Richardson, SarahPerret, Meg2022-11-2420222022-07-282022-11Perret, Meg. 2022. Gender and Sexuality in U.S. Biodiversity Discourse. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.29318591https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37373618This dissertation examines the role of gender and sexuality in discourses surrounding the biodiversity crisis that threatens the future of most known species, including humans. I examine the gendered rhetoric that biodiversity scientists in the United States use to frame species extinctions through interviews with scientists and textual analysis of scientific documents. I also analyze gendered depictions of environmental futures in broad cultural contexts, including popular-science, environmental non-profits, and the media. In particular, I use insights from feminist science studies to examine the role of gendered rhetoric and images embedded in scientific and popular representations of species extinctions. Ultimately, I find that representations of the future of endangered species in the context of environmental change are entangled with cultural anxieties about the future of human gender and sexuality. I argue that a subset of this rhetoric portrays the biodiversity crisis as a crisis of the norms of masculinity and heterosexuality. These findings are significant because they show how cultural constructions of gender and sexuality influence how we imagine possible environmental futures.application/pdfenbiodiversity conservationclimate changefeminist science studiesqueer ecologiesscientific rhetoricspecies extinctionsGender studiesEnvironmental studiesAmerican studiesThesis or Dissertation2022-11-240000-0003-2038-4294