Saudi Cultural Missions Theses & Dissertations
Permanent URI for this communityhttps://drepo.sdl.edu.sa/handle/20.500.14154/10
Browse
2 results
Search Results
Item Restricted Environmental Injustices in Robinson Jeffers’s and Denise Levertov’s Ecopoetry(University of Birmingham, 2025) AlRowisan, Amal Ali M; Holmes, John; Zimbler, Jarad; Wood, SaraThis 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.29 0Item Restricted MANIFESTATIONS OF THE OIL ENCOUNTER: AN ECOCRITICAL APPROACH TO MIDDLE EASTERN PETRO-LITERATURE(Ball State University, 2024-04-04) Alshareef, Nasser; Ferguson, MollyThis study examines fictional works from the Middle East that delve into Amitav Ghosh’s notion of the “Oil Encounter,” including novels by Ahmad Mahmoud, Leila Al-Atrash, Nawal El-Saadawi, and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s film Day of the Falcon. By analyzing texts across different historical periods and national traditions, the dissertation uncovers diverse attitudes and perspectives on the oil encounter, filling a critical gap in the scholarship. The study therefore argues that the experience of the oil encounter is not a monolith, but dynamic and complex encounters and experiences influenced by historical events and socio-political norms. Furthermore, a central concern in this dissertation is the ways in which the oil industry is associated with several myths that serve its interests and influence public perception. In different ways, the texts engage with these dominant myths about the oil industry by showing how the poor, women and the environment are on the receiving end of the oil industry’s impacts. By drawing from ecocritical studies, feminist and eco-feminist studies, and postcolonial studies, this dissertation highlights the ways in which the authors under study imaginatively subvert Euro-Americans myths regarding the oil industry and foreground counter-stories of the marginalized and oppressed. In other words, whether the oil encounter is linked to notions of liberation, abundance, instant modernization, development, progress, modernity, and economic prosperity or not is irrelevant. Rather, what is relevant and undeniable is that the oil encounter in the Middle East is a violent encounter.42 0