title: A body of one's own: Representations of women's bodies in the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Anne Sexton, and breaking free of the gendering patriarchy

authors: Rowell, Dadon

subjects: feminist

abstract: Waxing, shaving, plucking, eye-brow tinting, hair dying, makeup, diets, plastic surgery – if all women were instantaneously in love with their natural bodies, millions of people would be out of work. For centuries, women’s bodies have been sites of patriarchal control: are they too fat, too thin, too loud, too quiet, too modest, too revealing, too innocent, too experienced? The list of dichotomous expectations goes on for miles, but what remains most important is that women act like women, look like women, and are attractive to men. Unfortunately, what it means to be a woman has not been democratically chosen by women – the Western patriarchal power structure has dictated expectations of gender for centuries, and is showing no sign of ceasing. This thesis looks at the representations of women’s bodies, specifically the breast, hands and mouth in the poems of Emily Dickinson and Anne Sexton. Through body-focused language and metaphor, the narrators of the poems illustrate the extreme and debilitating nature of patriarchal control. The reader sees the effects of this control on the bodies and lives of multiple women. Breasts are commodified, idealised and turned into sites of fragmentation, hands are cut-off and stripped of power, and mouths are punished if they attempt to question or raise their voices. The work of several theorists, and viewing the poetry through a feminist Foucauldian lens, reveals the extent to which women’s bodies are focused on, criticised and controlled. Dickinson’s and Sexton’s narrators do offer some light: it is not all doom and gloom. They show that through the narratives of those the patriarchy oppresses, a conversation can begin, a call to rebellion can be sounded, and that even if people are too weak, they can still undermine and subvert power until their voices and bodies are heard – until they can be unshackled from the enforced gender binary the patriarchy uses to control and punish those who are not conformist, white, able, cisgender men. A creative component in the form of a poetry collection, We Wash Our Hands in Fire, is also included in this thesis. The creative work explores many of the themes addressed in the thesis; it seeks to further understand Dickinson’s and Sexton’s poetry by using a poetic medium and lens, and exploring forms similar to those of the two poets. The poetry is also intended to add another voice to the body-focused, rebellious chorus highlighting patriarchal control and challenging it.

text: A body of one's own: Representations of women's bodies in the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Anne Sexton, and breaking free of the gendering patriarchy Waxing, shaving, plucking, eye-brow tinting, hair dying, makeup, diets, plastic surgery – if all women were instantaneously in love with their natural bodies, millions of people would be out of work. For centuries, women’s bodies have been sites of patriarchal control: are they too fat, too thin, too loud, too quiet, too modest, too revealing, too innocent, too experienced? The list of dichotomous expectations goes on for miles, but what remains most important is that women act like women, look like women, and are attractive to men. Unfortunately, what it means to be a woman has not been democratically chosen by women – the Western patriarchal power structure has dictated expectations of gender for centuries, and is showing no sign of ceasing. This thesis looks at the representations of women’s bodies, specifically the breast, hands and mouth in the poems of Emily Dickinson and Anne Sexton. Through body-focused language and metaphor, the narrators of the poems illustrate the extreme and debilitating nature of patriarchal control. The reader sees the effects of this control on the bodies and lives of multiple women. Breasts are commodified, idealised and turned into sites of fragmentation, hands are cut-off and stripped of power, and mouths are punished if they attempt to question or raise their voices. The work of several theorists, and viewing the poetry through a feminist Foucauldian lens, reveals the extent to which women’s bodies are focused on, criticised and controlled. Dickinson’s and Sexton’s narrators do offer some light: it is not all doom and gloom. They show that through the narratives of those the patriarchy oppresses, a conversation can begin, a call to rebellion can be sounded, and that even if people are too weak, they can still undermine and subvert power until their voices and bodies are heard – until they can be unshackled from the enforced gender binary the patriarchy uses to control and punish those who are not conformist, white, able, cisgender men. A creative component in the form of a poetry collection, We Wash Our Hands in Fire, is also included in this thesis. The creative work explores many of the themes addressed in the thesis; it seeks to further understand Dickinson’s and Sexton’s poetry by using a poetic medium and lens, and exploring forms similar to those of the two poets. The poetry is also intended to add another voice to the body-focused, rebellious chorus highlighting patriarchal control and challenging it.

year: 2019

title: Carbon dynamics in restiad peatlands across different timescales

authors: Ratcliffe, Joshua Lee

subjects: bog

abstract: Peatlands contain one of the largest terrestrial carbon stores on the planet, and one which is known to interact with climate and global biogeochemical cycling of nutrients. Peatlands maintain their carbon primarily through a high and stable water table which restricts decomposition, and large amounts of carbon can be lost upon drying. However, peatlands are also characterised by non-linear responses to external forcing with a complex array of internal feedbacks which tend to dominate ecosystem response over long-timescales and may amplify or dampen external influences. This has made predicting the effects of environmental change, beyond a few years, highly challenging. Here we use CO₂ fluxes and down-core measurements of carbon accumulation to study the drivers of peatland carbon exchange across a wide range of timescales. First of all, we compare contemporary CO₂ fluxes at two raised bogs, one of which is extremely dry in an international context (Moanatuatua), with the summer water table drawdown approaching one metre, and another where the water table is high and stable (Kopuatai). We found that despite the low and fluctuating water table in the impacted bog the site remained a sink for CO₂ which is strong in an international context, but reduced compared to the wet bog. A key factor in the wet bog being able to maintain a net sink for CO₂ was the enhanced photosynthetic capacity compared to the wetter bog, especially in summer, which was able to partially compensate for enhanced ecosystem respiration. There was a clear difference in how the two sites responded to contemporaneous water table drawdown, which was consistent with differences seen across wet and dry bogs in the international literature. We found plant productivity to be restricted at the dry bog, at both wet and dry extremes, while at the wet bog water table lowering stimulated ecosystem respiration, with neither effect being consistent across both bogs.
To further investigate how the dry bog, Moanatuatua, has adapted to low water tables we re-analysed CO₂ flux data from 1999 and 2000, a period at least several years after the water table initially dropped, and we compared this flux to the present day (after a 16 year gap). Re-analysis of the older data showed that in 1999 and 2000 Moanatuatua was a moderate source for CO₂ with elevated ecosystem respiration and lower photosynthetic capacity compared to the present day. We attribute the change in photosynthetic capacity to the increased cover of the woody shrub Epacris Pauciflora, while a long term decline in ER would be consistent with changes in peat physical and chemical qualities as peat degrades making it further resistant to microbial decay.
In order to contextualise the CO₂ flux records and assess the drivers of carbon accumulation at the 50-100 year timescale we measured down-core C accumulation in unprecedented detail for a New Zealand bog, with supporting records available for fires, climate, eruptive events and plant species changes available from published and unpublished records at Moanatuatua. Contrary to our initial expectations, we found elevated C accumulation to be associated with at least three separate eruptive events, and possibly two others, with carbon accumulation rates increasing rapidly from a baseline typical of long-term accumulation rates, e.g. ~22 g C m⁻² yr⁻¹ to one which is more typical of contemporary uptake, 80-140 g C m⁻² yr⁻¹ . The complex eruptive history of the bog at this time makes it difficult to isolate any other effects, for instance climate.
Geochemical analysis of the peat suggests increased phosphorus inputs as a mechanism for rapid C accumulation, with the peat stoichiometry recording a shift towards phosphorus abundance relative to carbon and nitrogen. The eruptive events linked to elevated carbon accumulation rates are also known to contain phosphorus within the volcanic glass and the mineral apatite, both of which would be expected to weather and become biologically available due both to processes within the eruptive plume and within the bog post-deposition. As such we have found the restiad bogs studied to be highly resilient to water-table drawdown in the long-term but in contrast, the C sink is highly sensitive to phosphorus inputs.

text: Carbon dynamics in restiad peatlands across different timescales Peatlands contain one of the largest terrestrial carbon stores on the planet, and one which is known to interact with climate and global biogeochemical cycling of nutrients. Peatlands maintain their carbon primarily through a high and stable water table which restricts decomposition, and large amounts of carbon can be lost upon drying. However, peatlands are also characterised by non-linear responses to external forcing with a complex array of internal feedbacks which tend to dominate ecosystem response over long-timescales and may amplify or dampen external influences. This has made predicting the effects of environmental change, beyond a few years, highly challenging. Here we use CO₂ fluxes and down-core measurements of carbon accumulation to study the drivers of peatland carbon exchange across a wide range of timescales. First of all, we compare contemporary CO₂ fluxes at two raised bogs, one of which is extremely dry in an international context (Moanatuatua), with the summer water table drawdown approaching one metre, and another where the water table is high and stable (Kopuatai). We found that despite the low and fluctuating water table in the impacted bog the site remained a sink for CO₂ which is strong in an international context, but reduced compared to the wet bog. A key factor in the wet bog being able to maintain a net sink for CO₂ was the enhanced photosynthetic capacity compared to the wetter bog, especially in summer, which was able to partially compensate for enhanced ecosystem respiration. There was a clear difference in how the two sites responded to contemporaneous water table drawdown, which was consistent with differences seen across wet and dry bogs in the international literature. We found plant productivity to be restricted at the dry bog, at both wet and dry extremes, while at the wet bog water table lowering stimulated ecosystem respiration, with neither effect being consistent across both bogs.
To further investigate how the dry bog, Moanatuatua, has adapted to low water tables we re-analysed CO₂ flux data from 1999 and 2000, a period at least several years after the water table initially dropped, and we compared this flux to the present day (after a 16 year gap). Re-analysis of the older data showed that in 1999 and 2000 Moanatuatua was a moderate source for CO₂ with elevated ecosystem respiration and lower photosynthetic capacity compared to the present day. We attribute the change in photosynthetic capacity to the increased cover of the woody shrub Epacris Pauciflora, while a long term decline in ER would be consistent with changes in peat physical and chemical qualities as peat degrades making it further resistant to microbial decay.
In order to contextualise the CO₂ flux records and assess the drivers of carbon accumulation at the 50-100 year timescale we measured down-core C accumulation in unprecedented detail for a New Zealand bog, with supporting records available for fires, climate, eruptive events and plant species changes available from published and unpublished records at Moanatuatua. Contrary to our initial expectations, we found elevated C accumulation to be associated with at least three separate eruptive events, and possibly two others, with carbon accumulation rates increasing rapidly from a baseline typical of long-term accumulation rates, e.g. ~22 g C m⁻² yr⁻¹ to one which is more typical of contemporary uptake, 80-140 g C m⁻² yr⁻¹ . The complex eruptive history of the bog at this time makes it difficult to isolate any other effects, for instance climate.
Geochemical analysis of the peat suggests increased phosphorus inputs as a mechanism for rapid C accumulation, with the peat stoichiometry recording a shift towards phosphorus abundance relative to carbon and nitrogen. The eruptive events linked to elevated carbon accumulation rates are also known to contain phosphorus within the volcanic glass and the mineral apatite, both of which would be expected to weather and become biologically available due both to processes within the eruptive plume and within the bog post-deposition. As such we have found the restiad bogs studied to be highly resilient to water-table drawdown in the long-term but in contrast, the C sink is highly sensitive to phosphorus inputs.

year: 2020

title: Self-decolonisation in Aotearoa: Pushing through programmatic Pākehā paralysis

authors: Weijers, Dan M.

abstract: Te reo, tīkanga, mātauranga, te Ao, and kaupapa Māori are finally seeing a resurgence in Aotearoa. This revitalisation is occurring in the tertiary education sector, but staff and skill deficits are holding back many academic disciplines. This chapter documents the challenges facing a traditionally colonial tertiary programme—philosophy— attempting to de-colonise itself. The overlapping nature of the challenges can make decolonising appear to be so difficult that some programmes may feel paralysed. This chapter argues that the importance of decolonisation requires that programmes push through any paralysis they may be experiencing by prioritising decolonisation above other goals.

text: Self-decolonisation in Aotearoa: Pushing through programmatic Pākehā paralysis Te reo, tīkanga, mātauranga, te Ao, and kaupapa Māori are finally seeing a resurgence in Aotearoa. This revitalisation is occurring in the tertiary education sector, but staff and skill deficits are holding back many academic disciplines. This chapter documents the challenges facing a traditionally colonial tertiary programme—philosophy— attempting to de-colonise itself. The overlapping nature of the challenges can make decolonising appear to be so difficult that some programmes may feel paralysed. This chapter argues that the importance of decolonisation requires that programmes push through any paralysis they may be experiencing by prioritising decolonisation above other goals.

year: 2024