Tulane Simpson – 2022 Student Excellence Award Recipient

Tulane’s Nomination

Tulane Simpson is an exemplary writer and scholar. In the brief time I’ve known them, Tulane has masterfully and repeatedly proved their skills at academic synthesis, planning and organisation, critical thinking, providing feedback, and analysing sources. In record-breaking time, Tulane has won my respect.

Tulane’s topic is one of their own invention: ecoandrogyny, a concise term aimed to deconstruct a gender binary inherent to environmentalism and environmentalist media. This binary is depictions of ‘destructive’ masculinity versus depictions of ‘constructive’ femininity; for example, the Earth-polluting antagonists are usually male and the protagonists always have a ‘Mother Earth’ figure on their team. However, this kind of imagery fails to account for the fact that both men AND women pollute the Earth, and ‘masculine’ traits like aggression and assertiveness are actually essential for the environmental movement. Thus, Tulane coined the term ‘ecoandrogyny’ and created a framework for finding ecoandrogynous art to prove that a gender neutral approach to environmentalism is present and deserves attention. They are analysing children’s media that supports ecoandrogynous thinking as an alternative to conventional environmental children’s media (think Captain Planet or FernGully).

Tulane saw a niche in environmentalist media, found a slew of scholarly and lay sources that corroborated their ideas, then applied an academic framework to create a cross-cultural synthesis. Their work is exceptional. While their project may be ambitious, I can testify that Tulane has been more than up to the task thus far, always coming to class prepared and always communicating their thesis with precision and clarity. I am often astounded by how professional and scholarly they are just in class discussions. Tulane finds the right questions to ask every time, and they always have a thorough response when posed with a question.

Tulane correctly postulates that narratives focusing on black and white, male and female, good and evil binaries are limiting to our understanding of environmentalism, and they endeavour to synthesise a new paradigm for both media and environmental studies. Because of their original ideas, phenomenal dedication, and consummate scholarship, I cannot think of a better candidate for this award.

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