{"id":96105,"date":"2023-09-18T13:20:37","date_gmt":"2023-09-18T18:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=96105"},"modified":"2023-09-18T13:20:37","modified_gmt":"2023-09-18T18:20:37","slug":"96105","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=96105","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Vanderbilt professor: Climate change stories \u2018cater to the white consciousness.\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

A professor of English at Vanderbilt University recently gave a talk about how the genre of climate fiction, or \u201ccli-fi,\u201d has a problem with \u201cits intersection [of] race and genre.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teresa Goddu\u00a0 whose advocacy led to the creation of Vanderbilt\u2019s Environmental and Sustainability Studies minor, told an audience at the Novel Seminar Series that climate fiction in the United States \u201cdepicts the climate crisis as a whiteness crisis,\u201d The Hustler<\/em>\u00a0reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Such stories \u201coften represent white, mostly privileged characters in communities becoming destabilized if not undone by climate catastrophe,\u201d Goddu said. \u201cClimate punctures the bubble of safety and security that cocoons the white psyche.\u201d<\/p>\n

Goddu added that she is \u201ctired\u201d of the focus on whiteness in climate stories, or \u201ctexts that actually just reify whiteness.\u201d As a result, she\u2019s working on \u201cencompassing slave and neo-slave narratives\u201d into such tales to \u201cexpand the canon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI really think a lot of climate fiction is being written, but not recognized as such, especially African American literature,\u201d Goddu said. \u201cI want to expand [\u2026] what is considered climate fiction and [redefine] what we are actually reading and paying attention to.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Looking ahead, Goddu said she hopes her work will expand the genre and leverage optimism, satire and new tropes to innovate the body of work and reimagine a better, more sustainable future.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI am more interested in reading stories that reimagine possible futures or teach me about the structures, historically and currently, that I live within,\u201d Goddu said. \u201cI don\u2019t like literature as policy statements. I don\u2019t like literature to be so instrumental.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to her faculty bio, Goddu\u2019s research deals with \u201cslavery and antislavery, race and American culture [and] genre studies.\u201d In a\u00a02021 interview<\/a>, Goddu said she began \u201cnoticing how the antislavery movement was being invoked by climate activists as a model.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis led me to consider what social change my own moment demanded of me and how I might bring my gifts\u2014as administrator, teacher, and writer\u2014to bear on the issue,\u201d she said. \u201cIt made sense to connect my long-standing concern with racial justice to the issue of climate justice and my interest in how literature can affect social change to the climate crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seven years ago another Vanderbilt academic, Ed Rubin,\u00a0offered a pair of courses<\/a>\u00a0on cli-fi: \u201cVisions of the Future in Cli-Fi\u201d and \u201cClimate Change Literature: A New Fictional Genre about a Real Problem.\u201d Many of the titles on his reading list (\u201cEarth Abides,\u201d \u201cThe Postman,\u201d \u201cDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?\u201d) are Euro\/white-centric.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vanderbilt professor: Climate change stories \u2018cater to the white consciousness.\u2019 A professor of English at Vanderbilt University recently gave a talk about how the genre of climate fiction, or \u201ccli-fi,\u201d has a problem with \u201cits intersection [of] race and genre.\u201d Teresa Goddu\u00a0 whose advocacy led to the creation of Vanderbilt\u2019s Environmental and Sustainability Studies minor, … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,18,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crap-for-brains","category-econuts","category-education-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=96105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96106,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96105\/revisions\/96106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=96105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=96105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=96105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}