We’ll be kicking off our final project for the course on Monday. Here are some details:

• We’ll meet with Prof. Jennifer Newman, a Hunter librarian, remotely over Zoom (here’s the link): she thinks that format works better for this kind of exercise.
• To prepare, Prof. Newman asks that we answer a couple of prompts on Padlet prior to meeting:
  • Section 4: https://huntercollege68.padlet.org/jn1314/ne40012z0w35qr42
  • Section 6: https://huntercollege68.padlet.org/jn1314/tc5lsoukpbl7do1w
• You’ll also come to class with a “research question” already posted to the blog. Guidelines are here.

In order to contextualize Ben Lerner’s very strange and challenging novel, I thought you might appreciate the following:

• reviews:
  • in the Manchester Guardian; NYT); and Slate
  • As you can see, reception was pretty enthusiastic, but reviewers’ tolerance for the extremely close first-person, irony-saturated narrative differs, as I’m sure it does for students.
• autofiction:
  • we’ll talk about this in class, but this novel is not “cli-fi” in the usual sense.
  • It’s neither speculative and oriented towards “critical utopias” nor realist in the grand tradition exemplified and defended by Ghosh.
  • In terms of genre, it’s much more an example of the “autofiction” of contemporary writers like Teju Cole, Rachel Cusk, Karl Ove Knausgard, who themselves point back to twentieth-century writers like W. G. Sebald and, above all, Marcel Proust.
  • I included it in the course despite all this, since I think it represents a radically different strategy for thinking about deep time than the other two examples and represents a different strategy than either Ghosh’s or Butler’s in awakening our imagination to try to comprehend the “hyperobjects” of the Anthropocene.

We’ll go over the midterm a bit for the first 20 minutes of class tomorrow, so make sure to review your work and my comments on it. Here’s a key of sorts, with real answers from peers. Who wrote what is sort of besides the point, but I did include initials and section info for all authors by way of “citation”: congrats to all who wrote such good responses.

Midterm Key

I know y’all can Google, but here’s a map of the Sundarbans to get a sense of where this novel is unfolding in space:

Sundarbans

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

As promised, here is the link to the Word template you’ll use for your midterm. It’s probably a good idea to download it (button on upper left-hand corner) and edit it on your machine (you can use Pages or whatever instead of Word if you like)

• your exam will be based on the Clausen article under etexts
• the short answer questions are in hypothes.is and on the template (be sure to log in and select our ENGL252Sp23 group). You must enter all responses on your template; the questions are just on hypothes.is to provide some context. Do not enter anything test-related in hypothes.is
• All instructions and links are on the template. Due Tuesday 10/10 at midnight: one letter grade deduction for exams received by Wednesday at midnight, and a zero for exams received thereafter. Upload to Dropbox via this link when finished.

Good luck and see you Thursday!