Abstract
The Rise of an Eco-Spiritual Imaginary reveals a shared ecological aesthetic among contemporary U.S. ethnic writers whose novels communicate a decolonial spiritual reverence for the earth. This shared narrative focus challenges white settler colonial mythologies of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism to instantiate new ways of imagining community across socially constructed boundaries of time, space, nation, race, and species. The eco-spiritual imaginary—by which I mean a shared reverence for the ecological interconnection between all living beings—articulates a common biological origin and sacredness of all life that transcends racial difference while remaining grounded in local ethnicities and bioregions. The novelists representing this transethnic struggle co-opt postmodern narrative structures to translate indigenous and non-Eurocentric knowledges and methodologies both for each-other and for a broader audience including the descendants of the white settler colonial state.
Degree Date
Spring 2022
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Department
English
Advisor
Dennis Foster
Second Advisor
Darryl Dickson-Carr
Third Advisor
Jayson Gonzales Sae-Saue
Fourth Advisor
Christopher González
Subject Area
Ecology, History, Humanities, Humanities, Religion
Number of Pages
242
Format
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Spencer, Andrew Michael, "The Rise of an Eco-Spiritual Imaginary: Ecology and Spirituality as Decolonial Protest in Contemporary Multi-Ethnic American Literature" (2022). English Theses and Dissertations. 12.
https://scholar.smu.edu/hum_sci_english_etds/12
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