Theses and Dissertations at Montana State University (MSU)
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://scholarworks.montana.edu/handle/1/733
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Item The android in the anthropocene: a material ecocritical reading of Philip K. Dick's 'Do androids dream of electric sheep?'(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2017) Miller, Quentin Samuel; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Susan KollinPaul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer's concept of the Anthropocene recognizes the human role in climate change and situates the species within a geological timescale. While the idea of the Anthropocene has been adopted by a wide group of academics, scholars working with what they call 'new materialism' describe this naming of our geological time as an overestimation of human agency. They emphasize a furious search for meaning in an environmental context that asserts human superiority to and separation from nature. Instead, new materialists rethink outmoded trends in environmental, historical, and literary theory by recognizing the agency of nonhuman nature. Interestingly, Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel, 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?', anticipates the anxiety that emerges when humans confront the limits of their agency. He offers robotic animals, organic androids, and a post-apocalyptic space within which humans and nonhumans co-construct meaning and navigate the limits of agency in the late Anthropocene. New attention to materialism allows critics to recognize 'narrative agency,' which endows the nonhuman with meaning assembled with the human rather than through them. Through this material ecocritical framework, human/nonhuman and natural/cultural dualisms may be disrupted, allowing new ways to theorize the human. This paper traces the ways that Philip K. Dick lays the groundwork for an ecocritical posthumanism, demonstrating how nonhuman nature interacts with the human in ways that extend boundaries of agency. In his vision of the near future, the author engages readers in a critical conversation exposing problematic perspectives of nature and the human's place therein.Item A final good : indexing as a critical method and as text(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2003) Wiseman, Michelle LeeItem The medium of subversion : graphic literature and the hybrid/discrete debate(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2003) Marvin, Robert Christian; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Susan KollinItem The end of the wor(l)d as we know it : textuality, agency, and endings in postcolonial magical realism(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2013) Urschel, Janna Mercedes; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Robert BennettThe magical realist novels One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, Beloved by Toni Morrison, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz exemplify the concerns of critical literacy theory for counter-oppressive textual agency through highlighting paradoxes in the nature of text and its relationship to agency implicit in the interaction between authors, texts, and readers. The nature of magical realism as a literary mode as it fits into postcolonial thought and engages with reader response theory allows for an analysis of the "apocalyptic" endings of these novels that shows that they engage in ontological disruption and conscientization on the part of the reader with reference to their role as reader, or consumer, of texts.Item Chasing the dream : literature and regional construction in California's Great Central Valley(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2006) Bryson, Rachel Welton; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Susan KollinAs a region, California's Great Central Valley can be defined through the physical and cultural characteristics assigned to the space by its residents. Not unlike the larger regions of which it is part, the Valley's cultural landscapes have long been constructed as sites of wealth, fertile ground, and opportunity. Drawn to the region's myriad promises and possibilities, populations moving into and within the region often search for their part in a frequently elusive California Dream. Yet as with any place, the lived experience of the Valley's residents is often far removed from the construction of the region as a land of prosperity and mobility. Tracing the various constructions of region in the Great Central Valley requires an understanding of cultural and regional identity as complex and multifaceted. No two individuals experience the landscapes they inhabit in the same way; as a result, any attempt to define a unitary regional identity in the Valley is ultimately problematic. Despite the diverse experiences and interpretations of the Valley and its inhabitants, many overlapping themes emerge, resulting in what I call a "regional imaginary'-a set of meanings assigned to a region by its residents. Although many methods exist by which to explore and tentatively define the idea of a regional imaginary in the Central Valley, one of the most productive involves utilizing critical regional approaches to literature and other narrative works. By examining the many novels, poems, and other narratives written about the Valley, the various cultural, historical, and natural forces that converge and conflict in the Valley's landscapes may begin to come into focus.