Overview:
- Now that you’ve read David Wallace-Wells’s nonfiction journalistic analysis of scientific data to predict how climate change will impact humanity’s future and Octavia Butler’s fictional imagining of a climate-changed future set in modern-day Southern California, you can evaluate which elements from each book were most effective in:
- informing and persuading readers about the current and predicted future impacts of climate change on humanity
- arguing for particular approaches or solutions to climate change (both short-term and long-term) and
- persuading readers that climate change is an urgent issue about which they should care.
Essay #2 Prompt: Using evidence (quotes) from each of the assigned textbooks, explain which genre (nonfiction, fiction, or some combination of both) is most effective in helping readers understand and care about climate change’s likely (predicted) impacts on humanity–both now and in the future.
Sample Thesis Options:
- A sample thesis could look (meaning, it can look different) something like:
- Nonfiction writing like David Wallace-Wells’s The Uninhabitable Earth is the most effective genre for helping readers understand and care about climate change’s predicted impacts on humanity because it educates readers with scientific evidence that is so shocking and compelling that it makes readers care about how climate change will affect them in the future. OR
- Fiction writing like Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower is the most effective genre for helping readers understand and care about climate change’s predicted impacts on humanity because it uses scientific evidence to create the dystopian setting. However, following characters as they live through a climate-changed world is what truly helps readers care about climate change’s impacts because reader’s empathize with the characters through the use of pathos. OR
- The most effective way to help readers understand and care about climate change’s likely impacts on humanity is to combine detailed analysis of scientific data in non-fiction writing with fictional writing that features well-developed characters and the effective use of pathos. The combination of information and emotion is the best way to reach and persuade readers.
- With this prompt, your essay should have a specific and direct thesis that makes a clear argument in favor of a particular genre (or combination of them). Your body paragraphs should support your thesis with direct quotes from the textbooks.
Minimum Word Count: 1,250 words
In addition to writing your essay, you are required to include a self-reflection.
SELF-REFLECTION INSTRUCTIONS
- Write in complete sentences and paragraphs (not a list).
- Write at least 250 words.
- Place your self-evaluation at the end of your essay as a new paragraph under the title Self-Reflection. Dont forget the word count for the self-reflection!
- Note: Your essay will be returned ungraded if your self-reflection is not written in paragraph form or if you do not include it at all. Your essay will be considered late until you resubmit your essay and reformatted self-reflection.
SELF REFLECTION PROMPT QUESTIONS:
PLEASE TELL ME THE STORY OF HOW YOU WROTE YOUR ESSAY (in paragraph form)
- How long did you spend writing this essay? (Days? Weeks? Hours?)
- What steps did you take to write the essay? What did you do 1st? 2nd? 3rd?
- Did you write a rough draft? Second draft? Third draft?
- Did you visit office hours? (I DID NOT)
- Did you seek help from other sources (Family? Friends? Tutors? Students?)
- What are the greatest strengths of your essay?
- What are the greatest weaknesses of your essay?
- What would you do differently next time?
- What steps did you take to improve your proofreading?
Total Minimum Length: 1,500 words (1,250 for the essay + 250 words for the self-reflection)
Due Date: Wednesday, February 4 by 11:59pm
Submission guidelines: Submit your essay as a PDF. (Do NOT submit your essay as a Google Doc).
Formatting guidelines: Type your essay with 1″ margins, a 12-point font, and double spacing
THIS WAS THE THESIS I SUBMITTED FOR THE ASSIGNMENT – (In my opinion, the best way to teach these lessons about climate change is using both nonfiction and fiction writing; Wallace-Wells explains the facts about the science and what is happening, while Butler shows people what it is like to live through this, which helps people sympathize more.)
- In this course, we will critically analyze various stories (narratives) that articulate a picture, vision, or prediction of what life will be like on a climate-changed Earth as well.
- Beginning with David Wallace Well’s The Uninhabitable Earth, we will analyze his journalistic examination of the current science about climate change and engage with his attempts to describe humanity’s likely future in a climate changed world.
- Primarily based on his analysis and interpretation of scientific facts, data, and models, Well’s non-fiction will start our exploration of how we can begin to imagine, let alone describe, a future shaped by climate change.
- Next, we will read Octavia Butler’s fictional novel Parable of the Sower. Published in 1993(!), Butler’s dystopian sci-fi (science fiction) novel predicted what life would be in greater Los Angeles in the year 2024 (last year). We will compare Well’s non-fiction story of climate change’s future to Butler’s fictional depiction to see how both genres (non-fiction and fiction) can help us better understand humanity’s current trajectory and relationship to the Earth.
- Primarily focusing on the lives of the novel’s central characters, the novel centers the lived experiences and human toll that climate change–and the imagined resulting societal breakdown–may exact on humanity. At the same time, the novel also weaves a thread of hope as it examines how new ways of forming and sustaining communities may develop in the ashes of the old world.
- By comparing both books, we can think critically about the most effective ways–both in terms of information shared and narrative strategies used–to write and communicate about challenging topics.
Requirements: MINUMUM 1500 WORDS
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