Paper Title: An Ecofeminist Critique of Environmental Crisis: Are some apocalypses better than others?
Author: Jennifer Gambino

Email: jennylynn1127@hotmail.com

"The aim of my essay was to explore three environmental apocalyptic texts, ranging from 1973 to 2004, and the gender roles portrayed in each: these were the film Soylent Green, released in 1973, The Day After Tomorrow, released in 2002, and the science fiction novel Parable of the Sower, written by Octavia Butler in 1993. All of these texts are dystopian representations of cities in the future, and each contains an extremely different depiction of the dynamic between men and women. Over a span of thirty years, one can see a shift from woman as a sex object to be exploited or protected by a male protagonist, to woman as a strong, intelligent heroine who uses her empathy for living things and her intellectual ability to survive in the face of disaster. However, throughout three decades of conceptions of environmental crisis, certain sexist ideologies persist, which reflect sustaining patriarchal values present in American society. These patriarchal values and social hierarchies are the subject of ecofeminist studies, the lens through which I approached each different representation of environmental crisis over three decades of changing crisis thought and gender positions. By the dénouement of my essay, I concluded that from an ecofeminist’s perspective, some apocalypses are indeed better than others."