Browsing by Author "McKagen, Elizabeth Leigh"

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    Re-Defining C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman: Conventional and Progressive Heroes and Heroines in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and The Golden Compass
    McKagen, Elizabeth Leigh (Virginia Tech, 2009-04-28)
    C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman are two very popular authors of British Children's Fantasy. Their books The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and The Golden Compass straddle the period of writing that Karen Patricia Smith calls the Dynamic Stage of British Fantasy: from 1950 to the present. Both of these books are part of a larger series and both have been made into recent motion pictures by Hollywood. This paper explores these two books through the lens of their conventional and progressive authors. I discuss in detail the gifts that the heroes and heroines are given, the setting of these books, and the function of destiny and prophecy in order to explore the irony of these books: C.S. Lewis, often viewed as the more conventional author by scholars, is in fact more progressive than his contemporary counterpart.
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    The Stories We Tell: Toward a Feminist Narrative in the Anthropocene
    McKagen, Elizabeth Leigh (Virginia Tech Publishing, 2018-09-19)
    This paper synthesizes recent criticism of Western ideas of modernity and the Anthropocene to articulate criteria for a feminist narrative that can decenter the human as the key figure of concern in the present and advocate for a more collaborative understanding of existence. I begin with a close reading of Donna Haraway’s argument for multispecies collaboration and storytelling as the only viable response to the crisis of the Anthropocene in her recent book Staying with the Trouble, and then engage with additional critiques of modernity to broaden Haraway’s intellectual argument. While Haraway offers a compelling argument for response to our current era of precarity, I integrate her text with others to articulate nine specific criteria that can craft alternative narratives. Haraway and other Anthropocene critics focuses on interdisciplinary scholarship and local grassroots activism as key strategies for resistance, resilience, and change. Without disregarding those significant arguments, I extend the discussion to narrative frameworks, signaling the potential for more wide-spread awareness of a new narrative that can aid in response to the current environmental crisis. These criteria speak to Haraway’s oft-repeated refrain that “it matters what stories we tell stories with,” and stories of becoming-with through multispecies awareness give us the chance of a possible future wherein some humans and critters survive to tell more stories. This kind of storytelling features voices traditionally lost to narratives of modernity and progress (including the Earth itself) and seeks alternatives to Enlightenment-centered individualism as a significant form of response and reaction to the Anthropocene.
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    Visions of Possibilities: (De)Constructing Imperial Narratives in Star Trek: Voyager
    McKagen, Elizabeth Leigh (Virginia Tech, 2020-06-19)
    In this dissertation, I argue that contemporary cultural narratives are infused with ongoing ideologies of Euro-American imperialism that prioritizes Western bodies and ways of engaging with living and nonliving beings. This restriction severely hinders possible responses to the present environmental crisis of the era often called the 'Anthropocene' through constant creation and recreation of imperial power relations and the presumed superiority of Western approaches to living. Taking inspiration from postcolonial theorist Edward Said and theories of cultural studies and empire, I use interdisciplinary methods of narrative analysis to examine threads of imperial ideologies that are (re)told and glorified in popular American science fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001). Voyager follows the Star Trek tradition of exploring the far reaches of space to advance human knowledge, and in doing so writes Western imperial practices of difference into an idealized future. In chapters 2 through 5, I explore how the series highlights American exceptionalism, Manifest Destiny, a belief in endless linear progress, and the creation of a safe 'home' space amidst the 'wild' spaces of the Delta Quadrant. Each of these narrative features, as presented, rely on Western difference and superiority that were fundamental to past and present Euro-American imperial encounters and endeavors. Through the recreation of these ideologies of empire, Voyager normalizes, legitimizes, and universalizes imperial approaches to engagement with other lifeforms. In order to move away from this intertwined thread of past/present/future imperialism, in my final chapter I propose alternatives for ecofeminist-inspired narrative approaches that offer possibilities for non-imperial futures. As my analysis will demonstrate, Voyager is unable to provide new worlds free of imperial ideas, but the possibility exists through the loss of their entire world, and their need to constantly make and remake their world(s). World making provides opportunity for endless possibilities, and science fiction television has the potential to aid in bringing non-imperial worlds to life. These stories push beyond individual and anthropocentric attitudes toward life on earth, and although such stories will not likely be the immediate cause of change in this era of precarity, stories can prime us for thinking in non-imperial ways.