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The migratory beekeeping industry in North America is an integral component of capitalist agriculture due to the pollination services it provides. The industry is rife with problems ranging from the difficulty of maintaining adequate honey bee populations from year to year, to the negative impacts intensified agricultural land use has on wild species. Discussions surrounding the predicaments facing honey bees often occlude historical and ongoing settler colonialism as well as the capitalist economy that drives the pursuit of economies of scale. In order to remediate the aforementioned tendencies, this thesis puts to work Stoler’s (2016) recursive analytics to weave a genealogical account of the imperial formations that inhere in contemporary industrial beekeeping, with a focus on the 1862 Morrill Act and its relationship to the modernization of apiculture. I then take Greenpeace’s “Save the Bees” campaign to task to illustrate capitalism’s subsumption of discourse. Using Shukin’s (2009) rubric of rendering, I argue that a biopolitical analysis of commercial beekeeping necessitates a reading of both symbolic and material currencies towards a more fulsome understanding of trends within the industry. My research seeks to show the entanglements between imaginative structures, power, and relationships to bees and more-than-human worlds more broadly.

Sourakov, Andrei, Doll, Cassandra F., Quinn, Alyssa M., Xiao, Lei, Anderson, Eric (2020): On speciation and hybridization among closely related species: establishing an experimental breeding lineage between two species of Automeris Hübner moths (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae) and implications for taxonomy. Insecta Mundi 2020 (797): 1-16, DOI: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4565149, {"references":["Adamski D, Marques D, Mayo KG, Mayo R. 2019. Description of larval and pupal stages of a bilateral gynandromorph reared from a cross between Citheronia regalis (Fabr.) and C. splendens (Druce) (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae). The Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society 73: 135-144.","Ades D, Cocault R, Lemaitre R, Vuattoux R. 2005. Hybridation entre Graellsia isabelae (Graells) male et Actias sinensis (Walker) femelle: Obtention des femelles. Lambillionea 105(2): 321-325.","Brou VA. 2005. Spotlight on rearing: Automeris louisiana Ferguson & Brou 2005. 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This collection of short fiction repurposes myths, fairy tales, classic literature, and other narratives to explore the triumphs and failures of language. Some stories depict moments when language fails to signify, exploring what that means for characters and their attempts to communicate. Others celebrate the potential of language and narrative to combat solipsism and forge interpersonal connections. In doing so, the stories also examine the ways language shapes reality and identity. Overall, the collection emerges from the postmodern tradition, but attempts to temper postmodernism’s ironic stance with sincerity, intimacy, and lyricism.

This thesis analyzes reader-writer relationships in two novels by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin and Alias Grace. The plots of both these novels revolve around scenes of storytelling, in which tensions arise between the narrator and her audience. In The Blind Assassin, the elderly protagonist tells her granddaughter the truth about their family's past in an effort to achieve redemption. In Alias Grace, a convicted murderess tells her story to a psychiatrist who hopes to prove either her guilt or innocence. In my thesis, I examine how each of these narrative relationships reflects the relative powers of narrator and audience to define truth, shape identities, and assign meaning. Both parties have specific motivations for entering the relationship, and so each one vies for control of the story, sometimes to disastrous effect. Drawing on contemporary literary theory, this research explores the respective powers of reader, writer, and the text itself, and discusses how each one shapes the meaning of narrative. The thesis finally concludes that successfully navigating the narrative relationship can lead to personal empowerment and social connection, while failing to do so can be destructive. Ultimately, this project hopes to provide insight for real-world readers and writers as they enter into narrative relationships of their own.