Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2023, Geography

In the face of past, present, and future environmental injustice in central Appalachia, mothers have been on the front lines of resistance to extractive industry. Scholars have acknowledged this pattern, yet no substantive research on why motherhood is invoked so often as a discursive tool has been completed. This thesis examines the factors which have led central Appalachian women activists to use motherhood in their activism and analyze the discourse's strengths and weaknesses.

Committee: Anna Rachel Terman (Advisor) Subjects: Environmental Justice; Environmental Studies; Geography; Regional Studies; Womens Studies

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2019, Environmental Studies

Hydraulic fracturing is an environmental justice issue in Appalachia, particularly when it comes to the siting of waste fluid injection wells. Athens County, Ohio, is home to 8 injection wells that are actively receiving waste fluid from hydraulic fracturing. These wells pose threats to environmental and community health. This project: 1) documents risk perceptions of people living near the wells and 2) addresses the viability of inexpensive environmental monitoring technology for citizens to use. Through a risk perception survey sent to communities with and without oil and gas waste fluid injection wells in Athens County, citizens addressed their concerns about hydraulic fracturing. Some respondents discussed how hydraulic fracturing is disrupting their sense of place and raised concerns about environmental and human health issues. Others spoke to the economic and political benefits from hydraulic fracturing. This highlights contradictory perceptions and contention in these communities. Low-cost water quality monitoring devices that can collect and transmit data in remote areas may be able to address citizens' concerns about pollution and alleviate scientists' concerns about the legitimacy of citizen-collected data. Citizen science can be one tool to address citizens' water quality concerns and address environmental injustice in Appalachian oil and gas communities such as Athens.

Committee: Natalie Kruse (Advisor); Michele Morrone (Advisor) Subjects: Environmental Health; Environmental Justice; Environmental Science; Environmental Studies; Gender; Geography; Regional Studies; Sustainability

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2016, Antioch New England: Environmental Studies

Women's environmental activism prior to the early 1960s in America focused on women's roles as municipal housekeepers or emphasized wilderness conservation. I offer in this dissertation the story of the Illinois Prairie Path, the country's first rails-to-trails conversion to apply for National Recreation Trail status, and the innovative women who fought for nature preservation in a suburban setting rather than in a wilderness area. Led by renowned writer and naturalist, May Theilgaard Watts, these women built support for the public footpath project by fostering an ecological awareness throughout their region. I place them in the tradition of Chicago female reformers as a bridge between women of the Progressive Era and members of the modern environmental movement. My aim in this research is to show the ways in which May Theilgaard Watts and the Illinois Prairie Path founders cultivated a new post-wilderness era model of environmental thinking through their emphasis on the restoration of a suburban open space. These women scientists and naturalists worked for democratic equality through ecological restoration and access to nature. Through an interdisciplinary focus on ecocriticism, the politics of place, and the history of the suburban landscape, specifically in Chicago's metropolis, I examine how these women redefined space by linking communities across a region. By analyzing the documents, letters, speeches, and photos generated by founding leaders of The Illinois Prairie Path not-for-profit corporation, I demonstrate that this community of women challenged the hierarchies of the day. Their vision for conservation and connecting people to nature continues to serve as a model for the future of the Illinois Prairie Path and other rails-to- trails conversions.

Committee: Joy Ackerman Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Alesia Maltz Ph.D. (Committee Member); Ann Durkin Keating Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Conservation; Ecology; Environmental Studies; Womens Studies