Graduation Year

2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.A.

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Degree Granting Department

Communication

Major Professor

Aisha Durham, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Rachel E. Dubrofsky, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Jeremy Gordon, Ph.D.

Keywords

autoethnography, disaster studies, ecocriticism, queer ecology, Waterworld

Abstract

This thesis approaches climate disaster texts as an opportunity to challenge constructions of the body, space, and time. Developed from embodied experiential knowledge about hurricanes, my work will explore how climate disasters can teach us to reimagine human-nature relationships. In my two analysis chapters, I use critical textual analysis and autoethnography to challenge particular representations of the human-nature relationship as a binary between nature and culture. By intervening in the nature-culture binary, I theorize queer ecological temporality as an opportunity to reveal and challenge constructions of nature and time. Working at the intersections of queer and ecocritical theory, this thesis contributes to queer, environmental, and critical cultural communication research. Ultimately, I argue a queer sense of bodies, space, and time transform my understanding of hurricanes by blurring the nature-culture binary and emphasizing a queer ecological temporality of climate disaster.

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