Storying Extinction: Cultural Imaginations of Insect Decline

我提出的研究将调查20世纪60年代以来昆虫数量下降的社会和文化叙事，重点关注三个有魅力的微型动物：欧洲蜜蜂、帝王蝶和普通的花园蚂蚁。从切尔·卡森的《寂静的春天》（1962）开始，追踪自该书出版以来人们对杀虫剂对环境的破坏性影响的日益认识，我将研究并绘制关于这三种昆虫衰落的各种叙述。我的项目主要关注三个物种，如果不考虑它们的历史和生态重要性以及它们所处的自然环境，就无法讲述它们的多面故事。

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.