Two TPSs today: one on research, one on Offill:

What’s your usual procedure in kicking off research, once you have a prompt or a self-generated question or thesis? How did that procedure differ this time, if at all? How did you initiate the search for sources? Did you have to modify your search as you went?

In The Great Derangement, Ghosh points out that the realist novel grew out of an era of great faith in “incrementalism,” the belief that nature evolves in a slow-moving, predictable way. Just as novel plots that rely on sudden, unmotivated decisions by characters or implausible, atypical disasters (like the tornado he experienced in his youth in New Delhi) seem “unrealistic” and cheap, scientific hypotheses that rely on unpredictable, sudden changes (like the once-scoffed-at notion that a meteor triggered the mass extiction of the dinosaurs) were rejected out of hand.

How does Offill’s novel relate to this idea? How do its form and themes engage the questions of what’s “realistic” in the Anthropocene?

I used Hunter College Libraries’ OneSearch to search many topics in one search. I was always to adjust the resource type I wanted to use and the subject I wanted the information to be about. I want to break apart the role religion plays in understanding climate change. How are Clifi novels like Butler’s Sower and Ghosh’s Tide pushed to explore religion and what does this exploration do for the novel? Something of this nature I am still not too clear on how I want to phrase the question.

Jenkins, Willis. “Religion and Climate Change.” Annualreviews, Willis Jenkins,1,2 Evan Berry,3 and Luke Beck Kreider1, Oct. 2018, www.annualreviews.org/docserver/fulltext/energy/43/1/annurev-environ-102017-025941.pdf?expires=1715037725&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=556803653A0948C9CBF098FB160A3E46.

Nakayama, Mikiyasu, et al. “Influence of Religion, Culture and Education on Perception of Climate Change, and Its Implications.” Journal of Disaster Research, Fuji Technology Press Ltd., 1 Dec. 2019, www.fujipress.jp/jdr/dr/dsstr001400091297/.

Brissman, Ive. “The Search for Enchantment in Times of Climate Change: Religious or Spiritual Responses to Climate Crisis.” Wiley Online Library, Dec. 2023, onlinelibrary-wiley-com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/doi/full/10.1111/dial.12836.

Schuman, Simone. “Religious Beliefs and Climate Change Adaptation: A Study of Three Rural South African Communities.” Gale Academic Online, Simone Schuman, Jon-Vegard Dokken, Dewald van Niekerk and Ruth A. Loubser, 2018, go-gale-com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=cuny_hunter&id=GALE%7CA562807605&v=2.1&it=r.

Pihkala, Panu. “ECO-ANXIETY, TRAGEDY, AND HOPE: PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SPIRITUAL DIMENSIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE.” Wiley Online Library, 2018, onlinelibrary-wiley-com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/doi/full/10.1111/zygo.12407.

I used Hunter’s one search database as well as JSTOR and google scholar. In order to figure out which journals and peer reviewed articles I could use, I utilized key words from my question to narrow things down which helped significantly. JSTOR and one search was the most helpful and easiest to navigate for me.

Blazan, S. (2022). “Something beyond pain”: Race, gender, and hyperempathy in octavia butler’s parable of the sower. Gender Forum, (82), 34. Retrieved from http://proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/something-beyond-pain-race-gender-hyperempathy/docview/2764532780/se-2

Caputi, Jane. “Facing Change.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, vol. 11, no. 2 (42), 2000, pp. 175–78. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43308439. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.

Chelsea M. Frazier. “Troubling Ecology: Wangechi Mutu, Octavia Butler, and Black Feminist Interventions in Environmentalism.” Critical Ethnic Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 2016, pp. 40–72. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5749/jcritethnstud.2.1.0040. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.

Henderson, Carol E. “FREEDOM TO SELF-CREATE: IDENTITY AND THE POLITICS OF MOVEMENT IN CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN AMERICAN FICTION.” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 46, no. 4, 2000, pp. 998–1003. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26286181. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.

Miller, Jim. “Post-Apocalyptic Hoping: Octavia Butler’s Dystopian/Utopian Vision.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 25, no. 2, 1998, pp. 336–60. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4240705. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.

Mirza, Kanza Fatima, et al. “Gender, Capitalism, and Environmental Degradation: A Material Ecofeminist Analysis of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sorrow.” Panacea Journal of Linguistics & Literature, 5 Sept. 2024, journals.airsd.org/index.php/pjll/article/view/289.

Usoro, Rebecca. “Article ~ Emerging Gender Perspectives of the African Americans in Octavia Butler’s Fledgling and Parable of the Sower.” AKSU Journal of English, AKSU Journal of English, 15 Dec. 2023, aksujournalofenglish.org.ng/utuenikang/23/12/emerging-gender-perspectives-of-the-african-americans-in-octavia-butlers-fledgling-and-parable-of-the-sower/.

I was researching for sources in JSTOR, and looking around the suggested ones. These aren’t necessarily the ones I’ll use in my final paper. but they are good sources that I can potentially use for my paper.

Allen, Marlene. “Octavia Butler’s ‘Parable’ Novels and the ‘Boomerang’ of African American History.” “Callaloo”, vol. 32, no. 4, 2009, pp. 1353–1365.

This article examines historical and psychological elements in Butler’s novels, focusing on their exploration of trauma and resistance to change. It explains how “Parable of the Sower” uses speculative fiction to engage with societal anxieties.

Burkhart, Matt.“Trees Are Better than Stone’: Vital Commemoration in Octavia Butler’s Parable Novels.” “Western American Literature”, vol. 56, no. 3–4, 2021, pp. 287–313.  

Discusses ecological resilience and adaptation themes in “Parable of the Sower”, offering a perspective on the characters’ psychological responses to environmental collapse and their resistance to traditional societal structures.

 Clausen, Daniel D.“Cli-Fi Georgic and Grassroots Mutual Aid in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.” bWestern American Literature, vol. 56, no. 3–4, 2021, pp. 269–86.  This article explores the concept of mutual aid and community-building in response to environmental crises, shedding light on the resistance to change within larger societal frameworks in Butler’s speculative world.

 Guerrero, Paula Barba. “Post-Apocalyptic Memory Sites: Damaged Space, Nostalgia, and Refuge in Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower”.” Science-Fiction Studies, vol. 48, no. 1, 2021, pp. 29–45.  

    Examines how damaged landscapes and memory contribute to psychological responses to environmental collapse and the reluctance of characters to embrace necessary transformations.

Éva Federmayer.“Migrants and Disaster Subcultures in the Late Anthropocene: An Ecocritical Reading of Octavia Butler’s Parable Novels.” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, vol. 23, no. 2, 2017, pp. 347–70.  

   Offers an ecocritical perspective on migration and survival strategies, linking climate change anxiety with resistance to socio-political change.

I thought Weather and climate change were the usual centers in many Cli-Fi novels, as I’ve seen in Octavia Butler’s “Sower ” or Amitav Ghosh‘s “The Hungry Tide”, where extreme weather events or environmental collapse drive the plot, in Jenny Offill’s “Weather”, this is not the center of the novel. Instead, Jenny Offill’s “Weather”  approaches climate change more subtly. The weather in “Weather”  in the first two parts of the novel does not seem to drive the narrative compared to other novels.

“Weather” confuses me from the very beginning of the novel, locating the reader in  Lizzie’s  consciousness. We join her world without much context or explanation. This is parallel in some ways to the uncertainty of today concerning climate change: something is coming, yet not quite when and how it will actually happen. Offil’s novel doesn’t open with a dramatic scene of natural disasters or apocalyptic weather, as many Cli-Fi novels do. Instead, the climate crisis is the background, an unseen yet felt presence, which parallels the way that many of us today live our lives with knowledge of climate change but by no means acting actively concerned by it. In Weather, it is talked about and spoken through Lizzie‘s discussions with other characters. Lizzie‘s head is full of thoughts on the state of the world, but the weather itself doesn’t receive dramatic descriptions.

Weather is not a central plot to which characters seem to relate directly in their decisions and actions like In Butler’s “Sower” where many places were inaccessible because of the climate crisis they were facing. In “Weather” instead, the climate crisis is a background against what is happening in Lizzie’s life. For example, Lizzie‘s brother is fixated on doomsday scenarios, whereas Lizzie herself seems resigned to the coming disaster but is uncertain about how to prepare or respond. 

From what I’ve read the novel does not seem to be about catastrophic events of weather yet. The weather conditions seem to be a metaphor for the anxiety that Lizzie is experiencing in her day-to-day life. Lizzie‘s life is a series of fragmented moments and interactions with her family and colleagues yet she has this underlying anxiety about the future. Lizzie’s character seems to be unmotivated and waiting for a disaster that seems inescapable.

In the first two parts of this novel, I have found myself wondering why it’s called Weather and questioning Offil’s choice of making this novel in what I consider a confusing narrative. Yet from all the books concerning weather this semester, Offil’s novel is the most realistic. We are currently experiencing impacting levels of climate change and I wonder if we are reacting the same way Lizzie does. In this way where something is not right, yet we still live our day-to-day lives not making this issue the center.