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In this paper, I analyze representations of nature in popular film, using the feminist / deconstructionist concept of a dualism to structure my critique. Using Val Plumwood’s analysis of the logical structure of dualism and the 5 ‘features of a dualism’ that she identifies, I critique 5 popular movies –

In this paper, I analyze representations of nature in popular film, using the feminist / deconstructionist concept of a dualism to structure my critique. Using Val Plumwood’s analysis of the logical structure of dualism and the 5 ‘features of a dualism’ that she identifies, I critique 5 popular movies – Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Brave, Grizzly Man, and Planet Earth – by locating within each of them one of the 5 features and explaining how the movie functions to reinforce the Nature/Culture dualism . By showing how the Nature/Culture dualism shapes and is shaped by popular cinema, I show how “Nature” is a social construct, created as part of this very dualism, and reified through popular culture. I conclude with the introduction of a number of ‘subversive’ pieces of visual art that undermine and actively deconstruct the Nature/Culture dualism and show to the viewer a more honest presentation of the non-human world.
ContributorsBarton, Christopher Joseph (Author) / Broglio, Ron (Thesis director) / Minteer, Ben (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The purpose of this study was to investigate undergraduate sustainability students' engagement with sustainability in relation to their sense of place in the broader Salt River Valley community. The study was guided by two research questions 1) How do undergraduate Sustainability students explain their sense of place in the Valley

The purpose of this study was to investigate undergraduate sustainability students' engagement with sustainability in relation to their sense of place in the broader Salt River Valley community. The study was guided by two research questions 1) How do undergraduate Sustainability students explain their sense of place in the Valley with relation to their perceptions of sustainability? 2) Does residency in a different city, town, or state prior to entering the Sustainability program influence students' sense of place in the Valley? The study consisted of two distinct parts. In the first part, twenty students were interviewed using a narrative inquiry process to understand their perceptions of sustainability, their sense of place in the Valley, and how those two components influenced their engagement with sustainability in their communities. In the second part, these narratives were analyzed, synthesized, and samples of the stories were placed into a creative nonfiction collection to express an overall picture of sustainability in the Valley. Results showed that students generally relied on academic, professional, and social factors to identify places in which they could practice or engage with sustainability. Regardless of previous residencies, students expressed similar frustrations or limitations in expressing their sense of place, as related to sustainability, in the Valley.
ContributorsAllen, Emily Elizabeth (Author) / Broglio, Ron (Thesis director) / Goggin, Peter (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor)
Created2014-05
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This dissertation explores discourses in the contemporary United States surrounding the creation, coding, sterilization, and general keeping of canines in order to interrogate how sex, gender, race, class, sexuality, and species together serve biopolitical formations of social control, patriarchal white supremacy, and heteronormativity. Interrogating these socially constructed and oftentimes stereotypical

This dissertation explores discourses in the contemporary United States surrounding the creation, coding, sterilization, and general keeping of canines in order to interrogate how sex, gender, race, class, sexuality, and species together serve biopolitical formations of social control, patriarchal white supremacy, and heteronormativity. Interrogating these socially constructed and oftentimes stereotypical narratives through an interspecies lens demonstrates how taxonomies of power and systems of oppression and privilege become situated across species. This project utilizes interviews and ethnography, as well as analysis of popular culture, legislation and news media.

Interspeciesism is informed by feminist influences, functioning as a framing paradigm that engages with a politicized question of the animal that explicitly acknowledges human-animal entanglements across sites that are shaped by imperialism and colonialism. This interspecies project considers the political nature of relationships between humans and canines. It suggests that people situate their own identities and power not only in relation to other humans but also to other species. Simultaneously, the interspeciesm I engage with extends analyses of biopolitics, or the regulations of living bodies, beyond humans to all species. It interrogates how contemporary U.S. society has organized and identified itself in part through the ways in which it controls and monitors canines, often in relationship to the multiple ways dogs in the U.S. are racialized, classed and gendered by specific breeds. This coding of canine bodies with various taxonomies of power is not about dog breeds’ in-and-of themselves, but instead indicates that dominant U.S. society seeks to assert control over certain populations that are constructed as undesirable and unproductive.

Canines exist in a unique space in the U.S. cultural imaginary where they have multiple and oftentimes contradictory meanings that are influenced by a variety of power relations that transcend species. At stake is a critical concern regarding how interspecies bodies are made, controlled, formed, and refigured together under heteropatriarchal white supremacist modes of power. It draws attention to what these corporeal un(makings) imply for an ethics of being with, and thinking of, the other—human and animal.
ContributorsClark, Meredith Helen (Author) / Leong, Karen J. (Thesis advisor) / Koblitz, Ann H. (Committee member) / Scheiner-Gillis, Georganne (Committee member) / Broglio, Ron (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017