This dissertation examines the emergence of a discursive regime, which I call “the Anthropocenic Imaginary,” that invokes, instrumentalizes, and distorts the language of the earth sciences to bolster a neoliberal project of depoliticization. In recent years, the Anthropocene, a proposed geologic epoch, in which humanity figures as a planetary force and the planet exists as a human artifact, has become a frequent subject matter within American art and scholarship. It is now common for texts to refer, implicitly or explicitly, to the Earth’s transformation by humanity. This dissertation wagers that the Anthropocene should be understood not only as a geo-scientific descriptor, but also as a troping device, discursive regime, and cultural imaginary, which frames cultural and scholarly productions in a manner that legitimates the political and economic status quo. I argue that, despite appearing to be the product of studies that address the Earth’s anthropogenic modification, this discursive regime is a symptom of neoliberalism, a political, economic, and cultural ideology that schools subjects into privatized modes of being in order to induce acquiescence to the dominance of economic elites. I demonstrate that the discursive regime of the Anthropocenic Imaginary causes recent works of American scholarship, literature, and photography, which seem as though they should incite activism, to become depoliticized. I suggest that the Anthropocenic Imaginary is characterized by the metabolization of disaster, the transmutation of shocking material into something stultifying. I argue that it is possible to interpret the texts that the Anthropocenic Imaginary instrumentalizes otherwise than as legitimations of the status quo, and to bring to light the intractable disaster these works embody. Within this state of disaster, I suggest that it is possible to uncover a politically generative condition of non-normativity, which suggests that the way things are now cannot be made permanent. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This dissertation responds to the advent within American culture of a range of discourses that posit humanity as a world-altering force and the planet as a human artifact. It seeks to answer the following questions: What is it about the present moment that makes the thought that humans are a terrestrial force appealing? Who benefits from the idea that humans are defined by the capacity to act as world-shapers? Against the scholarly consensus, I propose that this idea is not the product of scientific studies that announce the dawn of the Anthropocene, a geologic epoch characterized by anthropogenic modification of the earth system. Rather, I suggest that it is the effect of a discursive regime that I call “the Anthropocenic Imaginary,” which instrumentalizes the vocabulary of the earth sciences to legitimate the dominance of neoliberalism, a political, economic, and cultural ideology, which exerts a depoliticizing influence upon culture and scholarship.

Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake is a speculative fiction novel that has received much analysis since its publication, in particular around its engagement, or non-engagement of the Anthropocene. By contrasting and combining the “dark pastoral” and “deluge narrative” literary tropes, I offer a new method of reading Oryx and Crake which explores the distorted fantasies at the heart of the novel’s events. This reading is centred around the character of Crake, whose seemingly sociopathic train of thought becomes almost palatable through the viewpoint of Anthropocenic “deep-time”, and whose actions serve to realise humanity’s pastoral dreams in the physical world. By studying together the double-layered ironies of the dark pastoral and the mythological elements that shape most deluge stories, Atwood’s work reveals itself as deeply relevant to the contemporary novel’s ability to engage with the Anthropocene, and as such, also to our own.

abstract: Public awareness of nature and environmental issues has grown in the last decades and zoos have successfully followed suit by re-branding themselves as key representatives for conservation. However, considering the fast rate of environmental degradation, in the near future, zoos may become the only place left for wildlife. Some scholars argue that we have entered a new epoch titled the “Anthropocene” that postulates the idea that untouched pristine nature is almost nowhere to be found. Many scientists and scholars argue that it is time that we embraced this environmental situation and anticipated the change. Clearly, the impact of urbanization is reaching into the wild, so how can we design for animals in our artificializing world? Using the Manoa School method that argues that every future includes these four, generic, alternatives: growth, discipline, collapse, and transformation , this dissertation explores possible future animal archetypes by considering multiple possibilities of post zoo design. / Dissertation/Thesis / Historical Zoo timeline / Doctoral Dissertation Design, Environment and the Arts 2019

Since the Industrial Revolution at the end of the 18th century, anthropogenic changes in the environment have shifted from the local to the global scale. Even remote environments such as the high Arctic are vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Similarly, anthropogenic mercury (Hg) has had a global reach because of atmospheric transport and deposition far from emission point sources. Whereas some effects of climate change are visible through melting permafrost, or toxic effects of Hg at higher trophic levels, the often-invisible changes in microbial community structures and functions have received much less attention. With recent and drastic warming-related changes in Arctic watersheds, previously uncharacterized phylogenetic and functional diversity in the sediment communities might be lost forever. The main objectives of my thesis were to uncover how microbial community structure, functional potential and the evolution of mercury specific functions in lake sediments in northern latitudes (>54ºN) are affected by increasing temperatures and Hg deposition. To address these questions, I examined environmental DNA from sediment core samples and high-throughput sequencing to reconstruct the community composition, functional potential, and evolutionary responses to historical Hg loading. In my thesis I show that the microbial community in Lake Hazen (NU, Canada) sediments is structured by redox gradients and pH. Furthermore, the microbes in this phylogenetically diverse community contain genomic features which might represent adaptations to the cold and oligotrophic conditions. Finally, historical Hg pollution from anthropogenic sources has likely affected the evolution of microbial Hg resistance and this deposition can be tracked using sediment DNA on the Northern Hemisphere. My thesis underscores the importance of using culture-independent methods to reconstruct the structure, functional potential and evolution of environmental microbial communities.

La présente thèse a pour ambition d’interroger les fondements de la protection de la nature à l’ère de l’anthropocène. Le postulat de départ est que l’incapacité à répondre aux enjeux écologiques reflète les contradictions de l’ontologie naturaliste, laquelle s’est imposée comme la conception hégémonique des rapports entre humains et non humains (Descola 2005). L’argumentaire repose sur une analyse critique des politiquesdéveloppées dans un territoire emblématique du naturalisme : l’archipel des Galapagos (Équateur). Lieu fondateur des sciences naturelles, il représente l’archétype le plus abouti des figures, elles-mêmes archétypales, de l’île-laboratoire et de l’île-conservatoire. Il abrite depuis 1959 un parc national couvrant 97% des terres émergées et depuis 1998 une réserve marine parmi les plus vastes au monde. Archipel tropical le mieux conservé du monde, c’est aussi celui qui connaît la dégradation écologique la plus rapide (Snell et al. 2002). Les territoires protégés ont servi de support au développement d’un tourisme de naturequi a enclenché une intégration croissante des îles à l’économie-monde et au reste de l’espace équatorien, rompant ainsi brutalement l’isolement géographique qui garantissait leur intégrité écologique (Grenier 2000). Le tourisme a surtout été le moteur d’une croissance économique et démographique ayant engendré une rapide anthropisation des enclaves peuplées et une profonde transformation de l’espace archipélagique. Bref, les Galapagos représentent un condensé, dans le temps et l’espace, des logiques ayant conduit à entrer dans anthropocène.La thèse propose d’aborder, à travers l’exemple des Galapagos, les enjeux environnementaux de notre époque par une approche renouvelée de la géographie. Fondée comme la science des relations entre les sociétés et leur environnement, cette discipline a été une victime tardive du grand partage entre Nature et Culture se matérialisant actuellement, à propos des questions environnementales, par un tiraillement entre une géographie naturaliste et une géographie du naturalisme. Le présent travail esquisse une voie alternative à ce dualisme en posant les bases d’une géo-graphie de l’anthropocène, c’est-à-dire une étude conjointe des empreintes humaines sur terre et des récits que les acteurs et les sociétés construisent autour de celles-ci. La première partie traite successivement du rôle des territoires insulaires dans l’émergence et l’évolution des politiques de conservation, de la progressive naturalisation des Galapagos et du cadre théorique et méthodologique qui a guidé l’analyse. La deuxième partie montre comment l’ouverture géographique impulsée par l’essor du tourisme de nature a propulsé l’archipel dans l’anthropocène, mettant ainsi à l’épreuve le modèle conservationniste. La dernière partie s’intéresse à la manière dont la nature et le fait insulaire participent à l’affirmation d’un sentiment identitaire (Ospina Peralta 2001) et à des logiques multiformes et multiscalaires l’insularisation entraînant une archipellisation des Galapagos. / The emergence of the conservation movement in the late XIXth century in North America turned natural protected areas into a privileged tool for preserving the living. Designed in the first place as islands of nature shielded from human hold,they were progressively integrated in the 1970s to global environmental policies aiming at reconciling conservation and development. Such a dynamics both led to the increase and diversification of protected areas. However, until now, the development of those structures did not prevent from stopping the reduction of biodiversity, a paradoxical situation that isapplying to all the ecological issues. In spite of a strong global environmental consciousness and an increase of actions, measures and environment-oriented policies, we would have entered into a new epoch characterized by the general and irreversible mark of human activities on the earth : the Anthropocene (Crutzen et Stoermer 2000).This thesis aims at questioning the foundations of nature protection in the Anthropocene era. The starting postulate is that the incapacity to meet environmental issues reflects the contradictions of the naturalist ontology which stood out as thehegemonic conception of the relationships between humans and non-humans (Descola 2005). The argumentation is based on a critical analysis of the policies developed in a territory which is quite emblematic of naturalism, i.e. the Galapagos Archipelago in Ecuador. Being a founding place of natural sciences, it represents the most accomplished archetype of the figures (themselves very archetypical) of the laboratory-island or theconservatory-island. Since 1959, the Galapagos have been sheltering national park covering 97% of the land areas and since 1998 a marine reserve, which is among the largest in the world. As the best-preserved tropical archipelago on earth, it also is the place where the environment deteriorates most rapidly (Snell et al. 2002). The protected areas were used to develop a nature-based tourism leading to an increasing integration of the islands to the world-economy and the rest of the Ecuadorian territory, thus breaking up brutally the geographical isolation that was securing their ecological integrity (ibid.). Above all, tourism was the driving force of the demographic and economic growth, which led to a quick anthropization of populated enclaves and a deep change of the archipelago’s space. In other words, the Galapagos can be seen as a concentrate, in time and space, of the logics leading to the Anthropocene.Through the example of the Galapagos, the thesis deals with the environmental issues of our epoch in order to propose a renewed approach of geography. This discipline, originally founded as the science of the relationships between societies and their environment, was later victim of the great share between Nature and Culture, whichpresently expresses itself by conflicts between a naturalist geography and a geography about naturalism. The present research suggest an alternative way to such a dualism and sets down the bases of a geography of the Anthropocene, i.e. a joint study of the human marks on the earth and the narratives that stakeholders and societies produce about them. The first part successively tackles the role played by insular territories in building conservation policies, the progressive naturalization of the Galapagos and the theoretical and methodological framework conducting our analysis. The second part deals with the way the geographical opening threw the archipelago into the Anthropocene, thus challenging conservation policies. The third part shows how nature and the insular issues pertain to multiform and multiscalar logics, leading to the archipelization of the Galapagos.

abstract: From Frankenstein to District 9: Ecocritical Readings of Classic and Contemporary Fiction and Film demonstrates how American studies methodologies, ecological literary criticism, and environmental justice theory provide both time-tested and new analytical tools for reading texts from transnational perspectives. Recently, American literary scholars have been responding to calls for collective interdisciplinary response to widening social disparities and species collapses caused by climate change in the new epoch recently being termed "the anthropocene." In response, I analyze canonical texts, such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World in juxtaposition with Neill Blomkamp's South African science fiction thriller District 9 and contemporary US American novels such as Toni Morrison's Sula, William Faulkner's "The Bear" in Go Down, Moses and Richard Power's Generosity and The Echo Maker, to show how writers, filmmakers, and academics have been calling attention to dramatic climate events that consequently challenge the public to rethink the relationships among human beings to other species, and to ecological systems of low predictability, high variability, and frequent extremes. Rather than focusing solely on the "human," I examine how the relationships and livelihoods of multi-species communities shape and are shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces. As a whole, this dissertation seeks to make abstract, often intangible global patterns and concepts accessible by providing models for what I call "readings in the anthropocene" or re-readings of classic and contemporary texts and film that offer insights into changing human behavior and suggesting alternative management practices of local and global commons as well as opportunities to imagine how to live in and beyond the anthropocene. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2015

This paper explores the historical and contemporary situation of waterways in Los Angeles. It examines the birth and growth of metropolitan LA and contrasts this narrative with the current and pressing issues of drought and gentrification. This contrast raises the question of the sustainability of human growth in resource-scarce regions. From this analysis it forwards a nuanced perspective of the hypothesis that the dynamics of environmental degradation in the LA region threaten human growth. It suggests that this degradation comes as a result of egocentric human development projects by the elite. This paper examines all of this through the lens of a creative body of work. The body of work consists of a series of four large paintings. It discusses the artist’s inspiration and process of creation, as well as the influence of neo-expressionism and various contemporary artists on the work. It concludes with a consideration of where to go next with the series of paintings in order to address the issue of environmental degradation further.

Drawing on traditions of cultural geography and creativity, the environmental humanities, and critical geographic theory, this dissertation includes five articles that develop geopoetics as a sub-field of the geohumanities. It sketches the contours of three modes of geopoetics: as creative geography, as literary geography, and as geophilosophy. Through site-based projects at three Sonoran Desert ecological research and tourism sites, it furthers the use of artistic and literary practice in geohumanities research, employs that practice to interrogate climate change and Anthropocene narratives, and addresses the role of art and literature in environmental issues. In addition, it utilizes the development and teaching of a community course on climate change and poetry as an additional "site" of research, to illustrate the role of arts and humanities approaches to global environmental change. Drawing on the content of the climate change and poetry course, it also includes a close reading of the work of five contemporary Indigenous ecopoets in relation to climate narratives. This dissertation proposes that geopoetics, literally "earth-making," is broadly relevant to questions of socio-ecological futures and is a means to imagine and enact other ways of inhabiting the world.

No description available.

Thesis advisor: Jeremy D. Shakun / Glaciers in the tropics have retreated over recent decades, but whether the magnitude of this retreat has exceeded the bounds of past Holocene fluctuations is unclear. In this study, we measure cosmogenic 10Be and 14C concentrations from recently exposed bedrock at the margin of five glaciers in the tropical Andes, including four small glaciers and the Quelccaya Ice Cap, the world’s largest tropical ice mass. Concentrations at the Quelccaya Ice Cap margin suggest there was extended exposure during the first half of the Holocene, but that the site was covered by ice for the last 5 kyr. In contrast, nuclide concentrations are strikingly low in all samples at the margins of the four small glaciers, equivalent to ~200 years of 14C and 50 years of 10Be accumulation at surface production rates. These data suggest that the small tropical glaciers are now smaller than they have been at any point during the Holocene, whereas the Quelccaya Ice Cap has not yet retreated to its smallest extent of the Holocene, likely due to its larger size and slower response time. / Thesis (MS) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Earth and Environmental Sciences.