Author
Peres, Anushka Miriam SwanIssue Date
2020Keywords
Environmental CommunicationMultimodal Composition
Photography
Queer Ecology
Settler Colonialism
Visual Rhetoric
Advisor
Licona, Adela C.McAllister, Kenneth S.
Metadata
Show full item recordPublisher
The University of Arizona.Rights
Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction, presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.Abstract
This dissertation inquires into the rhetorical force and function of images of landscapes, specifically addressing the repercussions of colonial conceptualizations of land as a project of environmental and social urgency. I argue that while dominant depictions like that of the “pristine untouched wilderness” promote romanticized perspectives of the environment for conservation efforts, such depictions are also mechanisms of Indigenous dehumanization because they further settler colonialism, which functions structurally to eliminate Indigenous ways of knowing, seeing, and “being” landscapes. Drawing from environmental and visual rhetorics, settler colonial and decolonial theories, queer ecologies and queer Indigenous studies, and my background as a photographer, this project analyzes and creates visual rhetorics. I apply a queer ecovisual rhetorical method of analysis to theorize the visual and environmental rhetorical strategies found in photographs of “nature” and assess how these texts promote and counter racial, sexual, and gendered inequities and environmental degradation. This dissertation also argues that some non-dominant scholarly and artistic productions can make visible visions of land (and human relationships with it) that have the rhetorical potential to “unsettle”—even slightly—the normalization of settler colonial visual tropes and related looking practices in landscape photography. I further contend that multimodal compositions, composing processes, and technologies must also confront this relationship with settler colonialism and work to disrupt dominant narratives of landscape in the images that we see, make, and circulate. Ultimately, this project argues that gaining a nuanced understanding of settler colonial visual systems and analyzing how artists both reproduce and challenge such systems has the potential to reshape what and how people compose and communicate for environmental social aims.Type
textElectronic Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.Degree Level
doctoralDegree Program
Graduate CollegeEnglish