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An Archive of Imagined Worlds and Futures: Environmental Speculative Fiction of the 20th & 21st Century.

紀錄類型:	書目-電子資源 : Monograph/item
正題名/作者:	An Archive of Imagined Worlds and Futures: Environmental Speculative Fiction of the 20th & 21st Century./
作者:	Younus, Zainab.
出版者:	Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, : 2021,
面頁冊數:	201 p.
附註:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 83-02, Section: B.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International83-02B.
標題:	Literature. -
電子資源:	https://pqdd.sinica.edu.tw/twdaoapp/servlet/advanced?query=28645975
ISBN:	9798534699494

An Archive of Imagined Worlds and Futures: Environmental Speculative Fiction of the 20th & 21st Century.
Younus, Zainab.

An Archive of Imagined Worlds and Futures: Environmental Speculative Fiction of the 20th & 21st Century. - Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2021 - 201 p.

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 83-02, Section: B.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 2021.

This item must not be sold to any third party vendors.

When we consider changes in economic paradigms, urbanized populations, and technological innovations leading to altered environments including but not limited to nature, we have to start asking questions about why we, as a species, are making certain choices; why we are not making new or different ones. By examining the themes and narrative constructs of Environmental Speculative Fiction, I consider how these texts can serve as an archive of knowledge - a way to test out how future imagined worlds may be created and, most importantly, how they are rooted in present day environmental and social concerns. Environmental humanities in general and speculative fiction in particular emphasize that environmental problems are inherently human ones and therefore demand interdisciplinary solutions. If speculative fiction helps facilitate the breakdown in intellectual categories of 'the natural' and asks how texts can, have or could shape environmental thought and action; a theoretical field like ecocriticism (as much a constellation of ideas as it is a set of material realities); and environmental humanities in particular, can be equally instrumental in helping us to understand the environmental crises created in the present world. My approach in this dissertation presupposes that environmental change is already shifting the ways we think, feel and act and I argue that Environmental Speculative Fiction has a key role to play in helping us explore, understand, and archive these shifts. To that end, I propose to analyze the representations of environmental change in works of Speculative Fiction in order to theorize, what are the possible transformations that resulted in not only the physical and natural world (colonizing space, terraforming of planets, resource hoarding, loss of natural species), but also in the human sphere (political conflict, economic issues, social and societal structures)? Lastly, what, if any, will be the degrees of difference when we speculate about these changes manifesting in terms of shorter or longer temporal scale - that is, of centuries rather than decades. My introduction outlines what the idea of speculative and environmental change mean for my dissertation. I am working with the lens of ecocritical theory to explain how environmental humanities in general, and speculative fictions in particular, can help frame the temporality and the geo-political scale of climate change. Chapter One focuses on the works that have been chosen for the common theme of resource scarcity (water, arable soil, species extinction) in a post-environmental collapse world. The chapter discusses the selected novels of Amitav Ghosh and Paulo Bacigalupi in contrast to the space-based worlds of Frank Herbert and Kim Stanley Robinson to highlight the how the human-environment relationship is complicated by issues of political dissent and economic growth. Chapter Two focuses on a broader temporal and societal context by looking at selected works of Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler and Paulo Bacigalupi in terms of what space colonization could mean for human-environment and human-alien relationships. The texts in this chapter acknowledge how and why social evolution must go hand in hand with technological, scientific, and biological evolutions. Chapter Three brings the discussion back in terms scale and time by reading works that highlight the resilience of human beings to not be caught in a dystopic cycle as depicted in the selected works of Jenette Winterson, Ursula K. Le Guin, and N. K. Jemisin. As we start to understand that environmental and ultimately climate change is a systems crisis, and I contend that an integrated approach is necessary for effective change. My conclusion addresses not only the impact ideas of temporality, space and place have on understanding environmental change, but also focuses on the value of Environmental Humanities as a field and the study of Speculative Environmental Fictions within it.

ISBN: 9798534699494Subjects--Topical Terms:

537498
Literature.
Subjects--Index Terms:

Ecocriticism

An Archive of Imagined Worlds and Futures: Environmental Speculative Fiction of the 20th & 21st Century.
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