Matching Items (3)
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- All Subjects: environmental justice
- All Subjects: Environmental Studies
- All Subjects: Air--Pollution--Law and legislation--Social aspects--Mexico--Mexico City.
- All Subjects: Mexico's City Air Pollution
- Genre: Masters Thesis
- Creators: Sadowski-Smith, Claudia
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
Description
This thesis examines perceptions of climate change in literature through the lens of the environmental humanities, an interdisciplinary field that brings history, ecocriticism, and anthropology together to consider the environmental past, present and future. The project began in Iceland, during the Svartárkot Culture-Nature Program called “Human Ecology and Culture at Lake Mývatn 1700-2000: Dimensions of Environmental and Cultural Change”. Over the course of 10 days, director of the program, Viðar Hreinsson, an acclaimed literary and Icelandic Saga scholar, brought in researchers from different fields of study in Iceland to give students a holistically academic approach to their own environmental research. In this thesis, texts under consideration include the Icelandic Sagas, My Antonia by Willa Cather, Tropic of Orange by Karen Tei Yamashita, and The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi. The thesis is supported by secondary works written by environmental humanists, including Andrew Ross, Steve Hartman, Ignacio Sanchez Cohen, and Joni Adamson, who specialize in archeological research on heritage sites in Iceland and/or study global weather patterns, prairie ecologies in the American Midwest, the history of water in the Southwest, and climate fiction. Chapter One, focusing on the Icelandic Sagas and My Antonia, argues that literature from different centuries, different cultures, and different parts of the world offers evidence that humans have been driving environmental degradation at the regional and planetary scales since at least the 1500s, especially as they have engaged in aggressive forms of settlement and colonization. Chapter Two, focused on Tropic of Orange, this argues that global environmental change leads to extreme weather and drought that is increasing climate migration from the Global South to the Global North. Chapter Three, focused on The Water Knife, argues that climate fiction gives readers the opportunity to think about and better prepare for a viable and sustainable future rather than wait for inevitable apocalypse. By exploring literature that depicts and represents climate change through time, environmental humanists have innovated new methods of analysis for teaching and thinking about what humans must understand about their impacts on ecosystems so that we can better prepare for the future.
ContributorsBurns, Kate S (Author) / Adamson, Joni (Thesis advisor) / Lussier, Mark (Committee member) / Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Mexico City has an ongoing air pollution issue that negatively affects its citizens and surroundings with current structural disconnections preventing the city from improving its overall air quality. Thematic methodological analysis reveals current obstacles and barriers, as well as variables contributing to this persistent problem. A historical background reveals current programs and policies implemented to improve Mexico’s City air quality. Mexico City’s current systems, infrastructure, and policies are inadequate and ineffective. There is a lack of appropriate regulation on other modes of transportation, and the current government system fails to identify how the class disparity in the city and lack of adequate education are contributing to this ongoing problem. Education and adequate public awareness can potentially aid the fight against air pollution in the Metropolitan City.
ContributorsGarcia, Lucero (Author) / Duarte, Marisa E. (Thesis advisor) / Arzubiaga, Angela (Committee member) / Richter, Jennifer (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Anthropogenic factors contributing to more frequent and extreme weather-related events are displacing vulnerable populations and increasing the global number of food-insecure climate refugees. As food sovereignty is essential to combating climate change and ensuring sustainable futures – according to the Declaration of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda – it is important to examine accepted practices in the food industry that may threaten the sovereignty of vulnerable groups. The aim of this thesis is to explore two climate fiction novels – Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl – and how they demonstrate the connection between problematic practices in the food industry and lost food sovereignty. I also examine the novels through the lens of international documents such as the 2030 Agenda. Each novel, I argue, contributes to a growing awareness about the importance of protecting first rights to indigenous and local foods and land, or food sovereignty. The environmental humanities, and climate fiction specifically, are also contributing to a better understanding of the detrimental effects that lost sovereignty has on a people’s culture and the future sustainability of the planet. Climate fiction, as these novels illustrate, can provide case studies for understanding the inextricable link between humans and nature and allow people to imagine a better future. Placed within larger contexts that illuminate the current need for global campaigns for food sovereignty and United Nations agendas such as the 2030 Agenda, literature which demonstrates the human relationship to food can be used to enrich and strengthen application of the Agenda’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. Through imagery of seeds and regeneration, Butler and Bacigalupi illuminate the critical role of seed-carriers, or bearers of food knowledge, in intergenerational food education and sustainability. Their novels demonstrate links between environmental injustices and food insecurities – violence and displacement of climate refugees in Parable of the Sower, and biopiracy and food totalitarianism in The Windup Girl – that help readers better understand the potential power of the SDGs for planning food futures.
ContributorsBoth, Natalie (Author) / Adamson, Joni (Thesis advisor) / Brown, Lois (Committee member) / Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021