TPS on Annotated Biblio:

What was difficult about the annotated bibliography stage? Was it challenging to “decode” the sources and figure out their main arguments efficiently? Were you able to see a “conversation” of sorts around the “primary text” (the novel by Butler/Ghosh/Offill) on the part of a handful of critics? Do you have a sense of what you want to say and how it relates to what “they say”

Questions on Kruger:

1. What was Kruger’s “research question” (or questions) when she started this research, do you imagine? What did she need to know in order to answer it? How would you describe her methodology? Who is she “in conversation” with in this piece?
2. What is Kruger’s central argument in this essay? Where do we find it, and what do you notice about how she guides readers through the structure of the essay?
3. We’ve talked a good bit about how “Englishy” methodologies put the text at the center and offer readings of the “text” rather than the “world.” But of course lit crit has things to say about the world as well (though the prism, so to speak, of the “text”!). How does Kruger use Offil’s novel and Levy’s memoir to point to aspects of “real life”? How does reading Weather help us understand aspects of the real world we inhabit?
4. By the end of the essay, how do you understand Offill’s novel differently, especially in its differences from Butler’s and Ghosh’s work? How does a focus on the temporality of “milling” and “maintenance” allow us to see what’s distinctive about Offill’s novel and how it relates to the norms that have made novels “tick” for almost 3 centuries?