Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2006. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 176-185). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

This thesis is an exploration of the connection between women and nature, specifically the violence that has been inflicted upon them both and how it is interrelated. I positioned my research within the field of Ecofeminism, which critiques the language we (as a Western culture) use to associate women with nature and vice-versa. Traditionally, women are more often associated with nature than men are, and the environment is personified as “Mother Nature”. I argue that uncritically gendering nature as “female” is problematic because of the associations we typically make between the two, and the expectations and values we assign to them based on this association. Nature is historically viewed as inferior to civilization, and women as inferior to men: they are supposedly giving, nurturing, and passive, as opposed to taking, empowered, and active. While the assumption that women are inherently more "connected" to nature is harmful and perpetuates these stereotypes, there is truth in that women, and in fact all oppressed groups (based on race, sexuality, class, ability, etc), share with nature the common history of subordination and inflicted violence by the hegemony.

In order to address the full magnitude of the ecological crisis, communities need points of contact that provide enjoyment, build community, and foster "nature connection." The ability of the local food movement to provide these points of contact has fueled its rapid expansion in the last decade; however, no study to date has examined the impact of direct involvement in the movement on the ecological ethics of local congregations. This study assessed the impact of a communal vegetable garden project on the ecological ethics of an urban and a suburban United Methodist congregation in the Boston area. The study used a participatory action ethnographic model as well as an Ecological Ethics Index scale to assess overall impacts as well as impacts in the areas of ecological spirituality, community, discipleship, and justice. The study found impacts in all four areas, particularly within the suburban congregation, which integrated the project into the central identity and ministries of the church. The urban church had already integrated other food justice ministries into its central identity and ministry; the data also showed impacts in the urban church context, particularly among the project participants. The main findings of the study revealed the influential role of supportive communities, and particularly of elder mentors, in fostering nature connection experiences among the participants. The church-based locations of the gardens, as well as the hands-on, participatory nature of the projects, increased Earth-centered spiritual awareness and practices as well as pro-environmental discipleship behaviors. The visual impact of the gardens in a church context increased awareness of issues related to food justice. The gardens functioned as a means of grace that connected the participants and the wider congregations to the land near their church buildings in new ways; the gardens provided a connection to concepts of the Divine in the Creation as well as enjoyable opportunities to share the harvest among the community and with hungry communities. In these ways, the gardens connected the congregations to the Wesleyan ideas of grace and inspired new forms of Wesleyan responsibility for social and ecological transformation.

This dissertation analyzes the relationship between important intellectual discourses of the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries and the ontological status of non-human animals. The Enlightenment marks a distinct change in the ways in which humans gather knowledge and interact with the world, a change that forms the foundation for modern relationships between human and non-human animals. Through a theoretical framework that draws from animal studies and ecofeminism, I analyze the ways in which the status of non-human animals is shaped by the intersection of multiple anthropocentric concerns. In doing so, this dissertation probes the foundation of what defines the animal apart from the human. I use the metaphor of the chain of being to chart the relative ontological status of animals across multiple discursive paradigms and literary texts. The first chapter explores animal status within the changing epistemology of the Enlightenment. As humans rely on a combination of reason and sensory perceptions to know and describe the world, human reason becomes the source of human specialness and superiority. Rochester’s A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind questions the privileged status claimed by humans based upon the lauding of reason. Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko exposes the complex ramifications for animal status within a narrative that relies on sensory perceptions for its truth-making strategy. The next chapter analyzes animal status in relation to human aspiration. Pope’s Essay on Man urges humans to use their reason to restrain their ambitions. This results in a relatively secure ontological status for animals. However, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe celebrates human ambition, which results in a lower and more tenuous status for animals. I then turn to the status of animals within the emergence of natural philosophy. Plays by Shadwell and Centlivre include virtuosi, who act as comic practitioners of the new science. Though the plays use science as a source of comedy, they reinforce the strict species hierarchy that rests at the heart of Baconian science. The analysis then turns to Thomson’s The Seasons, which employs natural philosophy in a manner that establishes a more egalitarian relationship between human and non-human animals. The final chapter analyzes the ways in which Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels imbricates each of the three discourses discussed in the previous chapters. The overarching trend that emerges throughout this research is that in texts that celebrate the human and human potential, animals occupy a much lower status relative to humans. In texts where human nature and behavior are met with skepticism or downright pessimism, the distance between human and animal shrinks, and animals occupy a relative status that is higher than in more anthropocentrically optimistic texts.

This paper is about the representations of the female body in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. The pure female body, the sexual female body and motherhood (the female body as a mother) are analysed through an ecofeminist perspective. The way the bodies are represented describe much more than what is on the surface, and through an ecofeminist perspective the reader can understand what is said beyond the words. The female body will also, at times, be analysed in correlation with its relationship with nature in order to understand the way the protagonist, Esther Greenwood views other female bodies. This analysis will lend itself to the reader to further understand Sylvia Plath’s protagonist and how Plath uniquely represents female bodies and the characters in charge of their female bodies.

Issues related to women, environment and development constitute a major global concern today. Women's roles as agents of change in the environment has increasingly become the focus of both research and policy concerns. Environmental resource management is directly linked to development, and this makes it crucial to examine the activities of women more closely. Women's role in the management of natural resources assumes a multidimensional nature. Unfortunately, the central and crucial role that women play is often both overlooked and unappreciated, rendering them invisible and greatly diminishing their contribution as both producers and active agents in sustainable development. One of the arguments central to this thesis is that rural women's connections to the physical world can inform feminist theory as well as broader policy frameworks. Their knowledge and experiences can and should be fundamental in devising programs for sustainable development. Case studies are central to this thesis because they provide specific situations and issues and lend a concrete material reality to the topics under discussion. They point to the multidimensional and multifunctional nature of women's roles in natural resource management in addition to highlighting the diverse constraints that women face. Case studies help identify strategies that could be applied to facilitate sustainable development efforts by presenting us with tangible situations rather than dealing with the abstract. Clearly, this thesis has not covered the entire scope of issues that need to be addressed in the women, environment and development debate. Nor are the suggested strategies for enhancing women's role as environmental resource managers exhaustive. Nonetheless, it is my hope that this thesis serves as a beginning for what constitute some of the key issues when engaging with the women, environment and development debate.

This master's thesis undertakes an analysis of the current discourse in environmental religion and ecofeminism respectively and proposes the use of queer phenomenology to provide a framework of analysis for the ways gender and sexuality are envisioned in those fields in conversation with the use of Judith Butler's theory of performativity. First, a literature review and overall analysis of the current discourse of environmental religion is established. This is followed by a literature review and overall analysis of the current discourse of ecofeminism. Finally, the last chapter describes how queer phenomenology as posited by Sara Ahmed is a useful framework for the conceptualization of gender and sexuality that can benefit both discourses.

The relationships between gender and the environment have been explored most fully throughout the field of ecofeminism, which examines environmental problems through the lens of gender, revealing the ways that the oppression of women and the exploitation of nature are conjoined and mutually reinforcing. However, ecofeminism has often been ignored, re-named, or subjected to critiques of gender essentialism. As a result, I return to the 1993 Clayoquot Sound protests on Vancouver Island, British Columbia to re-examine the theory and praxis of ecofeminism. I argue that the main environmental organization, the Friends of Clayoquot Sound (FOCS), consciously invoked ecofeminist principles of equality, consensus and non-violence to direct the camp and campaign. Ecofeminism within Clayoquot Sound kept gender equality at the forefront of the environmental movement while challenging traditional hierarchical power relations and systems of dominance that many social movements experience. Clayoquot Sound was therefore a watershed social movement that integrated a gendered perspective into environmental discourse, analysis, and action. I urge further research and reflection among both activists and academics regarding the intersections between environmentalism and feminism, especially in today’s worsening climate crisis. / Graduate

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Ralph Waldo Emerson’s bee poem, “The Humble-Bee,” expresses the nineteenth-century transcendentalist philosophy of finding wholeness and oneness in nature while Sylvia Plath’s twentieth-century bee poems function as a response to Plath’s feelings of alienation and repression, indicating that transcendental peace is lost in the postmodern era. Emerson’s poem indicates the spiritual fulfilment found through observing bees and highlights the harmony between humans and nature, but women of the nineteenth century find difficulty achieving this same level of freedom; Emily Dickinson reclaims the language of transcendentalism in her bee poetry to explore a world otherwise denied to her. The effects of the industrial revolution then sparked a mass disconnect between humans and nature, a disconnect reflected in the bee poetry of Sylvia Plath; she rejects the inherited tradition of transcendentalist poetry by using her bee poems to demonstrate discomfort within nature and society.