With less than a week until graduation, I am wrapping up all of my ENVS coursework: a final edit for my thesis, finalizing my records and my DS site, and a few other projects for other classes. I’m preparing for a whole week of social whirlwinds with family and friends converging on Portland.
As I was revising my thesis for the last time, guided my Kristin Fujie’s amazing comments, I had several thoughts about what I would improve if I continue working on it. I plan to take a break from the project for a while, but I’m not opposed to continuing refining or expanding the project in my graduate studies. I think the project was ambitious, and could certainly be expanded with more context, more theory, and more in depth analysis of each of the books (and others!).
The most glaring omission I noticed in my final read-through was a more specific section bringing the theories to bear on the analysis. There were a lot of resonances I just expected my readers to pick up on, but they weren’t actually articulated in the paper. Kristin noticed this, and I think there could be a 6 or 7 page section in the bottom of the hourglass bringing the theory together and looking for more implications. I find this kind of synthesis very difficult, but even as I read it over after taking a break, I thought it was easier to see the bottom for what it was and what it needed. Throughout the process, I struggled with feeling like every section was disparate and I didn’t connect them perfectly. Part of this was the genre and the apparatus of the ENVS thesis, which required theory, results, methods, etc. In an expansion or revision, I would alter the structure. So far, I think the section that stands best on its own is the theory section. In the future, if I use this paper as a writing sample for English graduate schools, I would probably use this section.
There was also SO MUCH untouched material, especially in Murakami’s texts and Ozeki’s novel. I would love to do a more extended analysis of these stories. I think I would need to do a lot of free-writing, close-reading analysis of specific passages of the books to get to what I envision. I think, for the challenges I pose to ecocriticism, Ozeki’s novel in particular would be a fascinating case study to expand upon. My thesis defense and comments from Kristin have given me SO much to think about, and so many more places that my analysis might go. There is potential for expansion on all sides.
Another place that would be interesting to linger are the indigenous myths. In my thesis defense and in my Festival of Scholars presentation there were questions about this angle. For a postcolonial angle and an inquiry into literary tradition (as it relates to earthquake culture), it would be imperative to analyze the myths and collect more oral history. Since I am moving to Salt Lake City, I wonder if there has been any work done about earthquake culture and historical memory of indigenous tribes along the Wasatch fault. For my interest in the American West as a colonized space, this would be a fascinating topic to pursue in grad school.