Social Literature

Digital Project 1: Map time and place in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower

Set up Google Drive to create a directory for your work in this class. Work with TimeMapper: Save a TimeMapper Google Sheets template to your Google Drive folder. Develop the Google Sheets file following the template to describe events in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and record their timespans and locations. Visualize the timemap using TimeMapper’s web form.

Include on your TimeMapper at least five contextual events from our world (either from the time when Octavia Butler was writing this novel, or in the past 10 to 20 years), that relate to events in this book. For example, you might look up “desalination plant in CA”, or “world migration” or learn more about fires and how they threaten communities on the west coast. Find some specific events with links and media to pin in time and place on your Time Mapper as related in some way the events in the novel, and in your description make a brief, specific connection between the event you’re linking and a passage/episode in Butler’s novel.

Your Time Mapper for this novel should include at least 20 total events (it may contain more), at least 5 of which are contextual (though you may include more). You will complete it along with a reflective essay based on your reading of the novel and your plotting of events in time and space.

• The TimeMapper will be evaluated for accuracy and detail in descriptions and data, as well as grounding in the novel.
• Write a 4-5-page essay to accompany your TimeMapper project. In your essay, reflect on how specific events in the novel serve to comment on serious issues surrounding communities, whether in crisis or not.
  • Choose an issue to address based on (or perhaps building on) the topics you chose to plot on your timeline as well as topics you find most interesting in the book. Refer to the material in your TimeMapper together with passages from the novel to discuss in your paper, with the understanding that the TimeMapper serves to illustrate what you write in the body of your paper.
  • Use a consistent formatting style, such as MLA or APA or Chicago, for your paper in order to cite sources and refer to pages in the book. Whatever citation style you use should provide for in-text citations that involve citing page numbers in a book in the body of your paper. Include a Works Cited (or Bibliography) page listing your sources that gives precise information. See the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) for standard style guides and examples of how to cite sources, as well as helpful writing advice.
  • Write a heading to your paper on the top left corner of page 1, but not appearing on later pages, giving the following information:
    • Your Name
    • This class: Englit 0066
    • Your TimeMapper Link:
    • Your Google Sheets Link:
    • Date of Submission
  • Upload your paper on the Assignments tab in Courseweb by the deadline, 11:59pm on Tuesday January 29.