This dissertation studies literary modernism’s philosophies of nature. It examines how historical attitudes about natural environments and climates are codified in literary texts, what values attach to them, and how relationships between humanity and nature are figured in modernist fiction. Attending less to nature itself than to concepts, ideologies, and aesthetic theories about nature, it argues that British modernism and ecology articulate shared concerns with the vitality of the earth, the shaping force of climate, and the need for new ways of understanding the natural world. Many of British modernism’s most familiar texts, by E.M. Forster, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and H.G. Wells, reveal a sustained preoccupation with significant concepts in environmental and intellectual history, including competition between vitalist, holist, and mechanistic philosophies and science, global industrialization by the British Empire, and the emergence of ecology as a revolutionary means of ordering the physical world. “Modernism, Ecology, and the Anthropocene” uncovers these preoccupations to illustrate how consistently literary works leverage environmental ideologies and how pervasively literature shapes cultural and even scientific attitudes toward the natural world. Through the geological concept of the Anthropocene, it brings literary history into interdisciplinary conversations that have recently emerged from the Earth sciences and are now increasingly common in the humanities, social sciences, and in wider public debates about climate change. The dissertation’s first chapter, “Connecting Earth to Empire: E. M. Forster’s Changing Climate,” argues that E.M. Forster’s fiction apprehends the global implications of local climate change at a crucial time in environmental and literary history. By relating Forster’s Howards End and A Passage to India to his 1909 story, “The Machine Stops,” it attends to the speculative aspects of Forster’s work and presents Forster as a keen observer who foresaw not only the passing of rural England and the arrival of a new urban way of life, but environmental change on a global scale. Its second chapter, “The Call of Life: James Joyce’s Vitalist Aesthetics,” explores the connotations “life” gathers in Joyce’s early fiction and proposes a new reading of his aesthetics that emphasizes its ecological implications by pairing Joyce with his contemporary “modern” vitalism and current new materialisms. The third chapter, “Make it Whole: The Ecosystems of Virginia Woolf and A.G. Tansley,” revises critical conceptions of Woolf as an ecological writer and environmental histories of early ecology by showing how Woolf’s philosophy of nature and Tansley’s ecosystem concept run parallel and represent a shared intellectual project: advocating theories of form and of perception that navigate the tension between holist and mechanistic conceptions of nature and mind. A final chapter, “Landlord of the Planet: H. G. Wells, Human Extinction, and Anthropocene Narratives,” establishes Wells as an early environmental humanist whose ecological outlook evolved with his perception of the rapidly increasing pace of climate change and its threat to the human species. By digging into a rarely-read scientific textbook he co-authored, The Science of Life, this chapter analyzes how the natural world is managed in three Wellsian utopias and traces the development of his writing in concert with ecology. / English

Exile is not only an appropriate lens through which to view the ecological, social, and psychological destabilizations of the Anthropocene, but also as a state which can inspire the flexibility and creativity necessary to survive difficult times through ecologically-connected states of being. Examinations of literary alienation and responses to this condition in this project are confined to women’s exoplanetary science fiction which anticipates the experience of physical and emotional separation from planet Earth. In contextualizing experiences of exile from our planet of origin and the expressions of such in women’s science fiction literature, this project interrogates selected cultural movements in human relationships to the environment, separation from the environment, and resistances to that estrangement through the concept of exile. Chapter One considers the Western myth of the lost paradise and the ways in which the Garden of Eden has contributed to Western conceptions of environmental and human perfection and belonging and the persistent idea of working one’s way back to Eden. In contrast to this idea, I present analyses of James Tiptree Jr.’s A Momentary Taste of Being and Molly Gloss’s The Dazzle of Day, both of which illustrate that working toward perfection is an ultimately stagnating and often violent move. Chapter Two, mounting further challenges to the Western paradise and its reverberations through environmental discourse, frames science fiction’s initial acquiescence to narratives of colonization and later feminist rejection of these narratives. Analyzing the connections between colonial structures, the environment, and beings considered nonhuman or less-than-human in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest and Joan Slonczewski’s A Door Into Ocean, this chapter describes the psychological and emotional estrangements necessary to survive and resist colonization and its ecological destruction and contextualizes experiences of exile. Chapter Two argues that though exile is often a destructive process, it can form a basis with which to resist entrenched social structures. Finally, Chapter Three examines the ways in which Indigenous science fiction, working in a different historical and cultural context than that of the Western feminist texts discussed in the previous two chapters, emphasizes an experience of and approach to exilic destabilizations which centres on what Gerald Vizenor calls “survivance”—the survival of colonial genocide and resistance to further colonial impositions. While Lee Maracle’s “The Void” and Mari Kurisato’s “Imposter Syndrome” utilize exoplanetary distance from Earth’s ecosystems to illustrate modes of survivance, they also demonstrate the ways in which relations to the land are maintained through interrelational rather than hierarchical subjectivities, and demonstrate the resilience intrinsic to interconnected ecological systems. In sum, the estranged position of women’s exoplanetary science fiction emerges as critical of the hierarchical structures which have resulted in widespread ecological collapse, and imparts the perspective necessary not only to challenge those structures but also to survive their destabilizations. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This work sets out to analyze stylistic changes in Anthropocene fiction over the past 60 years. The starting point for the analysis has been Rachel Carson, and the presumed beginning of the Anthropocene in the 1960s. The primary insight gained reveals the connections within these novel and relations of similar writing about climate change thereby contributing to the field of Environmental Humanities in a fundamental way, as so far, climate change fiction has only been investigated through a topic centered focus. The corpus compiled for scrutiny here extends to over 84 novels from these years. These novels have been selected based on a dual approach, looking at the secondary literature as well as a crowdsourced approach in looking at Good Reads’ cli-fi lists. The resulting texts are then analyzed with stylo, an R package that has been specifically created for stylometric analysis by humanists. The results are visualized in a network that allows easier interpretation and leads to an understanding of more detailed questions about the nature of the connection between works, the inspiration and representation of a specific genre of writing. Moreover, the thesis looks diachronically at clustering based on time and topic. Understanding the ways in which authors address and have addressed climate change is one indicator of how climate change is and has been comprehended. In terms of the digital approach applied here, the basis is a distant reading approach covering a larger number of novels and rather than close reading them, the task is to find patterns that extend throughout. However, for a thorough analysis, scalable reading is applied to contextualize and investigate the results in more depth. Overall, the results are meant to establish a baseline for discussing climate change fiction in the Anthropocene which although gaining more scholarly attention still is understudied. The hope is to not only gain insight but to generate visualizations that will provide a helpful resource for fellow scholars.

Each data chapter within this dissertation, while distinct in the stressor/combination of stressors, species under examination, and the purpose of the research effort, contributes to the unified objective of the dissertation: answering critical questions regarding the physiological effects of various environmental stressors on freshwater species. Results from data Chapter 2 indicate that adult Daphnia magna are more sensitive to lead exposure when co-exposed to percent air saturation approaching lethal levels of hypoxia. Moreover, increased hypoxia under control (no lead) conditions induced increased hemoglobin protein and mRNA expression, regardless of isoform transcript and typically in a dose-dependent manner for the latter. In Chapter 3 the maximum sustained swimming speeds (Ucrit) of several fish species of greatest conservation need at different temperatures (15, 22.5, and 30 °C) is assessed, providing valuable insights for site-specific calculations of culvert water velocities (Vf). Additional physiological endpoints of relevance to overall swimming performance were also measured, including maximum burst swimming (Umax), aerobic scope and cost of transport (COT). In Chapter 4 ammonia toxicity at different salinities to juvenile Macrobrachium rosenbergii is determined and real-time metabolic assessments as an effective detection method for perturbations in systems such as recirculating aquaculture systems is conducted. Although these chapters address distinct research topics, they collectively demonstrate the pivotal role of physiology in addressing complex issues related to human activity and environmental impacts. The dissertation's findings contribute novel information emphasizing the importance of understanding physiological responses in mitigating the impacts of anthropogenic activities on freshwater ecosystems.

The dissertation re-examines the philosophy of Georges Bataille within the context of post-Kantian aesthetics and argues for a re-evaluation of Bataille’s notion of expenditure [depenser] within this context. The dissertation argues further that the artistic practice of Robert Smithson is an exemplary case of an ‘aesthetics of expenditure.’ It is our contention that Bataille’s cosmic-energetic philosophy finds a complementary material expression in Smithson’s abstract geology and its confrontation with post-Kantian aesthetics. We will argue that this occurs through Smithson’s varying strategies, which are grouped conceptually according to the broader logic of their expression:seriality, sedimentality, monumentality, and meandering. While Smithson’s own references to Bataille in the early 1970s are discussed in detail, it is not our position that Smithson was enacting Bataille’s philosophy ‘aesthetically’; rather, by reading Bataille’s evaluation of Kant’s aesthetics and teleology in relation to Smithson’s artistic practice, we emphasize instead that the politics of disgust shared by both figures advance a radical decentring and repositioning of the human in relation to planetary and geological forces. If, as geologists now agree, our present age is that of the Anthropocene1, our argument is that Bataille and Smithson anticipate this precarious condition analytically, and, perhaps more importantly, that their analysis suggests further important diagnostic considerations at the level of social organization and political composition that might help defer, if not entirely prevent, the catastrophic end of this all-too-human period.

Orientador: Mauro Galetti Rodrigues / Resumo: Invasões biológicas são uma das principais ameaças à biodiversidade, razão pela qual é campo de interesse de investigações científicas dos ecólogos. Os Neotrópicos abrigam uma das maiores riquezas de espécies do planeta e ao longo dos últimos anos vem sofrendo um aumento expressivo no número de introduções de espécies exóticas. Uma delas é o javali Sus scrofa e suas raças cruzadas com porcos domésticos, que em sua forma silvestre e de vida livre chamamos suídeos asselvajados. Ao longo dessa tese procuro investigar algumas das consequências ecológicas da invasão dessa espécie, assim como apresentar um panorama do controle populacional empregado hoje no Brasil, buscando sempre que possível fazer uma discussão dos resultados aplicada ao manejo da espécie. No Capítulo 1 mostro como a introdução acentuada dessa espécie ocorrida nos últimos 20 anos no Brasil fez com que ela se distribuísse amplamente por todo território nacional, principalmente nas regiões Sul, Sudeste e Centro-Oeste. No Capítulo 2 eu procurei fazer uma avaliação da efetividade do papel ecológico de frugivoria e dispersão de sementes prestado por esses animais. O Capítulo 3 mostra como as paisagens agrícolas estão subsidiando a invasão dos suídeos asselvajados potencializando a expansão da espécie e no Capítulo 4 busco revelar o papel do invasor no deslocamento do nicho trófico dos pecarídeos nativos.Já o Capítulo 5 apresenta um breve relato da interação entre os suídeos asselvajados e morcegos vampiros e, ao final... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Biological invasions are one of the main threats to biodiversity, which is why it is a field of interest for scientific investigations by ecologists. The Neotropics are home to one of the planet's greatest species richness, and over the last few years it has been experiencing a significant increase in the number of exotic species introduction. One of them is the wild boar Sus scrofa and their crossed-breeds with domestic pigs, that in its free-living wild-form we call wild pigs. My effort throughout this thesis is to investigate some of the ecological consequences of the invasion of this species, as well as present an outlook of the population control employed in Brazil, always seeking to make a discussion of the results applied to the management of the species. In Chapter 1 I show how the severe introduction of this species that occurred in the last 20 years in Brazil has made it widely distributed throughout the country, especially in the South, Southeast and Midwest regions. In Chapter 2 I evaluated the effectiveness of the ecological role of frugivory and seed dispersal provided by these animals. Chapter 3 shows how agricultural landscapes are subsidizing the invasion of wild pigs enhancing the species' expansion. In Chapter 4 I seek to reveal the role of the invader in displacing the trophic niche of native peccaries and Chapter 5 presents a brief account of the interaction between wild pigs and vampire bats. In the end, Chapter 6 outlines a profile of the methods and mo... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Doutor

Esta tese parte da problemática das mudanças climáticas como reflexão da relação homem-natureza. Desde final do século passado, transformações, rupturas e evoluções significativas são testemunhadas, assim como tensões entre biológico e social. Diante do crescimento exponencial das atividades humanas e suas pressões sobre os sistemas da Terra, alguns autores reconhecem que o planeta entrou em nova Era Antropoceno. Nesse sentido, impõe-se à humanidade novos padrões de relacionamento com a natureza e seus recursos, que repercute sobre os estilos de vida e de consumo, a ética e a cultura, a dinâmica política social e a organização do espaço. Portanto, a problemática das mudanças climáticas, assim como as questões socioambientais, clama pela mudança da relação homem-natureza. Para além da interpretação geológica, o Antropoceno é uma oportunidade para repensar o comportamento humano e estabelecer as bases de um futuro sustentável. Tais questões estão presentes no cotidiano da cidade de São Paulo. Tomou-se, então, para a análise o grupo Quinta Ambiental, formado, em sua maioria, por residentes e servidores públicos dos Distritos de Jaçanã e de Tremembé, Zona Norte do muncípio de São Paulo, onde localiza-se o Parque Estadual da Cantareira, importante remanescente da Mata Altântica. O objetivo é analisar como um grupo como a Quinta Ambiental possibilita o aprendizado e a mudança dos indivíduos em suas percepções e valores para uma transformação da relação homem-natureza. Trata-se de estudo qualitativo com perspectiva etnográfica. Foram utilizados dados secundários, por meio de pesquisa bibliográfica e documental e dados primários por meio da observação participativa, utilizando o diário de campo e registros fotográficosno como principais ferramentas, no período de fevereiro de 2015 a junho de 2016. Observou-se que a forma transversal o qual foi construída as relações dos participantes, envolvendo diferentes secretarias municipais e estaduais, instituições de ensino e a comunidade, e a convivência semanal proporcionaram maior cooperação entre estes atores, na na administração do bem público o que motiva a continuação das reuniões mesmo frente às diversidades de mudanças políticas e de gestão. Notou-se alterações positivas em relação à participação política e comunitária, na medida que, os participantes do grupo assumem uma postura politizada para as questões ambientais levando a discussão à diversos foruns administrativos. Conclui-se, então, que espaços coletivos, como o da Quinta Ambiental são importantes para possibilitar a convivência e a aprendizagem social e é nessa dinâmica que ocorre a troca de saberes e transformação de valores, sendo o papel do gestor público fundamental para o desenvolvimento de tais espaços / This thesis is based on the problem of climate change as a reflection of the relationship between man and nature. Since the end of the last century, transformations, ruptures and significant evolutions have been witnessed, as well as tensions between biological and social. Against with the exponential growth of human activities and their pressures on Earth systems, some authors acknowledge that the planet has entered a new Age - Anthropocene. Thus, new standards of relationship with nature are imposed on humanity, which has repercussions on lifestyles and consumption, ethics and culture, dynamic social policy and the organization of space. Therefore, the problem of climate change, as well as socio-environmental issues, calls for a change in the relationship between man and nature. In addition to the geological interpretation, the Anthropocene is an opportunity to rethink human behavior and stablish a sustainable future. These issues are present in the city of São Paulo/Brazil. It was taken for analysis the Quinta Ambiental (Environmental Thursday) group, formed, for the most part, by residents and public managers of the Jaçanã and Tremembé Districts, Northern zone of the São Paulo City, where it is located the Parque Estadual da Cantareira, important remnant of the Atlantic Forest. The aim of this study is to analyze how a group like the Quinta Ambiental makes possible the social learning and the change of the individuals in their perceptions and values for a transformation of the relationship between man and nature. It is a qualitative study with an ethnographic perspective. Secondary data were used, through bibliographic and documentary research and primary data through participant observation, using the field diary and photographic records as tools, from february 2015 to june 2016. It was observed that the transversal form, which built the relations of the participants, involving different municipal and state secretariats, educational institutions and the community, and the weekly coexistence provided greater cooperation between these actors, in the governing of a comms, which motivates the continuation of meetings even in the face of diversities of political and management change. There were positive changes in relation to political and community participation, as the group\'s participants took a politicized stance on environmental issues leading to discussion in various administrative forums. It is concluded, then, that collective spaces such as the \"Quinta Ambiental\" are important to enable coexistence and social learning, and it is in this dynamic that the exchange of knowledge and transformation of values takes place, and the role of the public manager is fundamental to development of such spaces

Le littoral subit de constants changements : son évolution est induite à la fois par des processus biophysiques – houles, tempêtes, courants marins, agents météorologiques –, et par une anthropisation notoire, particulièrement accentuée au cours des derniers siècles. En France, sur les côtes de la Manche, la variété et la richesse des types de côtes ont suscité l’inspiration de nombreux artistes notamment depuis le milieu du 19e siècle. Musées, archives, collections privées, détiennent de précieux témoignages visuels de l’histoire des lieux. Cette thèse vise à mettre en évidence la valeur informative de l’iconographie artistique des rivages à travers l’observation des évolutions géomorphologiques du littoral. La première partie contextualise la démarche générale en exposant un certain nombre de considérations théoriques essentielles au centre desquelles figurent les enjeux d’une géomorphologie moderne, le statut des images en géographie et une rétrospective de l’histoire des représentations picturales du paysage. La seconde partie explore concrètement le potentiel pressenti de l’exploitation des documents artistiques en tant que source d’information à l’échelle des rivages normano-bretons. A partir d’un corpus représentatif restreint d’œuvres d’art, une méthodologie est développée. Enfin, la troisième et dernière partie des travaux présente une application de la méthodologie élaborée dans un contexte précis. Le territoire considéré est celui de la Rance maritime avec pour principale problématique l’identification et l’évaluation des modifications architecturales et sédimentologiques intervenues au niveau du trait de côte et sur l’estran. Les résultats de cette approche sont diffusés au sein d’une interface numérique visant à être consultée, et à terme alimentée, par un large public. / The shoreline is submitted to constant changes : its evolution results from both biophysical processes – swells, storms, ocean currents, meteorological factors –, and significant anthropisation, strongly accentuated during the last centuries. In France, on the coast of the Channel, variety and sumptuousness of types of coasts have aroused the inspiration of numerous artists, especially since the middle of the 19th century. Museums, archives, private collections possess precious records of the story of places. This research aims to reveal the informative value of artistic shoreline iconography to observe geomorphological evolutions of the coast. The first part contextualizes the general approach, setting out some essential theoretical considerations centered on modern geomorphology, the status of images in geography and a retrospective of the history of landscape pictorial representations. The second part concretely explores the foreseen potential of using artistic documents as knowledge sources at the scale of the French coasts of the Channel. From a limited corpus of art works, a methodology is developed. Finally, the third and last part of the work presents an application of the developed methodology in a precise context. The territory considered is the Rance estuary, with, as main issue, the identification and evaluation of architectural and sedimentological modifications that occurred in the coastline and foreshore. Results are released through a dedicated Website, which intends to be consulted, and eventually contributed, by a large public.

Esta tese parte da problemática das mudanças climáticas como reflexão da relação homem-natureza. Desde final do século passado, transformações, rupturas e evoluções significativas são testemunhadas, assim como tensões entre biológico e social. Diante do crescimento exponencial das atividades humanas e suas pressões sobre os sistemas da Terra, alguns autores reconhecem que o planeta entrou em nova Era Antropoceno. Nesse sentido, impõe-se à humanidade novos padrões de relacionamento com a natureza e seus recursos, que repercute sobre os estilos de vida e de consumo, a ética e a cultura, a dinâmica política social e a organização do espaço. Portanto, a problemática das mudanças climáticas, assim como as questões socioambientais, clama pela mudança da relação homem-natureza. Para além da interpretação geológica, o Antropoceno é uma oportunidade para repensar o comportamento humano e estabelecer as bases de um futuro sustentável. Tais questões estão presentes no cotidiano da cidade de São Paulo. Tomou-se, então, para a análise o grupo Quinta Ambiental, formado, em sua maioria, por residentes e servidores públicos dos Distritos de Jaçanã e de Tremembé, Zona Norte do muncípio de São Paulo, onde localiza-se o Parque Estadual da Cantareira, importante remanescente da Mata Altântica. O objetivo é analisar como um grupo como a Quinta Ambiental possibilita o aprendizado e a mudança dos indivíduos em suas percepções e valores para uma transformação da relação homem-natureza. Trata-se de estudo qualitativo com perspectiva etnográfica. Foram utilizados dados secundários, por meio de pesquisa bibliográfica e documental e dados primários por meio da observação participativa, utilizando o diário de campo e registros fotográficosno como principais ferramentas, no período de fevereiro de 2015 a junho de 2016. Observou-se que a forma transversal o qual foi construída as relações dos participantes, envolvendo diferentes secretarias municipais e estaduais, instituições de ensino e a comunidade, e a convivência semanal proporcionaram maior cooperação entre estes atores, na na administração do bem público o que motiva a continuação das reuniões mesmo frente às diversidades de mudanças políticas e de gestão. Notou-se alterações positivas em relação à participação política e comunitária, na medida que, os participantes do grupo assumem uma postura politizada para as questões ambientais levando a discussão à diversos foruns administrativos. Conclui-se, então, que espaços coletivos, como o da Quinta Ambiental são importantes para possibilitar a convivência e a aprendizagem social e é nessa dinâmica que ocorre a troca de saberes e transformação de valores, sendo o papel do gestor público fundamental para o desenvolvimento de tais espaços / This thesis is based on the problem of climate change as a reflection of the relationship between man and nature. Since the end of the last century, transformations, ruptures and significant evolutions have been witnessed, as well as tensions between biological and social. Against with the exponential growth of human activities and their pressures on Earth systems, some authors acknowledge that the planet has entered a new Age - Anthropocene. Thus, new standards of relationship with nature are imposed on humanity, which has repercussions on lifestyles and consumption, ethics and culture, dynamic social policy and the organization of space. Therefore, the problem of climate change, as well as socio-environmental issues, calls for a change in the relationship between man and nature. In addition to the geological interpretation, the Anthropocene is an opportunity to rethink human behavior and stablish a sustainable future. These issues are present in the city of São Paulo/Brazil. It was taken for analysis the Quinta Ambiental (Environmental Thursday) group, formed, for the most part, by residents and public managers of the Jaçanã and Tremembé Districts, Northern zone of the São Paulo City, where it is located the Parque Estadual da Cantareira, important remnant of the Atlantic Forest. The aim of this study is to analyze how a group like the Quinta Ambiental makes possible the social learning and the change of the individuals in their perceptions and values for a transformation of the relationship between man and nature. It is a qualitative study with an ethnographic perspective. Secondary data were used, through bibliographic and documentary research and primary data through participant observation, using the field diary and photographic records as tools, from february 2015 to june 2016. It was observed that the transversal form, which built the relations of the participants, involving different municipal and state secretariats, educational institutions and the community, and the weekly coexistence provided greater cooperation between these actors, in the governing of a comms, which motivates the continuation of meetings even in the face of diversities of political and management change. There were positive changes in relation to political and community participation, as the group\'s participants took a politicized stance on environmental issues leading to discussion in various administrative forums. It is concluded, then, that collective spaces such as the \"Quinta Ambiental\" are important to enable coexistence and social learning, and it is in this dynamic that the exchange of knowledge and transformation of values takes place, and the role of the public manager is fundamental to development of such spaces

Terry Tempest Williams, in Finding Beauty in a Broken World employs literary techniques that suggest dislocations and relocations of the human subject in ethical modes of being. Through narrative techniques, multidisciplinary language, and themes of conversation, gift-exchange, listening and response, Williams reflects ecological humanist mosaics, suggesting cooperative regeneration—an intersection of material beings facilitated by an ethical human imagination that listens, receives, and gives toward patterns of beauty, including, but not limited to, being human in a collective world. This eco-critical analysis of Williams’s work affirms the human being in post-humanist philosophy and repositions relational Romanticism for the 21st century.