This study focuses on ecofeminist ethical theory. A first aim is to clarify ecofeminist views on five central issues in the field of environmental ethics. These issues are: (1) Views of nature, (2) social constructivism and nature, (3) values of nature, (4) ethical contextualism, and (5) ethical pluralism. A second aim is to compare ecofeminist standpoints with certain standpoints within nonfeminist environmental ethical theory. A third aim is to critically discuss some of the main standpoints in ecofeminism. The analysis focuses on the works of Karen Warren, Sallie McFague, Chris Cuomo, and Carolyn Merchant. Other important sources are the environmental philosophers and ethicists J. Baird Callicott, Paul Taylor, Irene Klaver, Bryan G. Norton, Christopher Stone, Eugene Hargrove, Holmes Rolston III, Per Ariansen, Don E. Marietta, and Bruno Latour. The result of this study is that there are no main differences between ecofeminism and nonfeminist environmental ethics regarding the main standpoints on the five issues. Rather, the significant differences are found within these main standpoints. In addition, one important characteristic of ecofeminist ethics is its "double nature," that is, the fact that it is rooted in feminism and environmentalism. The double nature of ecofeminism results in a foundation out of which ecofeminism as an environmental philosophy has a unique potential to handle some of the theoretical tensions that environmental ethics creates. From the perspective that environmental problems consist of complex clusters of natureculture- discourse and that environmental ethical theory ought to be action guiding, it is argued that ecofeminist ethical theory has an advantage compared to nonfeminist environmental ethics. This standpoint is explained by the fact that ecofeminism holds a variety of views of nature, kinds of social constructivism and contextualism, and conceptions of values and of the self, and from the presumption that this variety reflects the reality of environmental problems. However, in order for ecofeminist ethical theory to fulfill its promise as an acceptable environmental ethical theory, its theoretical standpoints ought to be explicated and further clarified.

Ecocritical theology relates to American fiction as it connects nature and spirituality. In my development of the term “neo-pastoral” I begin with Virgil’s Eclogues to serve as examples for spiritual and nature related themes. Virgil’s characters in “The Dispossessed” represent people’s alienation from the land. Meliboeus must leave his homeland because the Roman government has reassigned it to their war veterans. As he leaves Meliboeus wonders why fate has rendered this judgment on him and yet has granted his friend Tityrus a reprieve. Typically, pastoral literature represents people’s longing to leave the city and return to the spiritual respite of the country. When Meliboeus begins his journey he does not travel toward a specific geographical location. Because the gods have forced him from his land and severed his spiritual connection to nature he travels into the unknown. This is the starting point from which I develop neo-pastoral threads in contemporary literature and discuss the alienation that people experience when they are no longer connected to a spirit of the land or genius loci. Neo-pastoralism relates Bakhtin’s idea of chronotope and the expansion of the narrative voice of the novel to include the time/space dialogic. Neo-pastoral fiction shows people in their quest to find spirituality in spite of damage from chemical catastrophic events and suggests they may turn to technology as an ideological base to replace religion. The (anti) heroes of this genre often feel no connection with Judeo-Christian canon yet they do not consider other models of spirituality. Through catastrophes related to the atomic bomb, nuclear waste accidents, and the realization of how chemical pollutants affect the atmosphere, neo-pastoral literature explores the idea of apocalypticism in the event of mass annihilation and the need for canonical reformation. The novels explored in this dissertation are John Updike’s Rabbit, Run; Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49; Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer; Don DeLillo’s White Noise; Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead; Toni Morrison’s Paradise; and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

Discourse has the power to organize thought—and therefore, to limit imagination. The purpose of this project is to trace the contours of climate change discourse constructed by transnational fossil fuel corporations, to make visible the ideological barriers it creates to imagining post-capitalist alternatives. It is undertaken in the context of a well-established urgency for global collaboration to halt, mitigate, and adapt to the social, economic, and ecological impacts of climate change, and takes as its point of departure the fundamental link between ecological degradation and the capitalist mode of production (with its accompanying imperatives of accumulation and profit), as well as the necessity of counter-hegemonic praxis to pursuing system-transformative change on the scale required for humanity to negotiate the looming crisis in a just and ecologically viable way. Conceptualizing popular media as a discursive battleground in which the voices of corporations (through the evolving mediums of advertisement) are privileged, I employ critical discourse analysis to explore the framing of climate change messages by five major transnational oil and gas corporations, toward developing an analytical framework for the burgeoning climate change movement grounded at the intersection of global corporate capitalism and ecological degradation. Climate change messages included images, videos, and narratives intended for public consumption which spoke to the source, resolution, and/or future of human-induced and climate-related ecological problems. These were drawn from corporate websites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter feeds, and YouTube channels over the course of 2016. As action research, I have undertaken this project with the explicit aim of empowering climate movements – of which I count myself a part – to imagine alternative futures. To contribute to this aim, I have created a media literacy toolkit that links corporate climate change messages with the interests they represent to make visible the dynamics of power that mobilize those interests. / Graduate

In this thesis, I focus on the gender analysis of a book called Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pincola Estes. In my opinion, this book can be used both as study material and in one's personal life since it's a interpretative essayist which is in between a scientific text and fiction. In my thesis, I expand theories of Annis Pratt, Pam Morris, and Judith Fetterley. Since Estes puts a lot of focus onto the importance of archetypes I interpret them in the theoretical part and afterward, I put my full focus onto them in the analytical part of the thesis. Estes is strongly influenced by the analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung, because of this I focus on the subject, about which Jung's classical texts are about and which concepts can be taken subversive. At the same time, I am trying to point out in what sense was the Estés approach similar or vice versa is different from the other authors dealing with the archetypal issue. While working on the other topics mentioned above I am working on identifying other concepts, mainly feminist based theories, which influenced the discourse of the text. The main goal of this thesis is not a literary analysis of every single story, but a critical evaluation of how the author interprets the stories and what is the meaning of each archetype. While...

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This study is a gendered analysis of natural resource management at the local scale of a poor rural Sri Lankan village in a conservation buffer zone. This village experiences destruction of forests and human elephant conflict. The objective of this study is to gain an in-depth knowledge of residents' use and understandings of environmental resources, and to investigate if gender helps shape these factors. This study relies on a social sustainability conceptual framework. It tracks participation of local women and men in natural resource management, and in conservation within and outside of the Bibile community. Local nongovernmental organizations focus on mitigating human elephant conflict and government policies influence particular farming practices. Unless socially and environmentally sustainable practices are developed, areas within and outside of the protected areas are not sustainable in their current state (Jayewardene 1998). Current interventions are failing to solve this problem in both rural communities and natural ecosystems, demonstrated most clearly by shrinking forest habitats and the frequency of human and elephant deaths (Bandara 2009). By broadening the analysis of natural resource management to examine possible social, economic, and political influences, my research examines how different resource management approaches might be filtered and reflected by variation in local residents' use and understanding of environmental resources. I suggest that gender, household decision-making, and equality are overlooked but potentially important aspects in the perception and implementation of natural resource management.

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Soil is one of the largest ecosystems being ignored by human activities. Our farming practices and urban constructions have contributed to its degradation, with far-reaching consequences for the water cycle’s equi- librium.Reconnect with nature and learn the methods to assist in its recovery are essential for the survival of all inhabitants on this planet.  My degree project consists of a large research into the water cycle of urban areas, studying the particular case of Stockholm, that leads to the problems of degraded soil. The aim is to understand the relation- ship between water cycle and soil ecosystems and explore potential solutions.  As a result, I have designed KURITA, a learning tool founded upon the ecofeminism values of care, that serves as a learning method for citi- zens to reconnect with soil values and actively participate in its restor- ative process.

The female protagonist Catherine Danielle Clark (Kya) in Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing is abandoned by her family at a young age and grows up alone in a marshland environment in 1950s North Carolina. Shunned by the local community, Kya relies on nature to help her survive and to teach her about life and love—until one day she finds herself accused of murder. The purpose of this essay is to examine how the author uses nature and the protagonist Kya in order to promote environmental consciousness in the novel, interlinking them in ways that advance identifiable environmental concepts. Therefore, the essay carries out a close reading of the text using three different ecocritical lenses—postcolonial ecocriticism, ecofeminism, and climate change criticism—and with a focus on three themes, respectively—voice, agency, and urgency. It finds first, through an exploration of voice and a postcolonial ecocritical lens, that both nature and Kya are othered in the novel but come to be heard and respected over time; second, through an exploration of agency and an ecofeminist lens, that activity rather than passivity is ascribed to nature and Kya, and their interconnectedness acts as a positive force for change; and third, through an exploration of urgency and a climate change criticism lens, that the interconnectedness of nature and Kya persuades readers to care about the natural world and appreciate the need to respect and protect it, using a subtle rather than overtly political message. Overall, Delia Owens’ use of nature and the protagonist promotes three key environmental concepts: the voice of nature, the agency of nature, and the urgency of respecting nature. This essay concludes that Where the Crawdads Sing speaks to the environmental consciousness of readers in these times of troubling climatic change, lending itself to a variety of ecocritical readings and offering a glimmer of hope. / Den kvinnliga huvudpersonen Catherine Danielle Clark (Kya) i Delia Owens Where the Crawdads Sing överges av sin familj i ung ålder och växer upp ensam i en våtmarksmiljö i 1950-talets North Carolina. Kya är utstött av lokalsamhället och förlitar sig på naturen för att hjälpa henne att överleva och för att lära henne om liv och kärlek—tills hon en dag finner sig anklagad för mord. Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka hur författaren använder naturen och huvudpersonen Kya för att främja miljömedvetenhet i romanen och koppla samman dem på sätt som främjar identifierbara miljökoncept. Därför utförs en närläsning av texten med tre olika ekokritiska linser—postkolonial ekokritik, ekofeminism och klimatkritik—och med fokus på tre respektive teman—röst, agens och brådska. Den konstaterar först, genom ett utforskande av röst och en postkolonial ekokritisk lins, att både naturen och Kya är sedda som ”den andre” i romanen men kommer att höras och respekteras med tiden; för det andra, genom ett utforskande av agens och en ekofeministisk lins, att aktivitet snarare än passivitet tillskrivs naturen och Kya, och deras sammankoppling fungerar som en positiv kraft för förändring; och för det tredje, genom ett utforskande av brådska och en klimatkritik lins, att sammankopplingen av naturen och Kya övertalar läsarna att bry sig om den naturliga världen och uppskatta behovet av att respektera och skydda den, med hjälp av ett subtilt snarare än öppet politiskt budskap. Sammantaget främjar Delia Owens användning av naturen och huvudpersonen tre viktiga miljöbegrepp: naturens röst, naturens agens och brådskan att respektera naturen. Denna uppsats drar slutsatsen att Where the Crawdads Sing talar till läsarnas miljömedvetenhet i dessa tider av oroande klimatförändringar, lämpar sig för ett antal olika ekokritiska läsningar och erbjuder en strimma av hopp.

Ana Mendieta was a Cuban-born American artist whose unique body of work incorporated performance, activism, Earth art, installation, and the Afro-Cuban practices of Santería. She began her career at the University of Iowa, were she initially received her degree in painting in 1969. It was not until 1972 that Mendieta shifted radically to performance art. Though she was raised Catholic, she developed an interest in the rituals involved with Santería, a culturally predominant Cuban religion, and it deeply influenced her work in her choice of materials and settings. Santería is one of the major faith-based lifestyles of Cuba and is characterized by a synthesis of Afro-Cuban and Catholic characteristics, along with its own unique teachings and rituals. Also a prominent theme in Mendieta’s work was her sense of displacement and her insatiable desire to reconcile her Cuban heritage, which she attempts to resolve, not only through her art, but also during several trips to Cuba. Greater still in its contribution of influence to Mendieta’s work was the ecofeminist movement which amalgamated elements of the feminist and environmental movements; Ecofeminism’s emergence in the United States coincided with the rise of Mendieta’s career during the 1970’s. The movement focused on the correlation between the oppression, degradation, and exploitation of women and the oppression, degradation, and exploitation of the Earth. This thesis examines the life of Ana Mendieta and analyzes how her works may be viewed in an ecofeminist context. It analyzes how Mendieta’s work acts as a reflection of her cultural, social, and political reality and discusses ways in which characteristics of Santería and ecofeminism as a discourse influenced the imagery and symbolism used in Mendieta’s artwork throughout her brief career. Formal analysis of Mendieta’s artwork and contextual and historical analysis of Mendieta’s life, the ecofeminist discourse, and Afro-Cuban spirituality are explored in this research.