Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2007. / Title from title screen (site viewed Oct. 10, 2007). PDF text: 219 p. UMI publication number: AAT 3258740. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, November, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1996. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [195]-200).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2008. / "May, 2009." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 195-212). Library also has microfilm. Ann Arbor, Mich. : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [2009]. 1 microfilm reel ; 35 mm. Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 161-179). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wyoming, 2007. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Oct. 21, 2008). An Interdisciplinary Master of Arts thesis in English, Education, and Environment and Natural Resources. Includes bibliographical references (p. 150-154).

Thesis (M.A. in English)--Washington State University, August 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on July 15, 2009). "Department of English." Includes bibliographical references (p. 57-59).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2007. / "August 2007." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 191-221). Library also has microfilm. Ann Arbor, Mich. : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [2008]. 1 microfilm reel ; 35 mm. Online version available on the World Wide Web.

This dissertation seeks to avoid two extremes that have polarized literary debate: on the one hand, a strong constructivism that reduces environments to textual effects; and, on the other hand, a strong realism that elides language's constructive power, assuming texts' mimetic transparency. Positioning itself within the ecocritical attempt to reconnect text and environment, my project articulates a constructive vision of material representation that I call "constrained realism." Katherine L. Hayles's "constrained constructivism" emphasizes the constructed nature of scientific knowledge while asserting science's truth; conversely, "constrained realism" re-emphasizes the material real's influence on literature while acknowledging representation's limitations. My project adapts Bruno Latour's work in science studies to literary texts, reconceiving written representation as a dynamic process of human/material interaction. My reassessment of literary materiality extends to both canonical and neglected American texts that address representational anxieties about materiality. First, I examine how the work of Henry David Thoreau presents the relation between a material world and written text as actively constructed and mutually constituted, a relationship that necessitates Thoreau's self-reflexive engagement with language. A similar dynamic between material observation and skepticism about language informs Frank Norris's

<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>