Graduation Year

Spring 2012

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Environmental Analysis

Reader 1

Richard Worthington

Reader 2

Zayn Kassam

Rights Information

© 2011 Hannah M. G. Snyder

Abstract

Despite the fact that women make up a large proportion of participants in the environmental justice movement, the movement is still framed in terms of race and class. This thesis investigates the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, class, and environmental justice. I explore the prominent rolls that women play in grassroots environmental justice movements and the look at the discourses that surround gender and environmental justice through a queer studies and ecofeminist lens. I argue that motherhood narratives—while powerful motivators for activists and effective tools for creating resistance—can create a rhetoric that is exclusionary to people with non-normative sexualities and support heteronormative structures which ultimately hurts the movement. I suggest a new rhetoric that embraces plurality of voices including voices of motherhood—one that is based on an understanding of the connection between the oppression of many groups of people, and that of the environment.

Comments

Senior thesis submitted in December 2011.

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