Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2022, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Butler's choice of using the diary of a young Black girl and of making that Black girl a leader is directly paralleled in real history via diaries, such as The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells. Butler's use of the journaling technique via a Black woman ties the future to the past as the diaries of these influential Black women are read by later generations giving a glimpse of what dreams, hopes, and goals the women had for the Black Community. She further gives cautionary tales of “if-this-continues to-go-on” as a warning for the community to be on its guard, but also to look out for the young women who will become the leaders of tomorrow. Using a journal, Butler ties together Afrofuturism, the history of Black women and the Black Community, and the power of private words in public spaces. In this thesis, I will demonstrate that Butler's novels create a full cycle of how Black women's personal writings are influential by allowing a glimpse of the past, present, and future in the Earthseed series. I will further argue that it is through such Afrofuturist writings that the Black community can envision space that includes them, as both citizens and as leaders. Scholars of Afrofuturism have not discussed the importance of Lauren Olamina's journals to the authentic Black experience of the future. Scholars of journaling have focused on the individual healing process and not on the uplift of the Black community. By doing so, Butler's novels have fallen into the cracks and have been left unnoticed in the novels' revelatory meanings.

Committee: Julie Burrell (Committee Chair); Rachel Carnell (Advisor); Jeff Karem (Advisor) Subjects: African American Studies; Black History; Black Studies; Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, English

This dissertation examines how recent works of Black apocalyptic fiction represent the opportunities and limits of crisis as a driver of radical social change. Black apocalyptic fiction deals explicitly and substantively with what it means to be Black during, and in the aftermath of, apocalypse. It is a subset of the genre of Black speculative fiction, a broad category for texts by the African diaspora that resist purely realist or mimetic representation of the world and encompasses several genres, most commonly science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, and horror. Black speculative fiction has garnered considerable academic interest in recent years and has been recognized as a rich site for analyzing race and racial differences in popular culture. This project joins the emerging critical conversation of scholars such as Isiah Lavender III, Ramon Saldivar, Lisa Yaszek, and Marleen Barr, to analyze how Black writers engage with, challenge, and revise the conventions of the speculative genres. However, critical engagement with apocalypse in Black speculative fiction is still relatively sparse, as is scholarship addressing the representations of race and gender in Black apocalyptic fiction. Using intersectionality as a theoretical framework, I address this gap in current scholarship through a sustained consideration of Black apocalyptic fiction and the intersections of race and gender therein. This dissertation begins to answer the question of how race and gender impact the potential for radical change in the wake of extreme crisis. Literary representations of apocalypse provide one form of what Nnedi Okorafor calls “the distancing and associating effect” of science fiction. They depict familiar spaces made strange through the lens of total destruction. Apocalypse narratives have a long history and have served many functions over time, including articulation of societal anxieties, social critique, and utopian striving. Black apocalyptic fiction extends this (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Martin Ponce (Advisor); Lynn Itagaki (Committee Member); Brian McHale (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies; African Americans; African Literature; American Literature; Black History; Black Studies; Ethnic Studies; Gender; Literature; Minority and Ethnic Groups; Modern Literature