Graduation Term
9-24-2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Department of English
Committee Chair
Ricardo C Cruz
Abstract
Drenched and Drying is a speculative climate fiction novel that explores regional affects and tensions by zooming in on the US Gulf Coast South and central California in the midst of climatological disaster. They look to each other for aid. The asymmetrical experiences of climate change fuel the ongoing tension in the novel. The dissertation includes a critical introduction to the novel that examines the understanding of the US South as a region that has been created by media and literary canons, as well as affectual understandings of the region. I argue that to combat this monolithic and flattening imagined South, we—as literary scholars, publishers and literary journal editors, and southern writers—must give more attention to the local and specific through the appreciation of the small-scale south. The dissertation also includes a pedagogical chapter that reflects upon teaching an introductory creative writing workshop focused on teaching antiracist and decolonial (creative) writing.
Recommended Citation
Fontenot, Emily, "Drenched and Drying: Regional Affects and Small-Scale Souths: a Creative Dissertation" (2023). Theses and Dissertations. 1851.
https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd/1851
DOI
https://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2023.20240124055107348381.999998
Page Count
278