Storying Extinction: Cultural Imaginations of Insect Decline

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My proposed research will investigate social and cultural narratives of insectdecline from the 1960s onwards, focusing on three examples of charismatic microfauna: theEuropean honeybee, the Monarch butterfly, and the common garden ant. Beginning withRachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) and tracing increasing awareness of the debilitatingeffects of pesticides on the environment since its publication, I will research and map avariety of narratives on these three insects' decline. My project focuses on three specieswhose multi-faceted stories cannot be told without considering their historical and ecologicalimportance and the natural environments of which they are part.