UROP Project

literature, environmental justice, American studies, fiction, genre fiction, science fiction, speculative fiction
Ballard headshot.jpg
Research Mentor: Dr. Rebecca Ballard, she/her
Department, College, Affiliation: English, Arts and Sciences
Contact Email: rebecca.ballard@fsu.edu
Research Assistant Supervisor (if different from mentor):
Research Assistant Supervisor Email:
Faculty Collaborators:
Faculty Collaborators Email:
Looking for Research Assistants: No
Number of Research Assistants: 4
Relevant Majors: English or other humanities field preferred. Students outside of the humanities with interests in social movements and/or environmentalism are also particularly welcome to apply.
Project Location: On FSU Main Campus
Research Assistant Transportation Required:
Remote or In-person: Partially Remote
Approximate Weekly Hours: ~5,
Roundtable Times and Zoom Link: Wednesday September 4, 2-2:30 pm, https://fsu.zoom.us/j/95485843190
Thursday September 5, 11-11:30 am, https://fsu.zoom.us/j/92972551061

Project Description

Students who apply to this project will be working with me as I complete the manuscript for my first book. The book itself studies U.S. fiction in relation to social movements from the 1960s to the present, examining how both fiction writers and political movements had to craft new forms of storytelling to communicate effectively about structural and environmental forms of harm. In particular, the book connects the rhetorical and theatrical work of activists to the way that novelists experiment with speculative genres such as science fiction, apocalypse, magical realism, and the gothic. Each chapter identifies a particular instance or form of indirect or structural environmental harm and comparatively analyzes how activists and two novelists responded to that issue.

Research Tasks: Manuscript preparation, locating and checking references, bibliography

Skills that research assistant(s) may need: Required: familiarity with library databases and resource location, general knowledge of academic citation
Recommended: familiarity with Chicago Manual of Style (at minimum: willingness to learn with supervision and support), proofreading

Mentoring Philosophy

When I work with undergraduate researchers, I am committed to crafting a mutually beneficial relationship: not only should I be receiving valuable support on active research projects, but the students with whom I'm working should be receiving mentorship, supervision, and training in discipline-specific research methods and scholarly areas. Because my scholarship is interdisciplinary in nature, extending across English, American studies, and environmental studies, and because this project in particular is a manuscript with multiple chapters each with a slightly different theme, I am able to match students with the particular "slice" of the project that is most directly connected to their own scholarly interests, and I work to help bridge the research they are doing for me into their own research (past students, for instance, have completed senior theses and honors projects building on research we did together, and past projects have led organically to co-authored publications in major peer-reviewed journals). To achieve these goals, I practice a style of research mentorship that focuses on building confidence as well as skills, maintains clear and consistent lines of communication for questions, reactions, ideas, and feedback as ideas and work progress, and respects and leaves room for students' evolving interests to shape their work with me.

Additional Information


Link to Publications

https://www.rebeccamoballard.com
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