NADER Seyf-el Islam

Dissertation Title

Ecology on Screen: The Impact of the Cinematic Adaptations of American Science Fiction

Dissertation Advisor

Professor Sébastien Lefait

Dissertation Summary

My research project examines the ways in which American science fiction shapes ecological imaginaries by studying their construction and circulation on the level of adaptation, from literature to film, as well as reception by a wider audience. The study builds upon environmental humanities scholarship, focusing particularly on the dynamics of local and global environmental imagination that science fiction tends to center. It pays special attention to the way the genre constructs speculative ecologies that circulate via the globally influential industries of American cultural production. The aim is to first identify the characteristics of the ecological imaginaries constructed in American science fiction, the messages embedded in them, and how they adapt broader local and global environmental assumptions and discourse. Then, the project examines how these imaginaries are received textually and institutionally in American Cinema, as well as how they’re then reconfigured and remediated to viewers. The final step is to investigate the reception of those imaginaries by wider audiences through a large-scale, computational analysis of online reviews of the films to understand their impact on ecological perceptions.