Thesiss

This dissertation investigates the pathways and consequences of the commodification of ayahuasca, an Indigenous psychoactive and medicinal Amazonian plant brew, and the Shipibo healing rituals associated with its use. The “ayahuasca complex” is an assemblage of socionatural boun…

Sentient animals, both human and nonhuman, experienced increasing demands from the Nationalist and Communist governments of China during the mid-twentieth century. A multispecies environmental history of this period demonstrates the intermingled agency of humans, bovines, and mi…

Christian theology and discourse work by separating the human individual from “the environment.” The science of the human microbiome exposes the ecological, social and theological inadequacies of this and other western conceptions of the human individual. As multiple disciplines…

This thesis aims to induce wonder and cooperation towards enacting turfgrass formationsand discourses in more reciprocal ways. I amplify Kenneth Burke’s take on rhetoric as the art of inducing cooperation, but extend this definition to everyday multispecies relations. In the mid…