The Anthropocene in the Ordinary

Author:

Meyers, Liam

Area of Honors:

English

Degree:

Bachelor of Science

Document Type:

Thesis

Thesis Supervisors:

Claire Mary Colebrook, Thesis Supervisor
Matt Tierney, Thesis Honors Advisor

Keywords:

anthropocene
cultural studies
creative non-fiction
costco
shoelaces
english football

Abstract:

People like stories. Movies and books tell stories. Advertisements and news networks tell stories. TikToks and Twitter threads tell stories too. People are bombarded with narratives about themselves, others, and the world around them. The following pages are about a few stories that can be told by contemplating ordinary objects. My thesis focuses on a few mundane things—Costco hot dogs, shoelaces, and English Football—and what they have to reveal about what it means to be human in the Anthropocene, the era where humans impact the environment and climate on Earth. I will combine research about the Earth as a product of various environmental systems with personal vignettes that involve these three things. I will explore different outlooks on the situation we as humans currently find ourselves in. In Homer’s The Iliad, he spends nearly 150 lines describing the Shield of Achilles in great visual detail. On the Shield of Achilles there is imagery of the Earth, the moon, the sun, and the stars. Wrought in the metal of the shield, there are also depictions of two cities, a field being plowed, and a shepherd tending to his sheep. These images encapsulate a lot of the human experience. This thesis is my attempt at depicting my experience and research on the Anthropocene—my own version of the Shield of Achilles, if you will.