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Uncertainty Discourse: Climate Models, Gender, and Environmental Literature in the Anthropocene

<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>

  1. 10.25394/pgs.8969927.v1
Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:purdue.edu/oai:figshare.com:article/8969927
Date13 August 2019
CreatorsPamela Carralero (7012823)
Source SetsPurdue University
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeText, Thesis
RightsCC BY 4.0
Relationhttps://figshare.com/articles/Uncertainty_Discourse_Climate_Models_Gender_and_Environmental_Literature_in_the_Anthropocene/8969927

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