<p>This dissertation is an attempt to explain art in the 21st century by an artist/researcher. It is a theoretical writing on art informed by current discourses that influence art such as science and technology. There are two goals of this project. The first one is to understand art’s cultural role in the age of the anthropocene. What is the anthropocene? How does art’s role in society change in this particular geological epoch (following Crutzen’s definition), compared to for instance Holocene? This brings us to the second goal of my project. To better understand art’s role in society, can we benefit from a theory of art, that could present an insight on the dynamics within an artistic experience? What are the current tools and tendencies that can help form such a theory of art? Which fields can contribute to such an understanding?</p><p>As an instance of artistic research practice which involves both academic research and art practice, I will be using art projects as case studies to reach these goals. Case studies will consist of my own projects as well as projects by other artists who had been working on similar topics such as Edward Burtynsky, Chris Jordan, Louis Bec, Trevor Paglen, Patricia Piccinini and Lynn Hershmann to name a few. From Timothy Morton to Mackenzie Wark to Donna Haraway cultural theorists of our time, highlight the fact that there is a need for a cultural theory that can attend to what we might call the anthropocene. What is the contribution of art for such a theory? Or can art be instrumental in building a cultural theory at all? My dissertation offers a multi-disciplinary argument for the need to address such questions . Starting from art’s roots in biology and extending to what we might call our biological imagination, the dissertation focuses on art’s connection to biology to initiate a formula for art in the age of the anthropocene.</p> / Dissertation

Environmental pressures such as natural disasters, resource scarcity, and conflict related to climate change have emphasized the importance of considering social justice within its ecological context. Gender inequality is one type of injustice that has traditionally been addressed as a social matter, yet gendered divisions in bargaining power, mobility, and access to resources are exacerbated by environmental instability. One barrier to gender equity in the face of a changing climate is the mainstream economic paradigm, which promotes growth and individualism, often at the cost of environmental and social wellbeing. The issue of gender inequality in the Anthropocene, the proposed geological epoch highlighting human impact of earth systems, is explored here in three parts. The first section identifies opportunities for feminist and ecological economics to assimilate notions of justice in mainstream economic thought. The second considers dynamics of gender equality through an econometric analysis of macroeconomic effects of traditionally female-dominated unpaid care work. Finally, the third part investigates national progress toward the maternal mortality reduction target set in the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals and proposes a gendered perspective for the newly implemented Sustainable Development Goals. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of policy implications for national and international development institutions as they seek to improve gender equity in diverse social and ecological contexts.

Novembre 1988, la création du GIEC médiatise, institutionnalise, légitimise l’idée d’une « crise environnementale » et se propose d’en prendre la mesure. Les années 1990 et 2000 sont ponctuées d’événements politiques souvent mondiaux, qui participent à faire, de ce que l’on appellera alors le développement durable, une question sociétale majeure. Comment ce récit sur l’écologie pénètre-t-il le milieu de l’architecture ? Quel champ lexical convoque-t-il ? Quels acteurs s’emparent-ils de ce sujet ? Quelles institutions portent ces thèmes et vers quelles directions ? Quelle influence a-t-il sur la production architecturale française ?L’ambition de cette recherche est de comprendre la généalogie du récit écologiste dans le milieu de l’architecture, des questions réglementaires et énergétiques des années 1990 au changement de paradigme qui s’opère à la fin des années 2000, notamment avec l’émergence de la thèse de l’anthropocène / November 1988 the establishment of the IPCC mediates, institutionalized, legitimized the idea of an "environmental crisis" and intends to take the measurement. The 1990s and 2000s are often punctuated by global political events, participating to do, what we then called sustainable development, a major societal issue. How he gets this story on ecology the architectural environment? What lexical field he summons? Which actors do they seize it? What institutions are these themes and to which directions? What influence he has on the French architectural?The aim of this research is to understand the genealogy of the environmental story in the architectural environment, regulatory and energy issues in the 1990s paradigm shift taking place in the late 2000s, especially with the emergence the thesis of the Anthropocene

The tension inherent in the Anthropocene is the tension between what is rendered (in)visible, and what attempts to be made visible. It is, in this sense, a conflict of ontology and aesthetics: ghosts flutter around us, in and out of our dimension (Bourriaud, 2016; Morton, 2013), and, as Poe would say, “man” is being driven mad by the heartbeats heard through the floorboards. This study addresses two main ideas: (a) that it is the modern subject that is the anthropos of the Anthropocene, and (b) that we must further conceptualise claims about the ‘end of the world’ (Morton, 2013). Ultimately, however, both these claims are intimately linked: the ‘subject’ and the ‘world’ in modernity cannot be separated from each other, and are indeed part of the same process (Mbembe, 2003). Thus, the central argument herein is that the Anthropocene should be viewed as a threshold (Clark, 2016; Haraway, 2015) to an epoch (namely, modernity) rather than the start of a new one. To this end, what is at its ‘end’ or threshold then, is the modern subject, and the ‘world’ that it inhabited. We are faced with the utter abyss of the negative (Sinnerbrink, 2016). The sixth extinction is imminent, and a whole host of morbid repercussions of making-world (Mbembe, 2003) are creeping towards us (Morton, 2013). Ultimately, we must reckon with absence. But what does this mean? How are we to perceive and think about this lack? This study aims to address this problem, arguing that we now face the presence of absence, rather than the absence of presence. Indeed, we must seek a new aesthetics of absence. / Graduate

L’érosion des sols est reconnue comme l’un des principaux facteurs à l’origine de la dégradation physico-chimique des environnements aquatiques. Ce phénomène, bien que largement décrit dans des régions topographiquement contrastées, reste, pour les régions de plaine agricole très peu détaillé en dépit d’une connectivité optimale entre les sources de matière et les masses d’eau. Dans ce contexte, nous avons développé une approche intégrée multi-paramètres permettant de retracer la cascade sédimentaire sur une plaine agricole drainée (bassin du Louroux : 47.16°N – 0.78°E) en partant des sources de matière jusqu’à leur accumulation dans un réceptacle sédimentaire, l’étang médiéval du Louroux. Dans les objectifs initiaux, il s’agissait (i) de quantifier à long (<60 ans) et court terme (<10 ans) l’évolution de la dynamique érosive en lien avec les perturbations anthropiques (remembrement, mise en place de réseaux de drainage, fossés), (ii) de tracer l’origine des sédiments transitant dans les cours d’eau (iii) et d’identifier les modali-tés de départs de la matière au niveau des berges. / Soil erosion is identified as one of the main factors influencing the physico-chemical degradation of the aquatic environments. This phenomenon has been largely described on contrasted topographic areas but there is a gap of knowledge about sediment mobilization/transfer in lowland areas despite the high connectivity level between the potential sources of sediment and the water bodies. In this context we have implemented an integrated multi-parameter approach allowing to track the sediment dynamics in a drained lowland area (the Louroux pond catchment: 47.16°N – 0.78°E) by starting from the sources of sediment to their accumulation in a sedimentary receptacle: the middle-age Louroux pond. The aims of this study are (i) to quantify at long (approx. 60 years) and short time scales (<10 years) the evolution of the erosion rate in the hillslope in link with the increase of the anthropogenic pressures (land consolidation, implementation of the drain network, ditches design), (ii) to track the origin of sediment reaching the pond, (iii) to identify and quantify the parameters influencing bank erosion, that is one of the main source of sediment transfers.

Through the filters of postcolonial theory, environmental humanities, and digital humanities, this project considers the capabilities and limitations of novels to galvanize action in response to environmental crises. My findings suggest that novels are well equipped to engage in environmental education, although some of the form’s conventions must be disrupted to fully capitalize upon its strengths. The modern novel is conventionally limited in scope, often resorts to apocalyptic narratives that can breed hopelessness, is dedicated to a form of realism that belies the dramatic weather events exacerbated by climate change, defers authority to a single voice, and is logocentric. By supplementing conventional novels with a variety of paratexts, including digital tools, scientific findings, non-fiction accounts of past, present, and future activism, and authorial biography, it is my contention that the novel’s potency as a pedagogical tool increases. After addressing this project’s stakes and contexts in my Introduction, Chapter II assesses three South Asian novels in English that are concerned with sustainable development: Bhabani Bhattacharya’s Shadow from Ladakh, Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine, and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger. I conclude by considering how StoryMaps might further disrupt pro-sustainable development propaganda alongside more traditional novels. Chapter III examines how explicitly activist South Asian novelists construct authorial personae that propose additional solutions to the environmental problems identified in their novels, focusing on Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide and Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People. Chapter IV coins the term “locus-colonial novel,” a novel that decenters the human, situating place at the fulcrum of a work of historical fiction, using Hari Kunzru’s Gods without Men as one exemplar. I examine Kunzru’s novel alongside promotional materials for planned Mars missions to consider how narratives of colonialism on Earth might lead to a more socially and environmentally sustainable colonial model for Mars. Chapter V introduces the concept of a digital locus-colonial novel that allows users to develop informed, environmentally focused scenarios for colonial Mars. Through these chapters, this dissertation identifies specific rhetorical techniques that allow conscientious novels to create imaginative spaces where readers might explore solutions to the social, economic, and increasingly environmental problems facing human populations worldwide.

This thesis examines Darren Aronofsky's 2014 film Noah as a pattern for metafictionalizing narratives into thinking stories as we confront the uncertainty and challenges of the Anthropocene. While Ecocriticism has sought for the development and promotion of nature writing and environmentally oriented poetry and fiction- "new stories" that will shape a stronger environmental ethic"”it has placed too much responsibility for the environmental imagination on what we read rather than on the more important question of how we read. My argument addresses the readerly responsibilities that, if met, have the power to transform old stories and old habits of mind into environmentally relevant attitudes and behaviors. The search for new stories, in other words, although important, has tended to understate the responsibility of the reader to make stories new and to read them as cosmologies that pertain to our contemporary situation. What is needed are new ways to read and engage with stories, new reading methods to metaphorize narratives themselves, making them metafictional even when they are not. Now, in an age of climate change and environmental degradation, it is time for us to think about stories in relation to our role as protagonists in the story of the earth, imagining new possibilities and actively accepting our role of writing our story anew. I hope to demonstrate that this type of aggressive reading of even popular culture (often regarded as mainstream, or "œthoughtless" stories) can mine the necessary insights to reexamine humanity's relationship with the earth and its inhabitants.

abstract: Human endeavors move 7x more volume of earth than the world’s rivers accelerating the removal of Earth’s soil surface. Measuring anthropogenic acceleration of soil erosion requires knowledge of natural rates through the study of 10Be, but same-watershed comparisons between anthropogenically-accelerated and natural erosion rates do not exist for urbanizing watersheds. Here I show that urban sprawl from 1989 to 2013 accelerated soil erosion between 1.3x and 15x above natural rates for different urbanizing watersheds in the metropolitan Phoenix region, Sonoran Desert, USA, and that statistical modeling a century of urban sprawl indicates an acceleration of only 2.7x for the Phoenix region. Based on studies of urbanization’s erosive effects, and studies comparing other land-use changes to natural erosion rates, we expected a greater degree of urban acceleration. Given that continued urban expansion will add a new city of a million every five days until 2050, given the potential importance of urban soils for absorbing anthropogenically-released carbon, and given the role of urban-sourced pollution, quantifying urbanization’s acceleration of natural erosion in other urban settings could reveal important regional patterns. For example, a comparison of urban watersheds to nearby non-urban watersheds suggests that the Phoenix case study is on the low-end of the urban acceleration factor. This new insight into the urban acceleration of soil erosion in metropolitan Phoenix can help reduce the acute risk of flooding for many rapidly urbanizing desert cities around the globe. To reduce this risk, properly engineered Flood Control Structures must account for sediment accumulation as well as flood waters. While the Phoenix area used regional data from non-urban, non-desert watersheds to generate sediment yield rates, this research presents a new analysis of empirical data for the Phoenix metropolitan region, where two regression models provide estimates of a more realistic sediment accumulation for arid regions and also urbanization of a desert cities. The new model can be used to predict the realistic sediment accumulation for helping provide data where few data exists in parts of arid Africa, southwest Asia, and India. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Geography 2019

Plasticozoic excavates humanity’s relationship to nature and to ourselves through plastic artifacts of consumer culture, which were recovered from oceans and beaches by the artist, or sent to her from around the world. Through created specimens and collected fragments of the Anthropocene, it considers the precariousness of our place in time, where misperceptions of reality and the collective impact of our every day lives can have global effects. "Future geologists will be able to precisely mark our era as the Plasticozoic, the place in the sands of time in which bits of plastic first appeared." -Oceanographer A. Sylvia Earle, The World is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean's Are One

This thesis builds on the work of previous coleopteran-based climatic reconstructions to recreate the environment and climate of the last 20,000 14C years of northwest Europe using the data and methods available within the Bugs Coleopteran Ecology Package, and aims to assess the ability of the BugsCEP results to provide information regarding events and anthropogenic changes on environment during the Anthropocene. Samples and data from 134 sites across northwest Europe and the British Isles were included in this study. The Mutual Climatic Range method and the BugStats module based on habitat code classifications were used to create the climatic and environmental reconstructions respectively, the results of which are provided in eight isotherm maps for 14.5-9 14C years BP and 2 EcoFigure graphs for 20,000 14C to present. While the results of some isotherm maps align with the changes described in previous studies, other climate trends are muted within these results. Likewise, some previously recognized environmental shifts in Europe are visible, whereas other major events are not distinguishable within the environmental record. An assessment of the environmental reconstruction results finds that though there is not sufficient material to support any proposed Anthropocene start dates, effects of anthropogenic influence upon the environment may be visible starting within the last 2,000 14C years; the results also show some support for the Vera Hypothesis.