Matching Items (2)
Description
This thesis is an ecocritical, art historical inquiry into colonization, globalization, climate change as well as perceptions of American nationalism and Manifest Destiny through the overarching concept of the Anthropocene. The focus is on the United States specifically and entails an analysis of American society and culture from a global standpoint. First, an overview of origins and impacts of the Anthropocene concept is given. The thesis then explores works of visual culture by ten different artists through diverse subconcepts. Colonial history, neocolonialism, and globalization are examined through the Roanoke watercolors (1585) by John White, A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby (May-July 2014) by African American artist Kara Walker, and the Insertions into Ideological Circuits series (1970-ongoing) by Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles. In a further step, anthropogenic environmental destruction as part of visual and conceptual art is traced over a period of 130 years. The works Lower Manhattan from Communipaw, New Jersey (1880) by Thomas Moran, Erosion No. 2 - Mother Earth Laid Bare (1936) by Alexandre Hogue, and HighWaterLine (2007) by contemporary artist Eve Mosher provide a basis for this analysis. Finally, The Consummation of Empire and Destruction from The Course of Empire series (1836) by Thomas Cole, Emanuel Leutze’s Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (1862), John Gast’s American Progress (1872), and Amy Balkin’s Sell Us Your Liberty, or We’ll Subcontract Your Death (2008) are examined to reveal how American exceptionalism and nationalism have influenced domestic policy as well as foreign policy in the past and the present. Visual works have agency while, on the one hand, functioning as a means for propagandizing Anthropocene symptoms and consequences. On the other hand, they can serve as leverage for ecocritical readings and as catalysts for social change.
ContributorsSchuenemeyer, Katleen (Author) / Sweeney, J. Gray (Thesis advisor) / Adamson, Joni (Committee member) / Delmont, Matthew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
Raising future generations is a culturally diverse, universally technological human project. This research brought the everyday work of raising children into the domain of sustainability scholarship, by first proposing a model of childrearing as a globally distributed socio-technical system, and then exploring the model with participants in two nodes – an elementary and middle school, and a children’s museum. In the process, the research objective shifted towards using methods that were less academic and more relevant to childrearing agents. The focus on participatory survey data was abandoned, in favor of autoethnographic documentation of a long-term engagement with a third node of the system, a child welfare setting. This approach yielded unexpected findings that fit the proposed model, identified characteristics of a Zone of Mutual Oblivion (ZMO) that exists between childrearing and sustainability, and clarified ways in which people prioritize their own needs and responsibilities, the developmental needs of children, the potential needs and capacities of future generations, and the functional integrity of ecological systems.
ContributorsCazel-Jahn, Angela (Author) / Blue Swadener, Elizabeth (Thesis advisor) / Allenby, Braden (Committee member) / Lobo, Jose (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019