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Writing the Apocalypse: Pedagogy at the End of the World

May, Talitha
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5474-1993
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1520349189022125

Abstract Details

2018, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, English (Arts and Sciences).
Beset with political, social, economic, cultural, and environmental degradation, along with the imminent threat of nuclear war, the world might be at its end. Building upon Richard Miller’s inquiry from Writing at the End of the World, this dissertation investigates if it is “possible to produce [and teach] writing that generates a greater connection to the world and its inhabitants.” I take up Paul Lynch’s notion of the apocalyptic turn and suggest that when writers Kurt Spellmeyer, Richard Miller, Derek Owens, Robert Yagelski, Lynn Worsham, and Ann Cvetkovich confront disaster, they reach an impasse whereby they begin to question disciplinary assumptions such as critique and pose inventive ways to think about writing and writing pedagogy that emphasize the notion and practice of connecting to the everyday. Questioning the familiar and cultivating what Jane Bennett terms “sensuous enchantment with everyday” are ethical responses to the apocalypse; nonetheless, I argue that disasters and death master narratives will continually resurface if we think that an apocalyptic mindset can fully account for the complexity and irreducibility of lived experience. Drawing upon Zen, new materialism, and Yagelski’s theory of writing as a way of being, I call attention to the affective dimensions of capitalism, anti-apocalyptic thinking, and environmental writing pedagogies that run contrary to capitalist-driven environmental disaster.
Sherrie Gradin (Advisor)
Talinn Phillips (Committee Member)
Robert Miklitsch (Committee Member)
Wolfgang Sützl (Committee Member)
175 p.
Composition; Rhetoric
apocalypse; catastrophe; depression; ecology writing; environmental disaster; environmental sustainability; everyday; feminist pedagogy; new materialism; ontology; political exhaustion; writing pedagogy; writing trauma; writing as a way of being; Zen

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • May, T. (2018). Writing the Apocalypse: Pedagogy at the End of the World [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1520349189022125

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • May, Talitha. Writing the Apocalypse: Pedagogy at the End of the World. 2018. Ohio University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1520349189022125.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • May, Talitha. "Writing the Apocalypse: Pedagogy at the End of the World." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1520349189022125

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ohiou1520349189022125
385
© 2018, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Ohio University and OhioLINK.