Environmental Studies Commons^™

Jesus And Trees: From Separation To Connection, Mark Zschocke

Consensus

This essay was written for the course “TH530A-A: God and Theological Reflection,” taught by Mary (Joy) Philip at Martin Luther University College, Fall 2025.

Wounds That Mend: Rebecca Belmore’S Fringe And The Healing Of The Earth And Body, Muznah Moiz

Consensus

This essay was written for the course “TH530A-A: God and Theological Reflection,” taught by Mary (Joy) Philip at Martin Luther University College, Fall 2025.

Embracing The Earth: Reconnecting With Nature Through Spirituality, Art, And Climate Justice, Mais Haj-Ayoub

Consensus

This essay was written for the course “TH530A-A: God and Theological Reflection,” taught by Mary (Joy) Philip at Martin Luther University College, Fall 2025.

One Earth Community: Navigating The Challenges Of Our Time, Akpezi Ogbuigwe

Consensus

No abstract provided.

Communities Of Caring: A Jewish Response To The Earth Charter, Bill S. Tepper

Consensus

No abstract provided.

Teaching Global Partnership And Responsibility Using The Earth Charter, M. Beth Mccutcheon

Consensus

No abstract provided.

Shaping Pedagogy And Praxis: The Earth Charter In The Classroom And Community, Debbie Lou Ludolph

Consensus

No abstract provided.

The Virtue Of Water: Daoist Ecological Wisdom In Fan Kuan’S Travelers Among Mountains And Streams, Juliet Zhao

Consensus

This essay was written for the course “TH530A-A: God and Theological Reflection,” taught by Mary (Joy) Philip at Martin Luther University College, Fall 2025.

Colonial Whaling In Walvis Bay And In Southern Africa: Environmental Exploitation And Legacy Of South Africa’S Cetaceans, Jake L. Zarak

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

This paper examines the colonial whaling industry in Southern Africa, with a focus on Walvis Bay, tracing its long term environmental and socio-economic impacts. From the 1700s to the 1900s, whaling operations, primarily led by American, British, and French enterprises, exploited the region’s rich populations of sperm and right whales, drastically reducing their numbers. The study contextualizes whaling within a broader colonial framework, analyzing its effects on whale migratory patterns, indigenous communities, and marine ecosystems. It explores as well, the transition from whaling as an economic endeavor to modern conservation efforts and the romanticization of whales in literature and art. …

Writing From The Rift: Queer Temporality And The Refusal Of Resolution, Daniela Ruiz Perez

Masters Theses

This thesis develops a phenomenological method for reading speculative literature as a site where queer ecological temporality is experienced rather than explained. Working with Annihilation (2014) by Jeff VanderMeer, The Day of the Triffids (1951) by John Wyndham, and Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals (2020) by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, the project treats reading as a bodily practice shaped by forms of attention. Texts are not interpreted for stable meaning and instead I remain with moments where resolution is withheld. The work is informed by a Marxist attention to how capitalist time organizes labor, productivity, and value, and how …

A Photographic Exploration Of Humboldt's Coastal Lagoons, Aldaron Laird

Trade & Scholarly Monographs

This visually stunning book shows the same meticulous artistry that Aldaron displayed when depicting Wigi, but it shows places so different from Humboldt Bay that they seem to be of a different world. And in a sense they are, for the imprints of modern Humboldt County are here much less frequent and far, far gentler. Instead, we see the land of the Coastal Yuroks, which in many places is little changed from what it was like before the arrival of the Whites a hundred and seventy-five years ago. The only buildings we see are those of the traditional Yurok style, …

Repairing Estranged Death: Care, Politics And Ecology In The Us Funeral Industry, Cecilia Catherine Rodriguez

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The industrialization of death practices in the US has separated humanity from natural cycles while centering white settler colonial norms that marginalize other cultural ways of caring for the dead. Through necropolitics, the contemporary death industry embodies capitalist values of commodification and a monopolization of care, separating death from community and its ecological cycles. Black and Indigenous feminist knowledges understand death as not a discrete event but instead as an ongoing process that shapes our relationships with both the human and more-than-human worlds. Engaging with feminist political ecologies, I extend a conversation about care and repair to contemporary death practices …

Envisioning The Role Of Community-Owned Stores & Aligning Federal Food Policies: A Participatory Approach To Food Security And Food Sovereignty In Sambaa K’E, Denendeh (Northwest Territories, Canada), Narayan Subramoniam

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Northern Indigenous communities have relied on traditional food systems for meaningful, nutritious diets since time immemorial. But many Indigenous communities in remote northern regions of Canada still face disproportionately elevated levels of food insecurity due to climate change radically altering the availability for traditional foods, colonial food policies imposing Western diets, and the high costs of transporting store-bought foods. Extreme weather events such as wildfires further isolate fly-in remote communities increasing both the costs of transporting store-bought foods and the difficulties of harvesting traditional foods. There are many examples of community-based initiatives for supporting traditional and locally grown foods, however, …

Lake As Body: Ecofeminism And Animacy At The Great Salt Lake, Shae Barber

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Water shapes cultural, social, and ecological systems. Yet, dominant economic, political, and academic frameworks often treat water as a backdrop or passive resource, ignoring it as an active participant in meaning-making and relationship-building. Viewing water as “nonliving” obscures how it participates in and co-creates relationships, limiting understanding about impacts of and responses to climate change and environmental degradation.

This thesis takes a mixed-methods and participatory approach including semi-structured interview, photovoice, and participatory mapping to examine relational practices between environmental advocates and the Great Salt Lake, a desiccating saline lake in Utah, U.S. As the lake continues to decline, dominant Western …

A Psychogeography Of The Lower Colorado River Basin, Arren L. Kimbel-Sannit

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Dried-up canals. Superheated strip malls. Proliferating data centers. Infinite appetite for growth despite its apparent circumstances. Arizona may well be the state of the American future. This multi-genre series of essays from Arren Kimbel-Sannit offers a personal, political-economic and ecological critique of growth and accumulation in Arizona — from the perspective of someone who grew up in its suburban expanses, reported on its politics, and long sought to clarify his relationship with home.

Indigenous Land Seizure & Environmental Injustice: Impacts Of Settler Colonialism, Lydia Moorman

Journal of Earth and Life Science

The fields of conservation and environmentalism prioritize ecosystem health, yet both emerged from western frameworks that displaced and criminalized Indigenous land stewardship. The idealization of “pristine wilderness” narratives served to justify the removal of Indigenous peoples from their homelands and erased millennia of sustainable land stewardship that had maintained ecological balance long before western conservation existed. These narratives not only misrepresented Indigenous relationship with land but also constructed a false dichotomy between humans and nature that positioned Indigenous presence as a threat rather than a source of ecological knowledge. Simultaneously, anthropogenic expansion; such as pipelines, mining, railroads, and other extractive …

Doikayt And The Ethics Of Belonging: Lessons In Place-Making From The Jewish Labor Bund, Zoë L. Jacobs

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis traces the evolution of doikayt—the Bundist principle of hereness—from its origins in the Jewish Labor Bund to contemporary applications in North America. Rooted in a refusal of both assimilation and nationalist escape, doikayt emphasizes cultivating safety, solidarity, and belonging through collective responsibility rather than territorial claims.

Building on this foundation, the exploration situates hereness within a settler-colonial context, where ethical dwelling is complicated by Indigenous dispossession. Drawing on Alexis Shotwell alongside Indigenous thinkers Vanessa Watts and Kyle Whyte, I examine how inhabiting place requires confronting historical injustices and ongoing relational responsibilities. Chapter 3 analyzes Linke Fligl (2016–2022) as …

An Indigenous Sovereign Approach: Developmental Strategies And Guidelines For The Berger-Patawomeck Preserve Trail Network, Lauren N. Usher

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

This planning document serves the Patawomeck Tribe's cultural, environmental, and sovereign needs by providing research and recommendations to sustainably steward ancestral lands through integrated Indigenous and Western practices. The plan adapts sustainable design strategies to guide trail maintenance and activities within the Berger-Patawomeck Preserve, examining Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) alongside Western practices. A decolonized, sovereign lens guided the mixed research methods drawing on legal, regulatory, planning, and ethical frameworks to strengthen tribal health, education, and sovereignty. The research explores local ecology, Indigenous culture, and implementational strategies. The ecological findings document the Preserve's sensitive resources, including the Coastal Piedmont transition zone, …

Complexity Theory And Environmental Conservation Management: A Case Study With Coyote And Red Wolf Hybridization, Gretchen E. Mahalic

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Conservation biology and invasion biology are value-led scientific disciplines founded on environmental advocacy, operating at the intersection of research and action. Though these disciplines are known for their scientific veracity, unexamined values are often promulgated without scrutiny and drive decisions that work against good ecological outcomes. A case in point is that coyotes migrating into southeastern territory are framed as the greatest threat to the conservation of the endangered red wolf because hybridization is seen as diminishing their species integrity. Applying Val Plumwood’s ecofeminist account of dualistic frameworks, I will use this case to show how the vilification of the …

Black Ecological Care: Conservation, Environmental Justice, And Sovereignty In Baltimore, Maryland, Alexandria Nicole Casteel

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Dominant traditions of urban planning, municipal policy, and environmental science register Black urban spaces through a vocabulary of pathology, as sites of ecological deficit, contamination, and social decay. This dissertation investigates how Black communities in U.S. cities attend to the environment in ways that address legacies of environmental and social injustice while opening pathways toward different environmental futures. I gather these practices under the analytic of Black ecological care, which captures the generative labor of making and maintaining livable worlds within, alongside, and beyond histories of harm. I develop the analytic across twenty-nine months of ethnographic fieldwork in 2021 and …

Cultivating Diversity In Sustainable Food Systems: Black Farming And Lived Experience In Rural Southern Ontario, Kadeem Jerofy Morgan-Adamson Mr.

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This research examines the lived experiences of Black food growers in rural Southern Ontario to understand how their perspectives challenge dominant narratives of rurality and inform broader discussions on food sovereignty in Canada. Grounded in postcolonial theory, the study highlights how historical dispossession and persistent inequities shape the access of Black communities to land and resources. Using a mixed-methods approach that includes surveys, semi-structured interviews, and reflexive journaling within a community-based research framework, the study documents the barriers Black food growers face. These include limited land access, insufficient funding, inadequate training pathways, and experiences of racial isolation in rural contexts. …

Heart Of Stone: Geomorphization Through Stone-Oriented Affects, Grace F. Foster

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis draws from the work of geologist Marcia Bjornerud to bring a scientific (specifically geologic) understanding of humanity’s relationship to our home planet to bear in a literary context. I employ Bjornerud’s term “geomorphization” to expand from inter-species kinship to inter-substance kinship and to establish stone as an active, lively subject without relying on anthropomorphization. Geomorphization as I define it refers to recognizing similarity between ourselves and stone/Earth on the basis of our stoniness rather than stone’s human-ness. Geomorphizing ourselves entails what Bjornerud calls “timefulness,” a geologic perspective on temporality that sees the past as continually acting in the …

The Non-Reciprocity Of Cultural-Ecological Resilience In Eastern Sumba, B. Retang Wohangara

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya

Resilience is one key concept of culture and ecology. It highlights a particular system's adaptive and thriving capacities in facing various challenges. This research-based article investigates the reciprocity of cultural-ecological resilience in three traditional communities in Eastern Sumba. It starts with the examination of cultural resilience and ecological resilience using five and seven qualitative indicators, respectively. The last part of the discussion analyzes how culture and ecology reciprocate in the given communities. The research employs a descriptive qualitative method. Data are collected by conducting mini-ethnographic field research for interviews, documentation, and focus group discussions. Using the five and seven indicators …

Artificial Intelligence As A Catalyst For Systemic Sport Ecology, Ugo Arbieu, Laís Carneiro, Sonia Tieo, Franck Courchamp

Journal of Applied Sport Management

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping both sport management and environmental science, yet these developments have largely evolved in parallel. AI can serve not merely as a technical tool but also as a catalyst for systemic sport ecology, a field that integrates sport, digital innovation and environmental sustainability. Advances in discriminative, generative and agentic AI enable the synthesis of complex ecological and sport-related data, improving monitoring, forecasting, resource efficiency, policy design, and decision-making across scales. In doing so, AI offers a pathway beyond fragmented sustainability interventions and can support holistic approaches to the interconnected crises of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity …

Kalunga Crossings: Waterscapes Of Terror And "Teachment" In The African Atlantic World, Dianne M. Stewart, Tracey E. Hucks, Solimar Otero

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

In this article, we think alongside historian of religions Charles H. Long to analyze the relationship between water and empire, explore theoretical approaches to water and modernity, and probe the significance of water in Africana ecologies and spiritual cultures, highlighting its suggestive contributions to restorative epistemologies of ecological co-habitation. Our investigation advances an Africana religious framework of “waterscapes of terror and ‘teachment’” that centers diaspora bodies of water as loci for analyzing history, materiality, and ecological regard. Teachment is an anti-colonial linguistic irruption, an all-encompassing term for Africana pedagogies and epistemologies that defy antiblack and anti-African colonial instruction. Examining how …

Music And Sustainable Development Goals: Telling The Story, Mark Reimer

Journal of Global Awareness

Now, 10 years after the United Nations adopted its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, the music profession continues to work toward being a responsible partner in the health and preservation of the planet and its inhabitants. By transcending social barriers, music promotes cultural awareness and mutual understanding, encourages creativity, and enhances emotional well-being, outcomes vital to the global goals of health, freedom, peace, education, equality, prosperity, and environmental sustainability. The article includes various examples of how music performers, educators, composers, and scholars are creating or adopting new practices that are mindful of reducing the carbon footprint, yet financially feasible in their …

Notes From The Editor, Jay Nathan

Journal of Global Awareness

No abstract provided.

Letter From The Editor, Jay Nathan

Journal of Global Awareness

No abstract provided.

Mountain Communities During A Time Of War: A Case Study Of The Hutsul Region In The Carpathian Mountains Of Ukraine, Pavlo Rybaruk

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the ethno-ecological technologies employed by the Hutsul people within the highland agrarian economy of the Carpathian Mountains. Over centuries, the Hutsuls have developed ethno-ecological technologies that maintain ecological integrity while supporting community livelihoods.

The study addresses three primary research questions: What are the most important ethno-ecological technologies of the Hutsul highland economy? How might these traditional ethno-ecological practices be applied to economic, agricultural, and tourism development in the Hutsul region? How might these traditional ethno-ecological practices be combined with contemporary approaches to encourage sustainable development in the region?

The research explores the devastating impact of the Russian …

Environmental Beliefs Among Evangelical Leadership, Jeffrey Stark

Dissertations

There has been consensus among climate scientists for over a decade about the reality of human caused climate change. Even with this consensus, the public understanding of this issue remains divided based on factors generally unrelated to the science. Evangelical Protestants are one group which consistently polls as more skeptical of climate change. This is true not only when compared to the general population but also when compared to other religious demographics. Most large-scale surveys of evangelicals assume the demographic to be a monolith and do not attempt to break the demographic down further. In this mixed methods study, we …