Browsing by Author "Chatterjee, Sushmita, committee member"
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Open Access I kin sea slugs: awkward kin, inhuman horror, and queering encounter in Octavia Butler's Dawn(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Witter, Genevieve, author; Badia, Lynn, advisor; Claycomb, Ryan, committee member; Chatterjee, Sushmita, committee memberAnthropocentrism is rooted in narratives of evolutionary teleology and the human/nonhuman binary which exalts the human, homo sapiens, as the dominant Earth species, and taxonomizes nonhuman species according to human value systems. Octavia Butler's science-fiction novel, Dawn, raises important questions about the human as an identity category, according to anthropocentrism, and as a species. By introducing a multispecies encounter with an extraterrestrial species, Butler troubles our understanding of what it means to be human. Butler queers human-centric notions of ecology and evolutionary teleology through her protagonist, Lilith, as she attempts to adapt to a radically different, and at times hostile, environment. Lilith's horror for both the Oankali, humanity's alien rescuers, and the potential for an inhuman future, prompted by a hybrid-species zygote, introduce an opportunity to dissect human abjection for the non-/in-human and to overcome anthropocentric discomfort with human vulnerability to the nonhuman. Joining the conversation with Lee Edelman's theory of reproductive futurity, Donna J. Haraway's concept of sympoiesis, and Julia Kristeva's essay on abjection, this argument examines Lilith's fear for the inhuman to discuss the ways in which anthropocentric ideology jeopardizes humanity's ability to take action amidst the worsening climate crisis. As nonhuman Earth species' fate becomes increasingly tied to humanity's ability to responsibly address climate change, we need to reevaluate the way that humanity situates itself in multispecies Earth ecologies.Item Restricted This is how it was(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Pagliari, Nicole, author; Altschul, Andrew, advisor; Ausubel, Ramona, committee member; Chatterjee, Sushmita, committee memberThis Master's thesis is a collection of short stories that interrogate instances of racial aggression against Filipino and Filipino-American women alongside the existential dread of being a young woman and regret and robots in varying quantities and combinations. These stories all share a common goal of analyzing poignant moments of reckoning for their female protagonists of varying physical presentations, socio-economic statuses, and stages of life while also experimenting with speculative elements and voice.