''Promising Futures: Cli-Fi and the Temporal Imagination'' - a paper presented at the ASLE 2015 conference by Rebecca Evans

 

 

''Promising Futures: Cli-Fi and the Temporal Imagination''  

 

--  a paper presented at the ASLE 2015 conference by Rebecca Evans

 

ABSTRACT:

This paper will argue that cli-fi serves an important function in the public perception of climate change by helping readers grapple with the temporality of global warming. I will discuss the formal strategies adopted by recent speculative fiction in order to depict prolonged and slow-moving environmental disaster, with an emphasis on Octavia Butler’s Parable trilogy (I will have the opportunity to examine the unpublished third book in manuscript form prior to ASLE through a Huntington Library fellowship).

 

Characterizing this series as a foundational early work of cli-fi, I will use the Parable books to illuminate the significant role of contemporary cli-fi in helping readers comprehend the temporally distributed threat of climate change while still thinking critically about ethical actions in the present. I will conclude by considering the adoption of cli-fi’s temporal strategies by other aesthetic genres and forms, including the Future Library project and predictive/projective multimedia.

 

The Cli-Fi Literature Panel at ASLE 2015 last year (which was organized Greta Gaard and Serpil Oppermann) was a great success with the panelists presenting thought-provoking papers.

 

Two graduate students from the University of Oregon, Stephen Siperstein and April Anson,  were among them. They both teach cli-fi classes. 

 

Steven's course syllabus  can be accessed here: "English 104: Introduction Climate Change Fiction"   http://www.asle.org/wp-content/uploads/ASLE_Syllabi_CliFiSiperstein.pdf

 

His Course website: http://blogs.uoregon.edu/eng104/

 

Other panelists were

 

Rebecca Evans: 

Yates, Michelle: 

Laura Wright: 

Their papers:

Michelle Yates, Columbia College Chicago, MANLINESS AND CIVILIZATION IN ''SOYLENT GREEN'''S EDENIC RECOVERY NARRATIVE

April Anson, University of Oregon, SURVIVANCE ECOLOGY: SOLAR, THE IPCC HAIKU, AND THE MANIFEST STAKES OF FAILURE IN CLI-FI FORM

Stephen Siperstein, University of Oregon, TEACHING CLI-FI AND LESSONS IN AFFIRMATIVE SPECULATION

Laura Wright, Western Carolina University, THE FACT OF THE FICTION, AND THE FICTION OF THE FACT: CLI-FI, GEOSCIENCE, AND TRUTH

Rebecca Evans, Duke University, PROMISING FUTURES: CLI-FI AND THE TEMPORAL IMAGINATION