Accounts of Exploitation and Stories of Sustainability: Narrating the Nature of Resources in the Modern American West
Restricted (Penn State Only)
Author:
Montalvo, Aaron
Graduate Program:
English
Degree:
Doctor of Philosophy
Document Type:
Dissertation
Date of Defense:
June 10, 2024
Committee Members:
Janet Lyon, Professor in Charge/Director of Graduate Studies Chris Reed, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor Sabine Doran, Outside Unit & Field Member Carla Mulford, Major Field Member Christian Haines, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Keywords:
Resources Narrative American West Ecocriticism Environmental Humanities Environmental Literature Wood Oil Water Cultural Tourism
Abstract:
In this dissertation, I contend that social understandings of resource issues are deeply influenced by the stories we encounter about those resources. I term these tales “resource narratives” and argue that they serve as a valuable subject of study for scholars in the environmental humanities. While the term “resource” is often dismissed by critics for foregrounding an anthropocentric relation to the objects of the nonhuman world, I demonstrate that resources serve as intermediaries between nature and society and that the production, use, and depletion of resources has profound effects on our physical, cultural, and political worlds. The value of resource narratives, then, derives from the ways that these stories attune audiences to these relations and help them rethink and reconfigure them. Historically, resource narratives have been dominated by industrial and imperial narratives that valorize dominance over land and resources and promote unchecked resource consumption in the name of social progress. The narratives analyzed in this dissertation, by contrast, highlight the interdependent relation between people, resources, and the natural world to critique those dominant narratives and to imagine more ecologically and socially just ways of living.
