Environmental Studies Commons^™

The Walls At The Ends Of Empires: Towards A Political Ecology Of The Imperial Border, Benjamin Allen Stahnke

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation study investigates the intricate and complicated interplay between the border walls of imperial states, environmental change, and dispossession. Employing a multidisciplinary approach rooted in Political Ecology, and drawing on the theoretical frameworks of Social Metabolism, Social Kinetics, and Green History, the study is built around an analysis of two historical examples: the Roman border walls in the north of England (Hadrian’s Wall and the Antonine Wall), and the U.S.-Mexico border wall. The research uncovers two overarching conclusions: firstly, imperial border walls serve as discriminatory structures, targeting and segregating Indigenous populations while asserting control over Indigenous geographies; secondly, the …

Epistemological Insecurity In The Anthropocene, Dustin Purvis

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation analyzes how increased mainstream awareness of climate change and other complex environmental phenomena transforms some of the basic tools we use to understand the world, including notions of agency, evidence, and causality. More specifically, this project highlights numerous contemporary literary and cultural narratives that formally and thematically depict impromptu systems of action and comprehension developed by humans confronting the unique forms of information overload that result from damaged and rapidly changing environments. Following critics like Ulrich Beck, Rob Nixon, and Stacy Alaimo, I suggest our current era of ecological instability and destructive environmental practices dictate what I refer …

The Stateless Agent: A Multidisciplinary Analysis Of Transboundary Air Pollution In The El Paso-Ciudad Juárez Region Of The U.S.-Mexico Border, Elizabeth Hernandez

CMC Senior Theses

The El Paso-Ciudad Juárez (EPJ) region has a history of nonattainment for ozone and particulate matter. Given transboundary air pollution in the EPJ region is not confined to the U.S.-Mexico border, it is important to implement a transnational response that accounts for the health and safety of everyone, including marginalized communities in EPJ. This thesis assesses the state of air quality and transboundary air pollution in the EPJ region through a multidisciplinary perspective that focuses on issues of data monitoring, environmental governance, and transnational environmental justice. Analysis of the quantity and placement of ambient monitoring stations reveals EPJ residents near …

Editors' Note, Nirupama Devaraj, Bharath Ganesh Babu

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Submission Guidelines

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Reviewers And Referees

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Statement From The Indiana Academy Of The Social Sciences And Board Of Directors

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Volume 25, Full Contents

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Mission And Editorial Policy

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Author Biographical Notes

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Of Movements And Markets: Religious Competition And The Problem Of Black Church Relevance, Omar M. Mcroberts

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

Why do cross-denominational public religious movements such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference appear, despite the market-like competitive behavior of churches? Religious economy theory offers one set of explanations, based on a supply-side approach to the dynamics of numeric religious growth and decline. Namely, ecumenical movements are engaged by denominations, or religious firms, in membership decline. The history of national Black ecumenical movements, however, points to ways that religious economic theorizing fails to account for the multiple modes of social consciousness regarding church survival that motivate institutional religious activity. Black churches have existed not merely as a market but as …

Recommendations For Sustainable Tourism In Patagonia: An Exploratory Analysis Of Sustainable Tourism In Costa Rica, The Nordic Region, And Thailand’S Communities, Julia K. Lowery

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores different levels of governance and its role towards actualizing sustainable tourism in Patagonia. With the growing threat of climate change, international destinations such as Patagonia are looking to continue building their tourism industries in a sustainable way. Through analyzing case studies of national governance in Costa Rica, multi-national governance in the Nordic region, and community-based tourism in Thailand, we can better understand how each form of governance has the potential to create a sustainable tourism industry. With this understanding of successful governance in my case studies, as well as understanding the historical and political forces that have …

The Dream Of Property: Law And Environment In William T. Vollmann’S Dying Grass And Leslie Marmon Silko’S Almanac Of The Dead, Ted Hamilton

Faculty Journal Articles

This article describes how the law inflects the narration of environmental conflict in William T. Vollmann’s Dying Grass (2015) and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead (1991). By focusing on the legal common sense of settler colonialism—its emphasis on private property in land and its subjugation of Indigenous peoples to the guardianship of the state—the article explores the ways in which Vollmann’s and Silko’s novels present counternarratives to the law’s story of justified conquest. Combining a law and literature approach with ecocriticism, this article highlights the importance of the legal imagination in defining human-land relations in the United States. …

Queering Disaster Response: Best Practices For Intentional And Inclusive Disaster Response, Sean Fisher

Environmental Studies Student Work

Climate change is causing an increase in the severity and frequency of extreme weather and climatic disasters. Indigenous, Persons of Color, Women, Queer, Trans, Two Spirit, and Disabled communities will be most impacted by the adverse impacts of these disasters. This disproportionate impact is being examined through vulnerability to adverse impacts. Vulnerability is accrued though pre-existing social, political, and or economic marginalization. Overton comments, “Disaster can thus be seen as social events that reveal the inequalities, vulnerabilities, and coping mechanisms that inform how people negotiate the ‘permanent disaster’ of daily life.” However, current methods of disaster relief and aid don’t …

Percepción De Los Servicios Ecosistémicos De Provisión Ofertados En Agroecosistemas Campesinos En La Provincia De Sumapaz (Cundinamarca-Colombia), Nelson Enrique Fonseca Carreño

Ciencias Administrativas, Económicas y Contables

La acelerada transformación de los ecosistemas, provocada principalmente por actividades antrópicas como la ganadería extensiva y la agricultura convencional, han contribuido a generar fenómenos como la variabilidad climática, acentuando la pérdida de biodiversidad. Bajo esta premisa, el objetivo del estudio fue identificar y evaluar la percepción de los productores agropecuarios y su interacción con los Servicios Ecosistémicos (se) de provisión en los municipios de Cabrera, Pasca, San Bernardo y Granada ubicados en la provincia de Sumapaz en Cundinamarca, a través de las características socioeconómicas y biofísicas de cada territorio. Para ello, se propone el desarrollo de una metodología basada en …

Event-Related Potentials Of Individuals With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Performing The Attention Network Task, P. Dennis Rodriguez, Justin E. Stauffacher

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

The current study sought to investigate the neural basis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) by examining the performance of individuals with ADHD on the Attentional Networks Test (ANT) by Fan, McCandliss, Sommer, Raz, and Posner (2002), while recording electroencephalography (EEG) utilizing event-related potentials (ERP) methodology. Fifty-seven university students were divided into three groups: control, ADHD-inattentive subtype (ADHD-IA), and ADHD-combined/hyperactive impulsive subtype (ADHD-C/HI). The average peak amplitudes of the P300 waveform for each group were compared and analyzed for performance on each attention network measured by the ANT: the alerting network, the orienting network, and the executive control network. The average P3 …

A Material Stratum: Black Bodies And Environmental Exploitation In Edward P. Jones' The Known World, Julia Woodward

The Quiet Corner Interdisciplinary Journal

This paper seeks to reckon with the entwined realities of black lives, environmental degradation, and the Anthropocene through engagement with Edward P. Jones’ 2003 novel The Known World and Kathryn Yusoff’s recent critical work on the Black Anthropocenes. Yusoff contends that, “Literally stretching black and brown bodies across the seismic fault lines of the earth, Black Anthropocenes subtend White Geology as a material stratum,” (xii). This paper will examine the ways in which Yusoff and Jones are in conversation, and try to elucidate the ways in which the Anthropocene is both built upon and a harbinger of mass death. How …

Echoing Ecopoetics: Fantasy Literature's Background Sounds, Catherine Olver

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Despite David Abram’s fear that reading disrupts people’s “attunement to environing nature,” fantasy literature can vibrantly convey how to hear our environments as it describes characters attuning their ears to particular places. Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom series (1995-2021) and Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking trilogy (2008-10) develop an echoing ecopoetics of place through both world-building and style. Their fantasy worlds emphasize that characters must relearn to listen in unfamiliar environments: adjusting their expectations and interpretations of background sounds, recognising significant silences, adapting to new ways of communicating, and seeking meaning in nonhuman sounds rather than dismissing them as noise. Their stylistic …

Different Maternal Responses And Cognitions In Hypothetical Power Bouts: Relations To Parenting Styles, Kathy L. Ritchie

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

In order to explore how parental styles and maternal cognitions interacted with difficult extended discipline episodes called power bouts, 88 mothers were categorized as either Authoritative, Authoritarian, Permissive, or Uninvolved. Mothers then read six hypothetical vignettes about a 4-year-old child misbehaving and were asked how they would respond to the child and how they would respond a second time if the child did not behave. These open-ended responses were coded on a scale of increasing power assertiveness with 0 being giving in and 5 indicating using punishment through spanking, removal of privilege, or time out. Using Bell and Chapman’s (1986) …

Poems, Kelly Morse

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

Three poems:

• “Snow Sowing”
• “When I Say ‘Geoengineering’ You Say ‘What?'”
• "A Lyft Driver Dreams of Home”

Mass Tourism And The Arctic: The Impacts Of Globalization On Peripheral Communities, Talor Stone

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[First paragraph of Introduction] In the last 20 years, the number of tourists venturing into remote parts of the Arctic has increased dramatically. This rapid growth has shifted the region from a niche expedition destination reserved for hardy explorers to a popular bucket list item luring tourists with the promise of an exotic adventure to be experienced en masse. Although the phenomenon of mass tourism in the Arctic is relatively new, it fits into broader themes of globalization in which today far more people are aware of distant places, interested in global travel, and are able to afford both the …

Writing On Occupied Land, Joëlle Papillon

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[First paragraph] Reading Indigenous poets such as Joséphine Bacon (Innu) and Jean Sioui (Wendat), one is struck by how marvel before “nature” is intertwined with loss and mourning. The experience of loss derives from the interrelated ills of territorial dispossession and environmental destruction caused by settlers’ violent relationship to the land. When reading their verse, we are reminded that today’s Indigenous poets are writing on occupied land. All of us on Turtle Island are writing on occupied land, of course, but it remains easy for settlers to delude ourselves into thinking the land is either everyone’s or rightfully ours. We …

Unearthing Montreal’S Past In Hochelaga, Terre Des Âmes, Marla Epp

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[First paragraph] In his 2017 film, Hochelaga, terre des âmes (Hochelaga, Land of Souls), Québécois filmmaker François Girard delves into the complex history of Montreal. When a sinkhole appears in a football stadium, the site becomes an archaeological dig, led by a Mohawk graduate student at the Université de Montréal. The film tracks the progress of the dig, unearthing layers of history and revealing the stories of the generations of people who lived on the land, including the Indigenous peoples who lived there first.1

Water In Native American Spirituality: Liquid Life—Blood Of The Earth And Life Of The Community, June-Ann Greeley

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[First paragraph] Water: The life force of all creation, the generative dynamism of existence. Long before scientific experimentation and quantifiable instrumentation verified the facts, human beings have perceived and understood water to be the essence of all life, both material and spiritual. From the beginnings of recorded history and even before, across the expanse of human settlement and migration, indigenous as well as extraneous religions and spiritual traditions have celebrated water as the primordial source: water was sacred before it was material and water took on for multitudes of generations until even today an expansive inclusivity that scanned the literal …

Taiwan And The Pacific Islands: Exploring The Green/Blue Possibilities, Fabrizio Bozzato

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[First paragraph] The Pacific Island nations face unique developmental challenges and vulnerability issues that, in some cases, threaten their very existence. The Islands’ political and civil society leaders have recently embraced a vision of inclusive and sustainable development for remodeling their countries’ ‘brown economies’ into people-centered green/blue economies fostering poverty eradication. However, moving to a new socio-economic paradigm is a goal that the Pacific Island countries cannot achieve alone. They need reliable partners with green-tech capability and innovative aid policies. Taiwan is potentially the ideal partner for building a new framework for Pacific islanders and enabling them to reach for …

Solving Our Bread Problem: Gnostic Trends In Environmentalist Thought And Janisse Ray As Solution, Jeremy Elliott

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[First paragraph] One would be hard pressed to find a book more significant to the modern American environmentalist movement than John Muir’s seminal My First Summer in the Sierra. It gathered support for Muir’s fledgling Sierra Club and raised Muir’s national profile as he influenced Teddy Roosevelt on the creation of the National Park Service, thus serving a key role in perhaps the two most influential environmental organizations in the 20th century. Muir’s work is interesting, though, for another reason, as well: the way that Muir deals with the reality of his own physical body. Muir’s body is almost completely …

Vagabond: The Trans-Species Ecologies Of Plant/Human Encounters, Hubert Alain

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[First paragraph] The opening scene of the acclaimed documentary King Corn (2007) shows Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis, main protagonists, learning that corn constitutes one of the main carbon molecules of their hair. Segue to introduce the crop’s omnipresence in North American processed foods, principally used as sweetener, starch and animal feeds, the almost banal scientific fact presented in this scene is mesmerizing, providing a somewhat embodied support to the popular environmentalist saying “you are what you eat,” or to Donna Haraway’s poetic understanding of bodies and species as “full of their own others, full of messmates, of companions” (Haraway …

Language And Power In Social Movements: Hearing All The Voices In Food System Advocacy Narratives, Dianna Winslow

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[From first paragraph] Everyone must eat. It is this immediate and personal connection to food which drives public and scholarly interest in the complex narratives emerging in what is becoming known as the “food movement”—activism on a global scale that is challenging how the industrialized production, distribution and consumption of food is affecting environmental conditions, food sovereignty and security, human health and wellness, and cultural identities. As the number of food advocacy groups promoting different, yet overlapping, public concerns continues to increase, so does the flow of language used by these groups to shape collective identities and political stances, which …

Contemporary Art Exhibitions As Places Of Learning About Reflexive Food System Localization, Andrew Bieler

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[From first paragraph] This paper describes the role of socially engaged art practices in opening up our pedagogical imaginations to foster reflexive and creative approaches to building the local food movement. These contemporary artistic engagements with local food or ‘food system localization’ are in the genre of what has been called social practice artwork or, in other words, art practices that focus less on the production of a singular aesthetic object and more on the relational and experiential aspects of participatory interaction in a creative process (e.g., Kester; Finkerpearl). In this context, I examine social practice artworks that create experimental …

The Creative Arts, Environmental Crises & Well-Being In Globalized Place: Methodological Considerations For An Ecocritical Mode Of Practice-Based Research, Brad Warren, Patrick West

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[From Introduction] Problems pertaining to environmental and ecological well-being are increasingly having effects on a global scale; climate change is the most obvious example of this, but not the only one (the pollution of the oceans and transnational light pollution are others). Our paper argues that individual and community well-being in general, which is always directly or indirectly related to specifically environmental or ecological well-being at the global scale, can be augmented through the introduction of Creative Arts activities and products into local communities.