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.

The Arctic—warming at twice the rate of the rest of the planet—is a source of striking imagery of amplified environmental change in our time, and has come to serve as a spatial setting for climate crisis discourse. The recent alterations in the Arctic environment have also been perceived by some observers as an opportunity to expand economic exploitation. Heightened geopolitical interest in the region and its resources, contradicted by calls for the protection of fragile Far North ecosystems, has rendered the Arctic an arena for negotiating human interactions with nature, and for reflecting upon the planetary risks and possibilities associated with the advent and expansion of the Anthropocene—the proposed new epoch in Earth history in which humankind is said to have gained geological agency and become the dominant force over the Earth system. With the Arctic serving as a nexus of crosscutting analytical themes spanning contemporary history (the late twentieth and the early twenty-first century until 2015), this dissertation examines defining characteristics of the Anthropocene and how the concept, which emerged from the Earth system science community, impacts ideas and assumptions in historiography, social sciences and the environmental humanities, including the fields of environmental history, crisis management and security studies, political geography, and science and technology studies (STS). The primary areas of empirical analysis and theoretical investigation encompass constructivist perspectives and temporal conceptions of environmental and climate crisis; the role of science and expertise in performing politics and shaping social discourse; the geopolitical significance of telecoupling—a concept that reflects the interconnectedness of the Anthropocene and supports stakeholder claims across wide spatial scales; and implications of the recent transformation in humankind’s long duration relationship with the natural world. Several dissertation themes were observed in practice at the international science community of Ny-Ålesund on Svalbard, where global change is made visible through a concentration of scientific activity. Ny-Ålesund is furthermore a place of geopolitics, where extra-regional states attempt to enhance their legitimacy as Arctic stakeholders through the performance of scientific research undertakings, participation in governance institutions, and by establishing a physical presence in the Far North. This dissertation concludes that this small and remote community represents an Anthropocene node of global environmental change, Earth system science, emergent global governance, geopolitics, and stakeholder construction in an increasingly telecoupled world. / <p>QC 20151211</p>

This essay marks the degrading biosphere in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and argues that its narrative disclosure is meaningfully explored using the idea of a growing ecological awareness. The book depicts agentive nonhumans that are unseen or under-attended by the novel’s humans. I suggest this literary presentation of the biosphere is best understood as after the discovery of global warming when matters of ecological concern “intruded,” to use Timothy Morton’s word, on a human-only society with underequipped modes of historical thought. To construct my reading, I motivate recent work in object-oriented philosophies that would eschew anthropocentric metaphysics. I unpack Cloud Atlas’ ecological vision using Morton’s philosophy in which he explores the conceptual and aesthetic consequences of the hyperobject – a thing that is massively distributed in time and space relative to humans. My analysis will examine passages and techniques that construct Cloud Atlas’ “scenery,” and I argue that they evoke a degrading biosphere that interacts substantially with the human-only personal dramas. Features of the book’s formal construction allow for the animation of this scenery in the reader’s cross-novel interpretation. I look at how characters narrate this scenery to build my argument that the novel’s ecological vision makes claims on its storytelling characters. But as those characters still miss the long-view historical perspectives afforded the reader, they are shown to want community. I end by ruminating on how Cloud Atlas, which would “stretch” the literary novel, questions what the novel is at this ecological moment.

Loren Eiseley (1907-1977) a été connu tour à tour comme archéologue, anthropologue, éducateur, philosophe, poète ou bien encore auteur d’études en sciences naturelles. Il remet en cause les thèses sur la science, la nature et l’homme qui avaient cours à son époque. Il unit les sciences et les humanités au travers de sa prose et de ses poèmes, anticipant le concept actuel d’humanités environnmentales. En tant qu’archéologue, il utilise la science, l’imagination et l’observation tels des outils dans le but de reconstruire le passé. Il a mis au point de nouveaux angles de vue permettant d’appréhender l’univers et la place de l’homo sapiens en son sein. Il pense que l’homme moderne s’est dénaturé en devenant le destructeur de la planète et, de ce fait, anticipe le point de vue éco-centrique qui s’est imposé dans la période qui a fait suite à la révolution industrielle, période de plus en plus désignée comme l’anthropocène. Les écrits de Eiseley pressent l’humanité de renouer avec notre passé animal de façon à respecter l’ordre naturel dont nous sommes issus. Son œuvre force le lecteur à participer à son projet de rénovation de notre univers mental et culturel. / Loren Eiseley (1907-1977) has been variously described as archaeologist, anthropologist, educator, philosopher, poet, and natural science writer. He challenges the views of science, nature, and man that were current at the time he wrote. He brings science and the humanities together by expressing his ecological, philosophical and metaphysical ideas in both prose and poems, anticipating the concept of environmental humanities nowadays. He is an archeologist who uses the tools of science, imagination and observation to reconstruct the past. Eiseley finds new angles from which to view the universe and homo sapiens’ place within it. He argues that modern man has fallen out of nature and become a planet destroyer. He anticipates the eco-centric position that is becoming necessary in the era following the Industrial Revolution that is increasingly being recognized as the Anthropocene. Eiseley’s writings urge that humanity reconnect with our animal past in order to respect the natural world from which we came. In bridging the nature and culture divide, his work forces readers to participate in the project of re-examining our own mental and cultural world.

This dissertation presents a new approach to addressing environmental degradation based on transdisciplinary ecological art. Transdisciplinarity is defined here as merging art and science to discover new insights. Ecological art is defined as an aesthetic practice that promotes environmental resilience. This writing will describe why those approaches are essential to restoring resilient bioregionalism. It introduces the author’s own heuristic perspectives and methodologies and demonstrates how they may be integrated with technology and science. The problems of accelerated loss of coastal (littoral) zone biodiversity, degraded water quality, and habitat fragmentation need critical attention. The author’s research goal was to present a replicable set of guidelines for identifying small points of restoration for wetland littoral zones (the coastal region between terrestrial and marine life) based on a case study called Ghost Nets, scaled to a second case study, Fish Story. Her novel approach included establishing relevant parallels from quantum physics and acupuncture to energetic systems. Additional specific analogies were explored from visual arts, theatre, music, dance, and performance art, to discover a holistic and integrated point of view. Parallels and analogies were drawn by interrogating the two case studies. An important aim of the study was to examine how certain restoration practices could be scaled up to the bioregional level and integrated with a special theory, Trigger Point Theory, to reinforce healthy ecosystems. This included an analysis of how restored upland ecotones and a different relationship to other species could contribute to restoration in the littoral zone. The analysis critiqued how anthropocentric considerations often fail to protect vulnerable water systems. The role of environmental justice for vulnerable human populations and ethical concerns for other animal species was included in that analysis. The author also claims that when artists work with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping, that may propel a new transdiscourse and eventually make heuristic information scientifically useful. Insight from the Ghost Nets case study informed data collections and GIS mapping for the Southern Gulf of Maine. Those insights and the mapping were used to analyze relationships between finfish abundance, eelgrass, and invasive, predatory green crabs. Conclusions were drawn that are relevant to coastal and fisheries management practices. The author used performative approaches to contribute expert witnessing to her conclusions. Questionnaires were used to determine how much community awareness was accomplished with the case studies, and assess effects on future behavior. By combining art and science methodologies, the author revealed insights that could help small restored sites act as trigger points towards restoration of healthy bioregional systems more efficiently than would be possible through restoration science alone. In scaling up (applying small models to larger systems) and applying these practices for landscape ecology, the author assembled a set of recommendations for other researchers to implement these ideas in the future. Those recommendations included the formal engagement of ecological artists as equal partners on environmental restoration teams.

Starting from the notion of hyperbole as rhetoric figure and philosophical concept, my dissertation places Pynchon's and Bolaño's maximalist novels in a wider context shaped by the emergence of the Anthropocene as a new historical and geological epoch, by the return of realism in the humanities, by the renewed philosophical interest for ontological and metaphysical questions, by the possibility of a posthumanist phenomenology and by literature's 'anxiety of obsolescence' in a post-literate age. In this context, I examine a variety of literary questions (such as abundance as a modality of uncertainty, the dramaturgy of light and darkness, metaphors, ekphrasis etc.) to reveal the novels' hyperbolic structures that can nevertheless be inscribed within a realist framework. In Pynchon's and Bolaño's novels, hyperbolic doubts and linguisticuncertainty punctuate the narrative universes. If these doubts and uncertainties are over and over again vanquished by the adventurous labor of figuration, they are never fully abolished, but form the dark core of literary discourse and, after all, any linguistic act. / En partant de la notion de l'hyperbole comme figure rhétorique et concept philosophique, ma thèse de doctorat analyse les deux romans maximalistes de Pynchon et Bolaño dans un contexte marqué par l'émergence de l'Anthropocène comme nouvelle époque historique et géologique, par le retour du réalisme dans les sciences humaines, par le nouvel intérêt pourl'ontologie et la métaphysique en philosophie, par le détournement de certains projets phénoménologiques de l'humanisme, et par la possibilité d'anachronisme qui pèse aujourd'hui sur le genre littéraire. Dans ce contexte, j'examine les différentes questions de l'analyse littéraire (la copia, la dramaturgie du clair-obscur, la métaphore, l'ekphrasisetc.) pour révéler les structures poétiques hyperboliques qui sont quand même inscrites dans un cadre réaliste. Ces romans mettent en scène la permanence du doute hyperbolique dans l'univers narrative et au sein même du langage, mais ils effectuent en même temps le dépassement aventureux et laborieux de ce doute sans intention de nier les incertitudesfondamentales sur lesquelles sont fondés tout discours littéraire et, à la fin, toute acte linguistique.