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Environmental Injustices in Robinson Jeffers’s and Denise Levertov’s Ecopoetry
(University of Birmingham, 2025) AlRowisan, Amal Ali M; Holmes, John; Zimbler, Jarad; Wood, Sara
This thesis explores critiques of environmental injustices in the poetry of Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) and Denise Levertov (1923-1997). The anthropocentrism typical of American culture constantly imposes hierarchal division and underestimation of otherness which cause injustices to people and nonhumans. In urban, war, and natural environments, the poets investigate the impact of modernity, imperialism, and environmental degradation on changing environmental conditions and ecological wholeness. Jeffers and Levertov establish in their poetry a shared trajectory where they start with a description of injustices and their destructive impacts, progress towards a condemnation of the politics behind these injustices, and propose alternative ecological values. In their trajectories of critique across these three contexts, their poetry attempts to bridge the divide between the city and nature, between the Americans and the Vietnamese, and between humans and nonhumans. It provides a model for the reconstruction of anthropocentrism toward ecological relations of integrity. Their poetry reveals situations of the environmental ‘unconscious’ and attempts to draw a vision of environmental imagination and justice. Chapter 1 of the thesis registers Jeffers’s response to modernity. It explores his presentation of the city as a centre for accumulating change and corruption that separates man from nature. He presents the struggle of presence within the confinement of urbanization, mechanization, and rapid changes against human instinctual freedom and cultural values, a crisis he resists with his philosophy of Inhumanism. Instead, he urges a withdrawal to nature where he affirms in the landscape timeless and holistic values as contrasting models to human values. Chapter 2 investigates Levertov’s account of the Vietnam War as breeding violence and destruction to people's safety and emotional wellness. She presents victimization, loss, and emotional stasis which she supports with her political poetry of resistance. She encourages empathy, solidarity, and the need to maintain safety for others. Chapter 3 traces the poets’ presentations of exploitation, destruction, and cruelty to land and animals in their poetry. In the poems, both poets point out nonhuman forces that wrestle with humanity's injustices which they represent through myth and figuration. In their presentation of nonhumans, they highlight existing ideologies that underestimate nonhumans and seek in their poetry to affirm nonhuman agency and consciousness. In my investigation of their critique of injustices, my thesis draws on recent developments and turns of ecocriticism. It reframes the poets’ critiques through Environmental Justice theory, looking at human alienation in the city, the victimization of people in the Vietnam War, the exploitation of lands, and the cruelty to animals as environmental injustices. Under these thematic discussions, my thesis analyses the affective forces that emerge in response to injustices across these contexts. Jeffers’s presentation of the hopelessness of people in the city, Levertov’s depiction of the victimized emotions in Vietnam, and their presentation of nonhuman struggle in the degraded environments underscore the poets’ awareness of the notion of interdependency in the universe. The thesis also demonstrates the material forces of nonhumans that wrestle with human denial of them and affirm their existence instead. These recent developments in ecocriticism, which resonate with the poets’ critiques, elucidate the fundamental dynamics of existence and challenge the anthropocentric ideology that fosters such injustices.
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A God-given blessing or the Devils’ excrement? An enquiry into oil and interstate conflict
(University College London (UCL), 2024) AlDaajani, Nasser; Schenoni, Luis
This thesis seeks to examine the relationship between oil rents and interstate conflict, in particular, the quantitative testing of Militarised Interstate Disputes within a cross-section of 15 Middle Eastern countries. The thesis initially moves the discussion beyond the idea of ‘resource wars’ where it is argued that it is a thing of the past. Instead it advocates for the idea of Petro-aggression, as offered by Colgan. However, the thesis does not attempt nor consider ‘revolutionary governments’ to be an adequate causal mechanism, rather, it opts for military expenditure as a key variable. Drawing from literature on Resource Curse Theory and Rentierism, the thesis theorises that oil rents amplify mechanisms of security dilemma and information asymmetry, as outlined by the bargaining theorists. However, It finds that whilst petrostates are more likely to spend in their militaries, they are no more likely to instigate Militarised Interstate Disputes than non-Petrostates. Instead, the thesis finds that petrostates, protected by a norm of integrity, are less likely to be recipient of sanctions since they are able to foster political rapport with greater powers via increased military spending.
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To What Extent Were US Intelligence Failures at Pearl Harbor and the Vietnam War a Result of Cultural Bias in Intelligence Analysis ?
(Saudi Digital Library, 2022-09-05) AlSaud, Faisal; Wagner, Steven
Pearl Harbor and many aspects of the Vietnam War have been widely acknowledged as being riddled with intelligence failures on behalf of the US intelligence and military community. Yet, the role of cultural bias in these events has been underestimated. This study uses primary and secondary sources to argue that in both cases, the intelligence community miscalculated the enemy’s intentions and failed to provide an accurate cultural assessment of the situation, which led to poor strategic decisions. Cultural superiority, arrogance, Orientalism, mirror-imaging, and other characteristics of the intelligence community culture played a significant role in this intelligence miscalculation. Moreover, the dissertation reveals that no major changes have been made to eliminate or at least minimize pervasive cultural bias in the American intelligence agencies, despite gradual recognition of its role within the intelligence community.
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How is the BBC, CNN, and AlJazeera applying News Framing on the 2021 Israel Palestine Conflict and 2022 Russia Ukraine War?
(2022-09-08) AlShamsi, Sarah; Matar, Dina
The idea of framing first came around in a book by sociologist Erving Goffman in 1974. The title is Frame Analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. In recent years the use of framing in the news has become increasingly prevalent by news media outlets, it is defined as the construction of a tailored message to achieve a certain outcome or agenda. Each news media outlet has an angle or perspective they are reporting on, in some cases bias of one conflict or the other can be explicitly clear in published material. In this paper we will be exploring how three different news media outlets two of which are western media and the other is middle eastern covered the Israeli- Palestinian conflict in May of 2021 and Ukraine- Russia war in February 2022. We then will analyze how news framing theories were applied towards both conflicts and examine the language and images used to depict the themes of war. We examined articles and their accompanying visuals from the BBC, CCN, and AlJazeera, it was found that AlJazeera depicts a more in depth and realistic approach most of their coverage includes themes displaying the wreckage and ruin of war in juxtaposition the BBC and CNN’s coverage take on a more analytical approach.
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