Elements of place : Southern women writers, race, and generational environmental knowledge
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Catherine L. Bowlin (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
- Advisor
- Karen Kilcup
Abstract: Through a chronological and thematic study of twentieth and twenty-first century American literature, “Elements of Place: Southern Women Writers, Race, and Generational Environmental Knowledge” answers the following questions: how do Southern women writers represent elements of place? How is the natural world racialized, and how do African American writers portray Southern environments compared to White writers? I argue that because of the South’s particularly violent racist history, Black Southern writers and their White contemporaries portray the natural world differently: the Black women writers I examine (Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Jesmyn Ward) focus on surviving natural disasters and racial oppression, whereas the White women with whom I engage (Flannery O’Connor and Janisse Ray) write more about environmental ethics and care. All these women write about the dissemination of environmental knowledge through three generations of Southern families. Through an intersectional ecofeminist framework, I examine how socially constructed boundaries—particularly those of gender, race, and class—influence perceptions of the natural world and how literary portrayals of nature reveal social and ecological injustices. Southern women—and especially Southern Black women—have unique cultural experiences when compared to women from other regions. Studying Southern women’s environmental writing allows for a more comprehensive understanding of environmental movements, including how contemporary Southern women writers process the ongoing climate emergency. We can better understand the complexities of environmental issues by including Southern women’s voices, especially since environmental justice concerns often disproportionately affect women and other marginalized groups. This project initiates new ways of thinking about Southern ecoliterary traditions, altering how we read Southern and environmental literature. By examining Southern women’s environmental writing, readers better understand the nuance of how regionality affects environmental thinking, activism, and storytelling. My project offers a holistic approach to understanding the entanglements of Southern women, the natural world, race, class, and gender. While many important works critically analyze these topics, my research foregrounds specific elements of place, natural and built. Without analyzing an assemblage of elements of place, we obtain limited, often one-dimensional interpretations of women’s relationships with the natural world. My analyses focus on specific elements of place to examine how social identity markers overlap and entangle, influencing Southern women’s portrayals of nature and environments.
Elements of place : Southern women writers, race, and generational environmental knowledge
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Created on 5/1/2024
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Dissertation
- Language: English
- Date: 2024
- Keywords
- American literature, Ecocriticism, Ecofeminism, Environmental writing, Southern studies, Southern women writers