"What is a Protagonist in Cli-Fi?": The Oregon State Guide to Climate-Change Literature

How does climate change alter our understanding of individual protagonists, who are typically expected to resolve a story's conflict on their own? How can you spot these changes in cli-fi? In this short video, MA student Erika Stewart juxtaposes close readings of The Hunger Games series with two freely available cli-fi short stories--Helen Phillips' "The Disaster Store" and Adam Flynn and Andrew Hudson's "Sunshine State"--to answer these questions. The series is designed to help high school and college English students understand how common literary terms and literary devices change in our era of changing climate.

We have designed a free (OER) lesson plan tied to this video for teachers and students who wish to join the conversation. Check out that lesson at the end of the transcript here: https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/w...

Timestamps
0:00 General Definition of Protagonist + Example
0:33 Cli-Fi Individual Protagonist Example
1:53 Cli-Fi Collective Protagonist Example
2:40 Individual vs Collective Protagonist Discussion
3:09 Hunger Games and Collective Protagonists
3:37 Conclusions

The series is sponsored by the School of Writing, Literature, and Film at Oregon State University. For more discussions of literary topics and essay writing tips, please subscribe to the SWLF YouTube Channel or visit https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/ .

In the comments section below, please feel free to suggest other terms that you would like us to cover in this new series. Liking, sharing, and commenting on these videos will help us to build a rich digital learning environment around this pressing problem of the 21st century.