abstract: The Desert Southwest has no shortage of representations in literature, art, and film. Its aesthetics—open horizons, strange landscapes, and vast wilderness—inform and saturate the early Western films of John Ford, the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire, and continue in today’s popular imaginations. My work acknowledges such contributions and then it challenges them: why are those names more widely associated with the Southwest than Luis Alberto Urrea, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, or Pat Mora? The project intersects the environmental humanities, critical theory, and cultural studies with the Desert Southwest. It explores the fullness of desert places with regard to cultures, borders, and languages, as well as nonhuman forces and intensities like heat, light, and distance. Dispelling the dominant notion of desert as void or wasteland, it sets a stage to suit the polyvocality of desert place. My work is interdisciplinary because the desert demands it. It begins with Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian in order to reorient readers towards the rupture of the US War With Mexico which helped set the national and cultural borders in effect today. I then explore Denis Villeneuve’s film Sicario to emphasize the correlation between political hierarchy and verticality; those who can experience the desert from above are exempt from the conditions below, where Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway and Gaspar de Alba’s Desert Blood take place. The novels expose the immanence and violence of being on the ground in the desert and at the lower end of said hierarchies. Analyzing Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World and Mora’s Encantado enables what I term a desert hauntology to produce a desert full of memory, myth, ancestors, and enchantment. Finally, the project puts visual artists James Turrell and Rafa Esparza in conversation to discover a desert phenomenology. The result is an instigation of how far is too far when decentering the human, and what role does place-based art play in creating and empowering community. John Ford was from Maine. Georgia O’Keeffe, from Wisconsin. Edward Abbey, Pennsylvania. As someone born and raised in the Desert Southwest, I’ve written the project I have yet to encounter. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2020

The shift from centralised conservation to Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) was the highlight of the conservation discourse across the world during the late 1980s and early 1990s. CBNRM efforts were believed to have the potential of successfully merging biodiversity conservation simultaneously with local development efforts. However, the increasing critiques against the applicability of CBNRM interventions in different contexts is threatening the viability of the approach. Extant literature on CBNRM interventions focuses on the theoretical aspects of such efforts at the expense of the practical and context specific elements. This thesis intends to fill such a gap in literature by focusing on the practical and contextual elements of an example of this approach in Zanzibar. In an attempt to conserve the isles' natural forests, Zanzibar has adopted Community-Forest Management Areas (CoFMAs) bordering its natural forests. In this study, focus is placed on Pete's CoFMA, a village bordering the isles' last remaining natural forests- Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park (JCBNP). Pete provides an ideal site due to the conflict that exists between residents and the CoFMA intervention. By using the political ecological framework, this study is able to examine the political, social, historical and economic elements that play a significant role in the practice of CBNRM efforts. Narratives from residents are relied on to elucidate on such elements in relation to the existence of the CoFMA in Pete Village. Narratives gathered through interviews and participant observation concluded that while CoFMAs have been set up with the optimistic goal of conserving the forest and providing development to community members; in practice, the conservation intervention has proved otherwise. In spite of the achievement of some developmental goals, the overall findings indicate that the CoFMA has failed to protect the forests and its natural resources from degradation. At the same time, community members are facing difficulties to live a sustainable life.

In <i>Resurrection Flowers and Indigenous Ecological Knowledge </i>Kaden C. Milliren seeks to evaluate and analyze differences in perspectives and perceptions of the environment between Western and Indigenous worldviews and, consequentially, the different attitudes and ways-ofbeing with the world that emerge as a result. In so doing, Milliren discusses the sacredness of local landscape for Indigenous peoples and the role its spiritually-significant elements impact an entire cosmology. These important elements of sacred local ecologies are socially, materially, and symbolically rhetorical, ascribing meaning onto all elements of worldview from faith to ceremony, oratory to cultural tradition, physical sustenance to ancestral connection. In feedback and feedforward loops, these aspects of cosmology continue to ascribe meaning onto one another, affecting and being affected by each other, continually weaving together meaning and, therefore, rhetorical mattering.<div><br></div><div>In this case study Milliren discusses the sacredness of the landscape of Southcentral Washington State, the land of the Yakama Nation, an affiliation of 14 bands and tribes indigenous to the area. Central to the physical ecology, as well as the ecology of life for the Indigenous population, is the salmon, a food source significant to all areas of Yakama life and central to Yakama spirituality, oral tradition, ceremony, and nourishment. Tracing the impact of colonial capitalism beginning in the 19th century, Milliren discusses diminished salmon populations and its impact on the local landscape as well as the Yakama way of life. Additionally, he discusses the Yakama Nation’s response to colonial violence through acts of culturally-situated events aimed at maintaining Yakama tradition and improving its peoples’ cultural and physical health. Coining the term<i> resurrection flowers </i>Milliren analyzes the ways the government has utilized the salmon for monetary gain at the expense of Indigenous populations, and how Indigenous activists have fought to preserve the salmon population and resurrect cultural tradition through revitalized acts of decolonial cultural practices.<br></div>

This thesis is a critical study of the poetry and practice of Thomas A. Clark. It constitutes the first extended critical study of Clark's work. This thesis orients Clark within a network of influence, both historic and contemporary. It does this in order to contextualise and investigate Clark's innovative use of form, theme, and materiality. In Clark's work, form is used to explore and engage with the natural world. These interactions reveal the primacy of close attention in Clark's work, and his understanding of the ethical relationship between form, content, and the natural world. This thesis isolates four geographic features in Clark's work as lenses through which to explore his practice: the Field, the Garden, Concrete, and the Mountain. Thus, the thesis follows the structure of a walk through Clark's work, designed to echo Clark's own walking poetry. These four chapters explore different facets of Clark's influence: The Field chapter investigates Clark's reputation as a pastoralist, and his links to Romanticism, as well as to Charles Olson's open field poetics. Chapter two, 'Composition is a forgotten art': The Garden, explores Clark's engagement with 'domestic nature', and the parallels he creates between the space of the text and the space of the garden, and how this parallel allows for intense formal experimentation in a small space. Additionally, the Garden chapter investigates spaces of rest and recuperation in Clark's work. Chapter three, Thomas A. Clark and Concrete Poetry investigates Clark's relationship with concrete poetry, and how his post-concrete poetics have developed in relation to the broader post-concrete and conceptual art scene in Britain. Finally, Mountain Tasting: Zen and the poetry of Thomas A. Clark examines Clark's relationship with Japanese Zen poetics, and the way in which the 1960s interest in Zen which influenced Objective poetry and minimalism has profoundly influenced Clark's understanding of the ethical function of a text.

This dissertation recontextualizes literary, critical, and popular models of nature in contemporary American fiction, and argues that the transformations in the post-Fordist economy reframe environmental concepts and their uses in a new light. Scholars in the environmental humanities have long recognized that understanding changes in the political economy are a key way to understanding our ideas and representations of the natural world. These ideas serve as metaphysical models that relate individuals to society and to the broader world described by the sciences. However, much environmental criticism only goes so far as to historicize, either arguing that images of nature are wholly determined by structures and institutions of power, or, by privileging certain ideas of nature as absolute, critics lay claim to an imagined oppositional, but no less normative, space outside of society. Nature Industries intervenes in this dilemma by drawing on pragmatist and cultural studies methods to reconstruct the experience of American life in the aftermath of Fordism. Constructing this historical conjuncture enables interpretive practices which foreground the diverse political articulation of environmental figuration. The title is a play on Horkheimer and Adorno’s 1944 essay on “the culture industry,” which announced that cultural production had been subsumed into monopoly capitalism. Following culture, nature has undergone a similar loss of perceived autonomy. From the affective to the biogenetic, informational to the atmospheric, post-Fordist technologies and economies intervene in the world at scales that previous vocabularies struggle to describe without the help of fiction. Contemporary capitalism not only produces new natures—new combinations of nature and culture, or new “natural-history”—but, given the ecological consequences of industrialism, environmentalists too are forced to intervene in ways that would give pause to previous generations of conservationists. Rather than announcing the “death of Nature,” as the fictionalized Immanuel Kant does in the final moments of Mary McCarthy’s Birds of America (1971), we encounter a proliferation of natures, each with their own political valence, and each mobilizing a different set of social and natural referents in the public sphere.

No description available.

This dissertation is a study of water metaphors in the theoretical framework of feminist environmental humanities. It draws on feminist theory, metaphor theory, and Indigenous theories. It examines some of the water metaphors enshrined in Canadian legislation, specifically the Fisheries and Oceans Act and the Canada Water Act. It also examines some of the water metaphors in Canadian literature, focusing on creative works by Lisa Moore, Rita Wong, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. I argue that a dialogue between metaphor theory and feminist theory radically transforms the scope for understanding water in a way that not only consolidates the presence of materiality, but initiates a trajectory into the discursive and creative modes of metaphor that enable the interrogation of the politics of water. As a settler Canadian, I position this dialogue in relation to Richard W. Hill Sr. and Daniel Coleman’s metaphor of the Two Row Wampum-Covenant Chain Treaty to frame the conversation between the Indigenous and settler Canadian texts that I examine in this dissertation. Following a reparative arc, I analyze the metaphors of water to reveal the discrepancy between some of the legislative and creative metaphors. I conclude that the analytical lens of metaphor contribute to a greater understanding of how the conceptual metaphors of water we employ reflect our embodied experience of water and how historically marginalized as well as new metaphors can shape our values and ideas about water in the Anthropocene. I also conclude that the theoretical intersection of water and metaphor constitutes a powerful foundation from which to reimagine metaphor’s shared materiality and efficacy with water. This study affirms the value of a cultural intervention in the praxis of the water issues of the Anthropocene. / Thesis / Candidate in Philosophy / In this dissertation, I examine some of the water metaphors in Canadian legislation and literature. I argue that water and metaphor follow similar architectural processes and, from a perspective of the theoretical intersection of water and metaphor, I examine how individual water metaphors reveal the way metaphors frame our thoughts and shape our behaviour towards water. I show that the metaphors of water in the Canadian legislation, such as the Fisheries and Oceans Act and the Canada Water Act, are limited whereas literary metaphors of water in creative works represent a more comprehensive reflection of the material qualities of water and of the human and more-than-human relations with water. I conclude that the analytical lens of metaphor is useful to examine our relations with water and that the environmental humanities, which are excluded from solutions of water issues, can significantly contribute to the resolution of water issues in the Anthropocene.

It was my first visit ever to the neighborhood association – in February 2017 – and the phone rang again in the contiguous room. “I’m sorry” apologized José Luis “but our colleagues are not here yet and I need to answer the phone”. Manolo, who stayed with me, responded to my curious look: “we just sent the monthly invoice of the cooperative committee of funerals and this month is higher than usual. Three people died only last week. The neighbors are calling to check if the invoice is right, and some of them are trying to postpone the payment. But we try not to do exceptions, it’s the only way to keep working”. When José Luis came back, they both explained to me what exactly was the cooperative committee of funerals. Facing an increase in the number of deceased people and the high expense that is usually incurred by families in burial services, in 1987 the neighborhood association came up with the idea of creating a group of people that would share those costs. The project, though, would only make sense with widespread support from the community. Despite the strict age limit of 50 years old, almost 4.000 people responded when the call was launched, and the number of associates has remained steady through the years. This anecdote reflects very well the identity of the Can Sant Joan community, to which José Luis and Manolo passionately introduced me during that first meeting. The two men talked straight about the many social and environmental problems that the neighborhood had faced during the years and the ways in which the community had organized to confront them. Yet, they did not speak in a plaintive way, their speech challenged corporate and institutional power and claimed fearlessly for social justice. The Can Sant Joan community – not unlike many others in the Vallès region – has faced many adversities of different kind since its very creation, but its inhabitants have always confronted them and have restlessly fought for improving the living conditions in the neighborhood. Can Sant Joan stands out among other sacrifice zones in the Vallès area because of the long list of locally unwanted land uses that is burdened with, but especially because of its strong subaltern identity that has led the community to partially revert their condition. My research is grounded on the acknowledgment of Can Sant Joan’s environmental and social burdens, as a representation of all those communities around the world whose livelihoods are contaminated and impoverished in the name of neoliberal capitalism, and especially to those that decide to stand up and fight against power inequalities and social injustices. I foresee my research not just as an intellectual exercise, but as a process grounded in real life experiences of contamination and neglect that ultimately seeks to make a difference in the community, where it starts. This study is, thus, a transdisciplinary – almost antidisciplinary – piece where different disciplines with ambitions of challenging the sociopolitical status quo in order to achieve social and environmental justice intertwine. My research is built on existing literature in the fields of subaltern environmentalism – and other forms alternative environmentalism – political ecology and environmental humanities. Much have been written about polluted communities in different fields, but there are still crucial gaps that need to be filled. My ambitions are to better understand the sociopolitical processes that lead to the creation of sacrifice zones, to expand the definition of violence by uncovering different forms of slow violence that take place in them, to analyze the environmental movements embraced by affected communities, and to evaluate the potential benefits 1 that a subaltern environmental movement could have to those communities. The outcome of my research will be shared with the movement against waste incineration of Can Sant Joan and with the community in an attempt to realize the main aspiration of my research: to inform and enhance the activist movement in the neighborhood. This will be done by co-organizing at least one public event in the neighborhood together with members of the movement against incineration, in which the outcomes of my research will be presented to the local audience. Additionally, I keep personal relationship with the key informants, who have been integrated in the activist-scholar circle of the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory. If successful, this study could be the first stage of an action research in which local activists would not only be treated as a group of study, but their needs and actions would reframe the questions and scope of my research. In turn, the local movement against incineration would make use of the research outcomes in order to reach its goal, eventually creating a symbiotic feedback process potentially fruitful for both parts. This study is organized in seven chapters and six interludes. In chapter 2 I present the rationale behind the choice of case study as a research methodology, introduce the writer to the case study design, and share the ethical considerations at stake. Chapter 3 contains the theoretical toolbox where I conduct a literature review of the material that serves as theoretical frame for this study. I start with different visions on subalternity to later define subaltern environmentalism, and pointing out to some commonalities among different forms of alternative environmentalism. Then, I explore the concept of sacrifice zone and present the street science process that is being used by affected communities in order to uncover the infliction of slow violence in a variety of forms. In chapter 4 I introduce the reader to the case study through a short historical revision of the origins of Can Sant Joan and the development of the neighborhood until our days. Thereafter I thoroughly analyze the socio-political positionality of the community in different terms to verify if Can Sant Joan is a subaltern community. Chapter 5 is dedicated to discussing the neighborhood of Can Sant Joan as a sacrifice zone, as well as different forms of slow violence that the community has suffered. First, I revise the long list of locally unwanted land uses (LULUs) that the community has been burdened with and uncover a pattern based on political criteria for the placing of those LULUs. Thereupon, I analyze the different forms of slow violence that Can Sant Joan is being inflicted, including environmental, structural and narrative violence. In chapter 6, I document the movement against waste incineration in the cement plant that is taking place in Can Sant Joan, present the main forms of activism that the movement is using, and discuss the features that make it fit into the frame of subaltern environmentalism. Then, I discuss the central role of street science and forming coalitions: while the former is used to contest narrative violence and legitimize the claims of the community, the latter enhances public visibility and helps to forge a common subaltern identity that goes beyond the borders of the neighborhood. The study concludes with chapter 7, where I summarize the outcomes of this thesis by answering the research questions posed in chapter 2. Finally, I briefly present potential future research in Can Sant Joan that could keep contributing to the mobilized scholarly fields and to the movement against incineration as well, and close with a short update of the last months of struggle. The study is complemented with a series of six 2 interludes inspired by the Toxic Bios1 project, which compiles in an interactive open access online platform toxic autobiographies from communities affected by environmental injustices in several European countries and beyond. In the interludes the scale of the unit of analysis shifts from the community of Can Sant Joan to the individuals affected by the studied phenomena and thus, I use storytelling in order to complement my research with insights from a different perspective. In the first interlude, I highlight the importance that bodily experiences of toxicity can have in contesting narrative violence through toxic storytelling and I discuss the new guerrilla narrative methodology. The rest of the interludes comprise six toxic autobiographies by six different members of the local community that are to different extents active in the movement against waste incineration in Can Sant Joan.

<p>This dissertation, titled “Uncertainty Discourse: Climate Models, Gender, and Environmental Literature in the Anthropocene,” takes a feminist approach to sustainability through the lens of climate science and English-language environmental fiction. I diagnose the appearance of what I call a discourse of uncertainty, which describes new constitutions of thought and social organization emerging in response to the structural uncertainties that characterize climate change. I root this discourse in the scientific practice of climate modeling, by which scientists calculate the probability, or degrees of uncertainty, of future weather scenarios. Though climate models inform socio-political preparations for a climate-changed future, their utility has gone unheeded in the humanities. I fill this gap by placing scientific and literary depictions of uncertainty into conversation to explore their epistemological and ethical implications for a climate-changing future through issues such as gender and representation, politics and sustainability, and knowledge and time. I not only trace how uncertainty is manifested in contemporary environmental literature, such as Ian McEwan’s <i>Solar</i> (2010) and Barbara Kingsolver’s <i>Flight Behavior </i>(2012), but also consider the drama of South Asian women playwrights alongside the works of feminist scholars, philosophers, and activists.</p>

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.