The Nature of Citizenship: Race, Citizenship, and Nature in Representations of Californian Agricultural Labor

Wald, Sarah D.

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Year:: 2009
Contributor:: Wald, Sarah D. (creator); Keizer, Arlene (director); Rodriguez, Ralph (director); Garcia, Matthew (reader); Jacoby, Karl (reader); Brown University. American Civilization (sponsor)
Genre:: theses
Subject:: Farm workers; eco-criticism; Agricultural laborers; Citizenship; Race; Nature; Ecocriticism; Naturalization
Extent:: ix, 420 p.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0FQ9TTF

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Abstract:: The Nature of Citizenship: Race, Citizenship, and Nature in Representations of Californian Agricultural Labor contends that cultural understandings of nature shaped notions of national belonging and the category of U.S. citizenship in twentieth-century U.S. agricultural discourse. It analyzes representations of California's multi-ethnic agricultural labor force from the 1930s through the 1960s, including the work of Carey McWilliams, Ruth Comfort Mitchell, John Steinbeck, Sanora Babb, Hiroshi Nakamura, Hisaye Yamamoto, Carlos Bulosan, and Ernesto Galarza. The Nature of Citizenship employs close readings and archival research to substantiate three ways in which nature matters to citizenship in U.S. agricultural discourse. First, it suggests the centrality of land ownership to the construction of white citizenship. Secondly, it indicates ways in which representations of nature communicate either the naturalness of national identity and the nation-state or the unnaturalness of national identity and the nation-state. Finally, by analyzing anti-imperial renderings of the U.S.'s agricultural geographies, it exposes the nationalist ideologies operating in many representations of agricultural landscapes and asserts that twentieth-century U.S. agricultural discourse constructs the agricultural landscape as a particular place in which national identity manifests. By focusing on the role of the land in consolidating national identities, the project reformulates current understandings of race and citizenship. It builds a bridge between the fields of ethnic studies and the environmental humanities through its investigation of the category of citizenship. Moreover, the project brings the category of class to the foreground of eco-critical readings, attending to texts in which the primary relationship to nature is through labor rather than recreation.
Notes:: Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Brown University (2009)

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Rights: In Copyright
Restrictions on Use: Collection is open for research.

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Wald, Sarah D., "The Nature of Citizenship: Race, Citizenship, and Nature in Representations of Californian Agricultural Labor" (2009). American Studies Theses and Dissertations. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0FQ9TTF

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American Studies Theses and Dissertations

Theses and Dissertations for the American Studies department.
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