This thesis contends that Nina Katchadourian's oeuvre can be read as subtly breaking down problematic assumptions about nature in Western thought. The second chapter draws on biosemiotics, which redefines life as semiosis, and trans-corporeality, which reconceptualizes the human body as inseparable from the environment, to show how Katchadourian's art routinely calls attention to non-human animal and material agencies. The third chapter demonstrates how Katchadourian's work implicitly reinforces Donna Haraway's idea of naturecultures, which contends that nature and culture are mutually implicated and inextricably intertwined, through a close reading of two of Katchadourian's pieces, Natural Crossdressing and Mended Spiderwebs #19 (Laundry Line). The final chapter compares the use of irony in two pieces that comment on Western animal classification--Chloe, by Katchadourian, and Scala Naturae, by Mark Dion--contending that Katchadourian's piece demonstrates what Bronislaw Szerszynski terms an "ironic ecology."

According to the material feminist corpus, namely Stacy Alaimo’s concept of trans-corporeality, material flows and interconnectivity between humans and their environment insists that the human body has never been atomistic, but rather a porous figure that continually interacts/intra-acts with its environment. The recent biotechnological boom allowing for the production of human-animal hybrids (chimeras) provides the kind of visualization of these interconnectivities that can help instigate a reconception of the human—as not human at all, but rather posthuman. This study looks at the presence of these human-animal hybrids in popular art media, specifically: the horror film, Splice (Dir. Natali 2009); the YA novel, Inhuman (Falls 2013); and the comic, Sweet Tooth (Lemire 2009-2013). This thesis argues that the human-animal hybrid figure exhibits utopian horror, or the use of horror to produce new, better, ways of conceptualizing human-animal relationships, ones that acknowledge our already posthuman plurality of self.

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.

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Mon mémoire explore les représentations d’environnements matériels et naturels dans des œuvres littéraires de Virginia Woolf et Mina Loy, et comment ces écrivaines conçoivent les connections entre leurs personnages féminins et leurs environnements. À travers l’analyse de leurs œuvres respectives et à l’aide de préceptes de l’écocritique et de sujets connexes tels la matérialité, l’écoféminisme et la trans-corporalité, j’établis la possibilité de réévaluer la perception anti-nature du Modernisme et des opportunités pour enrichir les études écocritiques et modernistes. En premier lieu, j’observe l’inséparabilité entre l’humanité et ces environnements de vie dans Between the Acts, dernier roman complété par Woolf, et comment cela constitue une évolution par rapport à sa nouvelle « Kew Gardens ». De plus, je présente les bénéfices de cette relation pour les femmes et leurs ambitions artistiques en me basant sur les arguments de Woolf dans son essai A Room of One’s Own et en conversant avec des études qui explorent les éléments écocritiques de l’œuvre de Woolf. En deuxième lieu, je m’intéresse à une sélection des premiers poèmes de Mina Loy pour leurs examens de thèmes féministes et leur intégration dans les représentations des lieux visités dans les poèmes. J’illustre le rôle actif d’espaces domestiques et publics dans le maintien de discours dominants du patriarcat, et donc dans la résultante subjugation des femmes à son pouvoir. Ce travail d’analyse me permet de conclure avec de nouvelles avenues de recherche pour solidifier la place des femmes modernistes au sein du mouvement à l’aide de leurs intérêts environnementaux et pour reforger les liens ignorés ou effacés entre elles. / My thesis explores the depictions of material and natural spaces in literary works by Virginia Woolf and Mina Loy, and how both writers conceive the interconnections between their female characters and their surrounding environments. With the help of precepts of ecocriticism and of related fields such as materiality, ecofeminism and trans-corporeality in analyzing Woolf’s and Loy’s respective works, I demonstrate how the misguided preconception of Modernism’s contempt for nature can be reassessed to offer new opportunities for both ecocritical and modernist studies. Firstly, I observe the inseparability between humanity and its living environments in Woolf’s last completed novel Between the Acts and how this evolved from her earlier short story “Kew Gardens.” I also discuss the benefits of this relation for women and their artistic ambitions with the aid of Woolf’s own claims in her essay A Room of One’s Own and in conversation with studies which have attested the ecocritical elements of Woolf’s work. Secondly, I take an interest in Mina Loy’s early poetry for its exploration of feminist themes and how those intertwine with her depictions of her poems’ environments. I illustrate the active role of domestic and public spaces in the maintenance of ambient ruling patriarchal discourses and the subjugation of women to their power. This work of analysis allows me to conclude with new avenues from which to solidify the places of women modernists in the movement by the means of their environmental interests and to reforge the ignored or erased affiliations between them.

This thesis aims to develop a new methodological concept better to understand art and curating in a post-human setting. Departing from a post-humanist ontology, my initial idea was to analyse contemporary artworks dealing with food and trace and substantiate a figuration of the gut/intestinal system (connected to post-human notions as the ideas of trans- corporeality, vibrant matter, etc.) and how it could create a productive reading of these works. During my research on food-related art projects, I realised that the gut-figuration has broader implications and could function as a tool to understand the contemporary art world and curating at large, through a post-human lens. Accordingly, I suggest my thesis to be a contribution to what I would like to name an “intestinal turn”, a contemporary post-humanist, trans-corporeal understanding of art that could change how art is perceived and how the subjectivity of the artist, and curatorial work, could be understood today.