnos Para Sanar El Mundo”: Un Estudio De Mujeres Activistas Contra El Extractivismo Y Los Poderes Curativos De Terapia Social / "Heal Us To Heal The World": A Study Of Women Activists Against Extractivism And Healing Powers Of Social Therapy, Alisha Kendrick-Pradhan

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

En el mes de noviembre, trabajé con Fundación GAMMA y yo estudié el vínculo entre el activismo ecofeminista y la terapia social. La Fundación GAMMA ofrece talleres de terapia social a activistas de los derechos de las mujeres, muchos de los cuales luchan contra el extractivismo en sus comunidades. Existe un vínculo entre las cuestiones de derechos de las mujeres y la explotación del medio ambiente, que constituye la base de la teoría ecofeminista. En la práctica, muchas de las mujeres que asisten a estos talleres son víctimas tanto de la discriminación de género y también de las problemas de …

Balance And Imbalance: The Necessity Of Natural Disasters In Balinese Hinduism, Lorin Foster Demuth

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

No abstract provided.

Think Outside: Exploring The Influence Of Nature On The Individual And Of The Individual On Society, Brielle Wells

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This video project has an overarching goal to question the influence the natural environment has on the development of individual people and society as a whole. It begins by looking into the important role played by creativity in societal and economic development. From here a brief background is given on the requirements of maintaining and producing a creative environment. The piece alludes to the possibility that a relationship with nature has a deeper meaning than just being conducive to creativity. It also shows the effects pollution has had on the work of local artists and briefly the challenges faced by …

Restoring Eden: The Role Of Christianity On Environmental Conservation: A Case Of Karatu District, Arusha, Tanzania, Taylor Allen

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In order for environmental conservation to be effective it must have a method of translating to people’s everyday values. Developing countries which include mostly bio-diversity hotspot areas are important to maintain sustainable development. Due to most of these countries following an organized religion, predominantly Christian, an alternative method of conservation may be successful to motivate citizens to participate in efforts. In order for this to be successful, members of the congregation must agree that there is a religious obligation to care for the environment. For Christianity this obligation is discussed by the creation story in the bible. This paper will …

Litter On Wheels: An Ocean Garbage Art Car, William J. Leconey, William H. Gibson

Student Publications

In the Fall term of 2018, Gettysburg College seniors Bill LeConey and Will Gibson created the world's first Ocean Garbage Art Car, by covering an old Ford truck with plastic bottles (and other trash commonly found in our oceans), to raise awareness about anthropogenic pollution in our seas. Since the 1950’s, plastics have been an essential and ubiquitous commodity in nearly every society on the planet. Plastics find their way into just about every aspect of our lives - from water bottles and cell phone cases, to even advanced medical equipment and space shuttles - it’s no secret how prevalent …

Livelihoods Of The People Of Mazumbai: A Collection Of Stories And Portraits, Tanga Region, Tanzania, Joseph Baldus

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Despite rapid urbanization in Tanzania, agriculture remains central to the nation, the economy, and the livelihoods of a large portion of the population. Smallholder farmers account for the vast majority of agricultural production, yet are an extremely vulnerable population due to poverty, single-sourced income, and climate-dependency for both subsistence and cash-crop agriculture (Rapsomanikis, 2015). This report explores these dynamic rural livelihoods through interviews and portrait photographs in a case study on Mazumbai, Tanga region, Tanzania. Semi-structured interviews explore the people’s modes of economic subsistence, domestic lives, education, challenges, and life stories. Excerpts from these interviews combined with portrait photographs create …

A Field Guide For Weathering: Embodied Tactics For Collectives Of Two Or More Humans, Jennifer Mae Hamilton, Astrida Neimanis

The Goose

In our inherited meteorological practices and frameworks, weather conditions are managed for us in a range of ways (for example, through architecture, technology, commodity culture, infrastructure, economic rationale). This field guide brings the weather back to the body. A traditional field guide provides tools for the individual sovereign human subject to observe and document nature “over there”. In contrast, through a range of different activities, our field guide not only invites investigation and cataloguing of the field that we also comprise, but also challenges what counts as a noteworthy observation regarding the weather and also climate.

Returning The Radiant Gaze: Visual Art And Embodiment In A World Of Subjects, Beth Carruthers

The Goose

Drawing on the latter thinking of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as well as on the ideas of other contemporary philosophers and theorists, this essay considers the denigration of vision from Plato to twentieth-century anti-ocularism, and argues for the reclamation of vision and visual perception as sensuous, embodied interplay between humans and world, self and other—an opening to wonder and more sensitive human-world relations. It does so through a phenomenological exploration of the process of art-making, and consideration of the role and value of artworks and images in the world. This essay is first and foremost an enquiry. As such it promises no …

Disasters Fast And Slow: The Temporality Of Hazards In Environmental History, Fiona Williamson, Chris Courtney

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Popular representations of disasters tend to focus upon dramatic moments of chaos. They envision panicked communities desperately scrambling for safety as earthquakes reduce cities to rubble or lava turns villages to ashes. Yet disasters actually unfold on numerous temporal scales. Media reports tend to reduce disasters to discrete events, initiated on the shallow causal timescale of a meteorological fluctuation or seismic disruption. Social scientists, by contrast, have often sought to emphasise the processual nature of disasters—embedding causality in the deeper timescale of a community, in which risk and vulnerability build over months or years.2 Environmental historians elongate causality even further, …

Yardwork: A Biography Of An Urban Place By Daniel Coleman, Vivian M. Hansen

The Goose

Review of Daniel Coleman's Yardwork: A Biography of an Urban Place.

Thinking Continental: Writing The Planet One Place At A Time By Tom Lynch, Susan Naramore Maher, Drucilla Wall, And O. Alan Weltzien, Cory Willard

The Goose

Review of Thinking Continental: Writing the Planet One Place at a Time by Tom Lynch, Susan Naramore Maher, Drucilla Wall, and O. Alan Weltzien, eds.

Nature, Place, And Story: Rethinking Historic Sites In Canada By Claire Campbell, Emma K. Morgan-Thorp

The Goose

Review of Claire Campbell's Nature, Place, and Story: Rethinking Historic Sites in Canada.

The Larger Conversation: Contemplation And Place By Tim Lilburn, Emory Shaw

The Goose

Review of Tim Lilburn's The Larger Conversation: Contemplation and Place.

Foreclosures For Sale: Revisiting Stories Of Worcester's Mortgage Crisis, A Radio Documentary, Hallie Blashfield, Beatrice Misher

Sustainability and Social Justice

This radio documentary uses the personal stories of homeowners fighting to keep their homes in Worcester Massachusetts to explore the state of Foreclosure in Worcester ten years after the Great Recession. It follows the Worcester Anti-Foreclosure Team (WAFT) and its members in their fight against illegal foreclosures and their battles in Worcester Housing Court. Grounded in personal narratives, the documentary highlights systemic issues with the banking and legal system.

The Impact Of World War One On The Forests And Soils Of Europe, Drew Heiderscheidt

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

The First World War was one of the deadliest conflicts in human history thus far. With the human toll being over eight million deaths, and millions more wounded, and as such it has taken hold in peoples imaginations for over a hundred years. However, one overlooked impact of the war is the environmental impact it had. The forests of Europe were significantly changed, going from being diverse ecosystems pre-war to monocultures after the war, dominated by single species of trees. The soil was also affected, more heavily in some places, becoming contaminated with heavy metals, as well as becoming entirely …

Complete Issue

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

The complete issue 1 of volume 8, Landscapes Journal.

Beyond 'Owls Versus Jobs': A Twenty-Year Retrospective Of The Headwaters Forest Controversy, Jennifer Bernstein

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

In 1999, the Headwaters Forest Reserve was established in Humboldt County after more than 20 years of community activism, negotiations, and litigation. The ‘last stand’ of unprotected, privately-owned old growth redwood had finally been safeguarded, though many on the North Coast felt that the final deal fell far short of what was needed to protect the watershed’s ecological functioning. This article uses academic and journalistic research, supplemented by oral histories, to make three main points about the North Coast ‘post deal.’ One, forest management practices in the region have evolved to be more consistent with the practices of ecological forestry. …

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

Using Digital Mapping Techniques To Rapidly Document Vulnerable Historical Landscapes In Coastal Louisiana: Holt Cemetery Case Study, Alahna Moore

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis outlines a technique for rapid documentation of historic sites in volatile cultural landscapes. Using Holt Cemetery as an exemplary case study, a workflow was developed incorporating RTK terrain survey, UAS aerial imagery, photogrammetry, GIS, and smartphone data collection in order to create a multifaceted database of the material and spatial conditions, as well as the patterns of use, that exist at the cemetery.

The purpose of this research is to create a framework for improving the speed of data creation and increasing the accessibility of information regarding threatened cultural resources. It is intended that these processes can be …

Resilience Through Connection To Place: How Native Peoples Rely On The Land And How The Land Relies On Us, Tabitha N. Espinoza

Graduate Student Portfolios, Professional Papers, and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

(In)Visibility And Meaning In Food Labor: A Feminist Autoethnography, Kathryn Shedden

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

My graduate thesis project entitled “(In)visibility and Meaning in Food Labor: A Feminist Autoethnography” illuminates the gendered experiences of female food laborers and how women make meaning through their labor in this context. Gendered experiences do not stand apart from classed and raced identities, which I also reflexively analyze throughout this thesis. Women working within the food chain have been historically marginalized and made invisible, though they make up an increasingly significant portion of this workforce, a trend known as the “feminization of agriculture.” The discussion of the work that women do when discussing food in the academic literature also …

There Is Water In The World For Us : The Environmental Theories Of Alice Walker., Janae Lewis Hall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of African-American Environmental thought responds to the ongoing erasure of Black experiences and their perspectives on nature. Mainstream environmentalism maintains a legacy of perceived innocence and incorruptibility towards the land, while Black Environmentalism demonstrates the limitations of that ideology. Limitations include the erasure of history in regards to stealing land from Indigenous people, the brutality of slavery, legalized lynching, forced removal from the land, exploitation in sharecropping, destruction of sacred lands, heavy pollution in urban centers, and harmful environmental policies. For Black and Indigenous peoples, it is impossible to view American soil as innocent. This project surveyed the …