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.

CrashCourse Literature and other educational YouTube videos are essential mechanisms for connecting students and the general public to the humanities. Public humanities projects are in an intellectual tug-of-war between what academia and the diverse developing public want them to be, but that contention can and should be mediated using new media tools like CrashCourse Literature. CrashCourse Literature's emphasis on bringing the reader to the text and the text to the reader, echoes the goals of reception theory. Reception theory focuses on finding meaning in a literary text using the reader's horizon of expectations more than an a traditional, essentialist, "original' reading of a text. Analyzing public humanities projects like CrashCourse Literature through the lens of reception theory can help to show why the public uses them to connect more fully with the humanities. Within the texts of the videos "Fate, Family, and Oedipus Rex: Crash Course Literature 202," "Shakespeare's Sonnets: Crash Course Literature 304", "Like Pale Gold--The Great Gatsby Part I: Crash Course English Literature #4," and "Was Gatsby Great? The Great Gatsby Part 2: Crash Course English Literature #5," I see two distinct levels of reception that influence and strengthen each other: 1. First level of reception: CrashCourse interacts with and refracts the texts they are explicating based on where the reader is in time and space. 2. Meta-reception: CrashCourse interacts and connects with the viewers of the video by interpreting their viewers' responses to said text. CrashCourse's use of popular culture references, references to current or familiar social, political, and cultural ideologies, jokes, validations of viewers previous literary experiences, informal language all situated well within sound academic scholarship constitute examples of first-level and meta-reception. CrashCourse Literature sees the humanities, and fictional literature in particular, as exercises in empathy. Accordingly, they treat their approach to the text (first-level reception) and their viewers response to the text (meta-reception) with the same empathetic care. Public humanities projects that use new media well, allow public access to and connection with scholarly discussion and information. If academic institutions want to continue humanities research and discussion in a way that keeps their publics enthusiastically engaged, they will find good tools in CrashCourse Literature, which is engaging precisely in the kind of intellectual work and dialogue the academic establishment needs in order to stay relevant and significant to the publics they serve.

<p>This project argues that industrial fires have the capacity to illuminate the complex entanglements (political, ecological, economic, etc.) of life in the era of industrial capitalism. It retells and reframes the stories of five such fires, each off which shines a light on the networks of social, political, technological, economic, and ecological relationships in particular communities at particular moments. It thus contributes to the interdisciplinary fields of American Studies and the environmental humanities, furthering our understanding of the unfolding experience of industrial capitalism in the twentieth and twenty-first century United States. It takes the form of a public humanities project and is produced for a popular audience, using journalistic, literary, historical, and other techniques to tell the stories of these fires. In doing so, I also hope to contribute to the expansion of public humanities scholarship and help foster a thriving and creative future for the humanities both in academia and beyond.</p>