Graduation Year
2025
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Environmental Analysis
Second Department
Writing and Rhetoric
Reader 1
Marc Los Huertos
Reader 2
Kimberly Drake
Reader 3
Char Miller
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
2024 Annabella S Isaacson
Abstract
The following is an amalgamation of my experiences personally and vested interests academically, and is meant to be read as just that. As a thesis that combines Environmental Analysis and Writing & Rhetoric degrees, this project challenges traditional academic forms by integrating creative nonfiction and poetry with academic writing and analysis. This thesis attempts to fuse the academic and personal essay into one cohesive piece. The inconclusive nature of the narratives and explorations that follow are intended to represent my process in grappling with the histories and significance of American pastoral literature through the ways in which this genre has shown up in my life both rhetorically and physically. I examine pastoral nostalgia, acknowledging its significance and tight grip, while also attempting to push past it through my own writings. However, by way of its format as semi-fragmented narratives, I also hope to illuminate the impossibility inherent in presenting my work and my current, inconclusive thoughts as a neatly wrapped parcel. I intend for this work to be read as a creative exploration of farmland as a contested and crucial landscape, ultimately underscoring the act of writing as a way to renegotiate and steward these environments that, in one way or another, are tangled up in all of us.
Recommended Citation
Isaacson, Annabella, "The Dirt Underneath My Fingernails: The American Pastoral and 21st-Century Food System Reform" (2025). Scripps Senior Theses. 2495.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/2495
Included in
Agriculture Commons, American Literature Commons, Environmental Studies Commons, Food Security Commons, Food Studies Commons, Nonfiction Commons, Poetry Commons