Nature, knowledge, justice: The epistemology of literary form in Hurston, Ortiz, and Nabhan

My dissertation argues for the epistemological value of formal innovation in literary texts. Through a close reading of works by Zora Neale Hurston, Simon Ortiz, and Gary Paul Nabhan, I seek to elucidate the particular capacities of literature for enriching our understanding of nature. Three themes link these authors: the text as dialogical, the hermeneutic of the community, and the decentering of the authorial voice. Each of these authors intervenes in dominant discourses--such as ethnography, colonialism, and Western science--through the construction of multivocal texts. Hurston's vernacular ethnography, Ortiz's poems and stories, and Nabhan's narrative ethnobotanical texts destabilize conventional forms and assumptions to open up new possibilities for thinking about and relating to nature.;Closely tied to the questions of nature and knowledge is the issue of justice. These texts offer a genealogy for environmental justice literature through the role of the community in the formation of knowledge about nature. Drawing on Jason Corburn's concept of "street science," my dissertation argues for the value of literature in constituting and expressing the communal epistemology of environmental justice. This capacity is both formal and thematic: it is enacted through dialogical forms, free indirect style, the blurring of boundaries between oral and written literatures, and the destabilization of the scientific texts. It is thematized through reflection on the role of the ethnographer, the epistemology of labor, and the value of dissonance and dissent.;In the context of the emerging field of environmental studies, this study articulates the value of the humanities, not as merely an ornamental presentation of knowledge formed through empirical study, but as engaged in the interpretation of meanings, ethics, and values that are essential to understanding the natural world. It therefore contributes to the fields of ecocriticism and environmental studies by bridging "the two cultures" of literature and science, taking each on its own terms and revealing the value of the epistemological and expressive capacities of literature for interdisciplinary dialogue.;This dissertation includes previously published material.