MOVEMENT III · WEEK 12

What Can Humanistic
Imagination Actually Do?

WEEK 12  ·  CRDM 790  ·  Spring 2027
Reading: Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement (Perusall)
Activity: The 'So What?' Gauntlet
Pre-class: 150-word non-specialist project description
UDL COMPLIANT
CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 12 · Movement III
Session Map

Today's Arc

📖 Primary Reading (Perusall)
  • Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable
  • Perusall annotation: Find the moment where you feel most implicated as a humanist
✏️ Pre-Class Writing
  • 150-word version of your dissertation project for a smart non-specialist
  • Someone curious and educated — but not in your field
  • What can you keep? What falls away? What is actually essential?
  • Bring it. This is the raw material for today's activity.
💬 Discussion
  • Ghosh on the failure of humanistic imagination — and what that failure reveals
  • Discussion anchor: Ghosh on the impersonal and scale (pp. 7–26, 57–72)
  • What is the unthinkable in your research area?
✦ 'So What?' Gauntlet
  • Groups of three: each person presents their 150-word version
  • Partners ask — politely but relentlessly — "So what?"
  • Keep answering until you hit bedrock: what actually matters, to actual people
  • Each person writes one sentence — the real 'so what' — reads it to the room
CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 12 · Pre-Class Writing
What You Brought to Class

The Audience Test

The Prompt — 150 Words

Write a version of your dissertation project for a smart non-specialist — someone curious and educated, but not in your field. A journalist. A sibling with a different degree. A policy researcher who doesn't know your discipline.


What can you keep from your prospectus paragraph? What has to go? What, when the disciplinary scaffolding falls away, remains?

Perusall Annotation

Find the moment in Ghosh where you feel most implicated as a humanist. Not the most interesting passage — the one where you feel he is asking you to answer for something. What is he asking you to answer for?

The Diagnostic

"What falls away when I translate this into plain language is ___. That tells me that my prospectus has been doing ___ instead of ___."

Ghosh's Core Argument

Literary imagination has failed to reckon with climate change — not because writers aren't concerned, but because the conventions of serious fiction make it nearly impossible to represent the scale of forces involved. This is a failure of form, not just content. Ghosh asks: what would it take for the imagination to rise to the scale of the crisis?

Why This Matters for Your Dissertation

Ghosh is not just about climate. He is about what the imagination systematically refuses to engage — the unthinkable that is structurally excluded by the conventions of a form. What is the unthinkable in your field?

CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 12 · Discussion
Click to Reveal · or press Enter

Guiding Questions

1
Ghosh argues that literary imagination has failed to reckon with climate change — and asks why. What does that failure reveal about what fiction and scholarship can and cannot do? Is this a failure of will, form, or something structural to the conventions of serious inquiry?
2
Is your dissertation actually for something? Who is it for? Could a non-specialist care about it? Not "is it interesting to scholars?" — that's a contribution claim. Does it matter beyond the discipline? That's a stakes claim.
3
Ghosh moves between literary criticism, political analysis, and memoir. What does that generic instability make possible? What does it cost? What genre conventions govern your field's writing? What do they make it impossible to say?
4
What would it mean for your work to matter outside the discipline — to a community, a public, a policy conversation? What would have to be true of the argument for that to be possible? Not "translate into a press release" — genuinely matter. What problem would your work help someone outside the discipline think about?
5
The 'unthinkable' in Ghosh is what the imagination systematically refuses to engage. What is the unthinkable in your research area — the thing the field circles around but cannot directly address? Your dissertation's contribution might live exactly here.
Click a question to reveal · or press Enter
CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 12 · Activity
Hands-On Activity · Press A to Advance

The 'So What?' Gauntlet

1
Form groups of three
Groups assigned by instructor — not self-selected. Each group will work through all three members' projects. Decide who goes first.
2
Present the 150-word version
The first person presents their non-specialist version from the pre-class prompt. 2 minutes. Partners listen without interrupting.
3
Ask: "So what?"
Both partners ask — politely but relentlessly — "So what?" The presenter must keep answering. Warm, patient, genuinely curious, unwilling to accept the first answer. The breakthrough often comes at the fourth or fifth 'so what.' Do not stop early.
4
Hit bedrock
The goal: find the thing that actually matters, to actual people, in the actual world. Not "why is this interesting to scholars?" — but "why should anyone who isn't a scholar care?" Keep going until you get there.
5
Write and share the real 'so what'
Each person writes one sentence — the real 'so what' that emerged from the gauntlet — and reads it to the full room. These sentences go into the prospectus. They make a remarkable document when collected.
Step 1 of 5
The Distinction That Matters

Contribution = why this matters to scholars. Stakes = why it matters to the world. Both belong in a prospectus — but stakes are almost always underdeveloped.

The Tone of the Gauntlet

The goal is not to embarrass anyone — it is to find the genuine stakes that are buried in disciplinary language. Set this norm explicitly. The 'so what?' is an act of care: it refuses to let you hide behind jargon when there's something real underneath.

Collect the Sentences

Read the full room's 'real so what' sentences aloud as a set. This is the cohort's collective intellectual project — what is it saying?

CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 12 · Synthesis
After the Gauntlet

Discussion & Synthesis

What Ghosh gives you

The question "what can the imagination actually do?" is not pessimistic — it is honest. Ghosh's argument clears the ground. If you know what imagination cannot do by itself, you know where it needs help: from community, from politics, from different forms. Your prospectus is one form. What can it do?

The 'so what' in the prospectus

Your real 'so what' sentence from today belongs in the prospectus — not buried in a conclusion, but near the beginning, where it can do rhetorical work. The reader needs to know early why they should care. The Gauntlet found it. Now use it.

Looking toward Week 13

Next week: guest lecturers from alt-ac paths, and the Three Versions activity. You will write your project description in three registers — for a field hiring committee, a grant panel, and a journalist. Come with your 'so what' sentence. It will travel across all three.

Writing Seed

"The real 'so what' of my dissertation — the thing I found at bedrock — is ___. What surprised me about finding it there was ___."

Before You Leave

Collect your real 'so what' sentence. It belongs in the prospectus — near the front, doing rhetorical work. Keep the 150-word non-specialist version too. You will need it in Week 13.

CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 12 · Further Reading
If This Week Opened Something

Further Reading

📖
Ursula K. Le Guin
"The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction"
A short essay — six pages — that proposes an entirely different theory of narrative form. If Ghosh diagnoses a failure of imagination, Le Guin suggests a different shape for stories. Useful for anyone whose dissertation deals with narrative, form, or alternative ways of knowing.
📖
Anna Tsing
The Mushroom at the End of the World
On precarity, multispecies entanglement, and the possibilities of humanistic inquiry when the frame is not progress but survival. A model of what it looks like to write at the scale Ghosh is calling for — without abandoning close attention to the particular.
📖
Amitav Ghosh
The Great Derangement — Full Text
The assigned sections cover the core argument. The full text extends the analysis into historical imaginaries of empire, capitalism, and Asian modernity. Worth reading in full if this framework is relevant to your project area.
Primary reading on Perusall · Further reading available through NCSU Libraries
CRDM 790 · Spring 2027 Week 12 → Week 13
Before You Leave

Looking Ahead

🎤
Week 13 · Paths Forward: Alt-Ac and Otherwise

Guest lecturers — former CRDM students who have taken non-academic paths. We want candor, not polish. Come with questions about what's genuinely uncertain for you, not what sounds professionally appropriate to ask.

✏️
Pre-Class Writing for Week 13 — Three Versions

Write three 100-word descriptions of the same project: (1) for a hiring committee in your field; (2) for a foundation or nonprofit grant panel; (3) for a journalist covering your research area. Bring all three. The differences between them will tell you something important about where the core of your project actually lives.

📋
Week 14 · Prospectus Workshop — Full Draft Due

Your complete prospectus draft is due the night before Week 14. Start now. Your revised sentence from Week 11 + your real 'so what' from today are the beginning. Use them.

"What actually matters — to actual people — is ___."

CRDM 790 · Movement III · Week 12

What Can Humanistic Imagination Actually Do?

Ghosh on the failure of form — and what your dissertation is actually for.

Reading: Ghosh, The Great Derangement (Perusall) Activity: The ‘So What?’ Gauntlet Pre-class: 150-word non-specialist description

Session Map

📖 Primary Reading

Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. Perusall annotation: find the moment where you feel most implicated as a humanist.

✏️ Pre-Class Writing

150-word version of your dissertation for a smart non-specialist — a journalist, a sibling, a policy researcher outside your field. Bring it. This is the raw material for today’s activity.

💬 Discussion

Ghosh on the failure of humanistic imagination and what that reveals. Anchor: the impersonal and scale (pp. 7–26, 57–72). What is the unthinkable in your research area?

✦ The ‘So What?’ Gauntlet

Groups of three. Each person presents their 150-word version. Partners ask — politely but relentlessly — “So what?” Keep answering until you hit bedrock. Write one sentence. Read it to the room.

Reading Guide

Assigned (Perusall)

Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable — assigned sections. Discussion anchor: pp. 7–26 and 57–72 (scale, the impersonal, failure of imaginative form).

Ghosh’s Core Argument

Literary imagination has failed to reckon with climate change — not because writers aren’t concerned, but because the conventions of serious fiction make it nearly impossible to represent the forces involved. This is a failure of form, not just content. What would it take for the imagination to rise to the scale of the crisis?

Why This Matters for Your Dissertation

Ghosh is not just about climate. He is about what the imagination systematically refuses to engage — the unthinkable that is structurally excluded by the conventions of a form. What is the unthinkable in your field?

Perusall Annotation Prompt

Find the moment in Ghosh where you feel most implicated as a humanist. Not the most interesting passage — the one where you feel he is asking you to answer for something. What is he asking you to answer for?

Further Reading
  • Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” — six pages proposing a different theory of narrative form; counter-move to Ghosh’s diagnosis
  • Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World — a model of writing at Ghosh’s scale without abandoning the particular

Pre-Class Writing

The Audience Test — 150 Words
Write a version of your dissertation project for a smart non-specialist — someone curious and educated, but not in your field. What can you keep from your prospectus paragraph? What has to go? What, when the disciplinary scaffolding falls away, remains?
The diagnostic
“What falls away when I translate this into plain language is ___. That tells me that my prospectus has been doing ___ instead of ___.”

Guiding Questions

1
Ghosh argues that literary imagination has failed to reckon with climate change — and asks why. What does that failure reveal about what fiction and scholarship can and cannot do?
Is this a failure of will, form, or something structural to the conventions of serious inquiry?
2
Is your dissertation actually for something? Who is it for? Could a non-specialist care about it?
Not “is it interesting to scholars?” — that’s a contribution claim. Does it matter beyond the discipline? That’s a stakes claim.
3
Ghosh moves between literary criticism, political analysis, and memoir. What does that generic instability make possible? What does it cost?
What genre conventions govern your field’s writing? What do they make it impossible to say?
4
What would it mean for your work to matter outside the discipline — to a community, a public, a policy conversation? What would have to be true of the argument for that to be possible?
5
The ‘unthinkable’ in Ghosh is what the imagination systematically refuses to engage. What is the unthinkable in your research area — the thing the field circles around but cannot directly address?
Your dissertation’s contribution might live exactly here.

The ‘So What?’ Gauntlet

Activity · Groups of three · Finding the real stakes
1
Form groups of three
Groups assigned by instructor — not self-selected. Decide who goes first.
2
Present the 150-word version
The first person presents their non-specialist version. 2 minutes. Partners listen without interrupting.
3
Ask: “So what?”
Both partners ask — politely but relentlessly — “So what?” The presenter must keep answering. Warm, patient, genuinely curious, unwilling to accept the first answer. The breakthrough often comes at the fourth or fifth ‘so what.’ Do not stop early.
4
Hit bedrock
The goal: find the thing that actually matters, to actual people, in the actual world. Not “why is this interesting to scholars?” — but “why should anyone who isn’t a scholar care?” Keep going until you get there.
5
Write and share the real ‘so what’
Each person writes one sentence — the real ‘so what’ that emerged from the gauntlet — and reads it to the full room. These sentences go into the prospectus.
Contribution vs. Stakes

Contribution = why this matters to scholars. Stakes = why it matters to the world. Both belong in a prospectus — but stakes are almost always underdeveloped. The Gauntlet finds the stakes.

Synthesis

What Ghosh gives you

Ghosh’s argument clears the ground. If you know what imagination cannot do by itself, you know where it needs help: from community, from politics, from different forms. Your prospectus is one form. What can it do?

The ‘so what’ in the prospectus

Your real ‘so what’ sentence from today belongs in the prospectus — not buried in a conclusion, but near the beginning, where it can do rhetorical work. The Gauntlet found it. Now use it.

Writing seed
“The real ‘so what’ of my dissertation — the thing I found at bedrock — is ___. What surprised me about finding it there was ___.”

Looking Ahead

Week 13 — Paths Forward: Alt-Ac and Otherwise
  • Guest lecturers — former CRDM students on non-academic paths
  • Come with questions about what’s genuinely uncertain for you
Pre-class writing for Week 13 — Three Versions
  • Write three 100-word descriptions of the same project: (1) for a hiring committee in your field, (2) for a foundation grant panel, (3) for a journalist. Bring all three.
◆ Week 14 — Full Prospectus Draft Due
Milestone 4 (40%) — Night Before Week 14

Start now. Your revised sentence from Week 11 + your real ‘so what’ from today are the beginning. Use them.

“What actually matters — to actual people — is ___.”