This dissertation offers a reappraisal of twentieth-century dystopian fiction in the roughly thirty years after World War II by identifying the environmental dimensions of many of the most genre-defining authors and novels of this period. Given the escalating climate emergency and the growing popularity of climate fiction (“cli-fi”), it would be difficult to imagine critical conversations about twenty-first-century dystopian fiction that overlook environmental anxieties in the genre. Yet, in scholarly discussions of postwar dystopian fiction, there is a limiting sense that environmental “themes” emerge only periodically, or are of secondary importance to the genre’s more typically “Orwellian” themes like totalitarianism, propaganda, the Cold War, automation, censorship, and conformism. In contrast, my dissertation shows how dystopian fiction from this period develops in conversation with emerging conceptions of environmental degradation in the anti-nuclear, anti-population growth, and modern environmental movements. By developing a history of dystopian fiction’s mutual imbrication with growing anxieties about ecological degradation, my dissertation shows that texts in the genre have grappled for decades with socioecological questions that still perplex us today: can nuclear energy power a safe and abundant future? Should there be hard limits to humankind’s population? How should humans interact with/in non-human nature? If there are ecological limits to economic growth, is humankind (a problematically capacious term) approaching ecological limits? If so, are we (another problematically capacious term) courting disaster? Over three chapters, I trace the co-emergence of dystopianism and environmentalism in the roughly three decades after World War II as major Western cultural heuristics for thinking about the future. In this historical context, my dissertation puts dystopian novels like George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano (1952), Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! (1966), John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (1968), and Ursula Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven (1971) in conversation with trailblazing environmental texts like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) and Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968). As I will show, dystopian fiction produced during this period was influenced by and participated in debates about nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, overconsumption and overpopulation, and the degradation and disappearance of non-human nature. At the same time, the anti-nuclear, anti-population growth, and modern environmental movements borrowed rhetorical strategies from dystopian fiction to warn about the (in)habitability of the future. In developing these arguments, I draw heavily from primary sources and historical accounts of these movements, utopian and dystopian studies criticism, Marxist ecology and Critical Theory, and a growing collection of scholarship in the Environmental and Energy Humanities that emphasizes the centrality of energy to modern societies. This history will contribute to a better interdisciplinary understanding of how modern environmental thinking is influenced by dystopianism, and how dystopian fiction warns readers about what John Brunner calls environmental “survivability” in an age when the spectre of climate breakdown looms large in the public’s imagination.

The doctoral dissertation “Waterbirth and Russian-American Exchange: From the Iron Curtain to Facebook” presents the social history of the Russian waterbirth movement, from the Cold War epoch to the present. One of the first ethnographies to examine Russian-American cultural exchange, this study fills a number of gaps in both Russian and American cultural history, bringing together the issues of religion, science, gender, body politics and the state. By drawing on interviews with Russian and American birth practitioners, as well as participant observation of the birthing practices on both continents, I seek to define their agendas for the development of alternative ideologies and practices, as well as their specific effects, experienced on both global and local scales. In particular, I attempt to problematize the conventional narratives of globalization and biomedicalization, presenting “local” cultures either as passive victims of the dominant Western agent or rebels exercising futile resistance. Despite the turbulent effects of Western intervention into the Russian value system and everyday practices, the local culture of Russia proved capable of producing, promoting, and communicating to the world particular models and schemes that proved to be viable, went global, and affected the vision of the body and self in the Western world. By examining the case of the waterbirth movement, the project seeks to enrich current understanding of the information flows between Russia and the West. By looking at Russian and American utopian projects, which center on science, nature, tradition and globalization, and carefully tracing their sources, origins, mutual impacts and conflicts, we can get a better understanding of the formation and distribution of authoritative knowledge on global and local levels. An empirical study of this specific set of problems is expected to stimulate a valuable insight into the mechanisms governing the relationships between social orders, complex transnational identity formation, and global/local knowledge production in late modern societies.

As Aristotle wrote, rhetoric is an art or faculty of finding the available means of persuasion in a given circumstance, and the late nineteenth century was a time in American history when many authors used utopian fiction as the best available means of persuasion. For a few years, the utopian novel became a widespread, versatile and common rhetorical trope. Edward Bellamy was the most popular of these writers. Bellamy’s utopian novel Looking Backward was not only the third best-selling book of nineteenth century America, it inspired over a hundred other utopian novels and helped create a mass movement of “Bellamy clubs” along with a political party (Nationalism). During the latter part of the nineteenth century, American public discourse underwent a general shift from a focus on communal values to a focus on individuals as the source of truth. Utopian fiction of the era helps illuminate why and how this shift occurred. In nineteenth century America, literature was generally not considered to be rhetorical. At most, critics treated fiction as a form of epideictic rhetoric, aiming only to delight, educate, or create discussion. When fiction was used to promote legislative agendas and thus entered into the realm of deliberative rhetoric, critics argued that its transgression of rhetorical boundaries supposedly ruined its appeal. Utopian literature came the closest to breaking down the barriers between literature and rhetoric, as hundreds of utopian novels were published, most of them in response to Edward Bellamy. A close rhetorical reading of Looking Backward details its rhetorical nature and helps account for its rhetorical success. I treat each of the novels as participants in the larger cultural conversation, and detail the ways in which they address Bellamy, each other, and issues such as the temperance movement and the decline of classical languages in higher education. In modern times, though Bellamy has faded from the public memory, he has proven useful in a variety of contexts, from a political punching bag to a way to lend an air of erudition to various types of popular fiction. / text

This study is an exploration of the practices of yoga teachers whose approaches are inscribed in social justice. Indeed, it attempts to understand how they find cohesion between a complex and spiritual discipline and their commitment to participate in anti-oppression. Moreover, it looks at the ways they believe yoga can be used for collective liberation. It is autoethnographical, and is based on semi-qualitative interviews which are then analysed thematically. Furthermore, it is analytically framed within theories of intersectionality, affective knowledge and teaching, solidarity and language, and critical future and utopian studies. The analysis then focuses on the teachers’ understanding of yogic practices andphilosophies before unveiling the ways they address and/or avoid issues of oppression and looking at the ways they envision yoga as a tool for collective liberation.

In this paper, I explore the emerging genre of Ecotopian fiction, which envisions alternative societal structures through an environmental or ecological lens. Examining two seminal works, Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future (2020) and Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia (1975), I investigate how these ecotopian narratives contribute to progressive ideologies on resource management, shedding light on the environmental requirements of utopia. Applying Darko Suvin's methodology to analyse the utopian framework in both novels, my reading of the works demonstrates that Callenbach's Ecotopia offers a confined utopian vision while Ministry for the Future employs a narrative approach that encompasses multiple possible utopian horizons. This adaptation of the Ecotopian framework serves to reimagine and reassess our strategies for addressing climate challenges within the complexities of the global economy. My argument draws from Booker and Daraiseh reading of Ministry for the Future which posits that the dialogic elements within Robinson's work foster reader engagement, prompting consideration of diverse perspectives and possibilities. Moreover, the polyphony of narrators in the Ministry for the Future facilitates a detachment of climate resolutions from Western-centric perspectives and from the perspective of one person - an imperative step towards the necessary global system change. As agents shaping potential worlds, ecotopian writers must articulate new economic systems in a manner that resonates with readers, fostering integration of these concepts into the collective consciousness. I contend that, to endure impending challenges, it is essential to continue developing the ecotopian horizon, exploring variations on ecological economies and that is best done through a multi-voiced approach. This ongoing effort is crucial to ensure the survival of future generations, empowering them to contribute to their own narratives of ecotopia.