UHP Discover: Octavia E. Butler and Farming as Resistance

UHP Discover allows the students who do not want to do research in the non-STEM disciplines. It helped me grow as a person in my research component of my college career as well as building relationships with my mentor and other faculty within the department. I was able to grow from learning about Octavia E Butler. My research was called Octavia E. Butler and Farming as Resistance. Octavia E Butler was a Sci-Fiction (Afro-futurism) writer, and never stopped her writing. During my UHP Discover summer research we had looked at the role Octavia E Butler played within the Black Lives movement, her using agriculture as a means of resistance, her life, her books, and putting her in conversation with the modern happenings. She had done much within history whether that be only using people of color in books, looking at their triumphs and never changing her general theme, etc. She was an activist throughout her whole life. When looking at Butler, she knew everyone, and everyone knew her. Octavia E Butler was impactful throughout her lifetime. She predicted multiple modern day happenings as well.

In terms of what I took from this experience was much. I educated myself about a vital person in history who did much during her life. I also learned how to do transcription work, which applies heavily because at some point within my life, I want to get a Masters/PHD in Archaeology or Art Management. I got to learn an important skill that a curator would do. In addition I improved my annotation skills. For my job as the assistant researcher to Dr. Jones, I had to annotate many documents about Octavia E Butler. And I had to do it in a manner that was concise and comprehensible. Lastly, I improved on my communication skills because we had to create an end of project to the others in the program. Overall, I would do this program over again and try another research project again. It was vital to my success as Political Science major with a history minor because of the historical aspect as well as how she portrayed her books, and how similar they are to modern day.

Some of the transcribing work I did.