Let's get old school!And no, I don't mean Richard-Dawson-on-a-game-show "old school" (Richard Dawson, by the way, is one of the most amazing men to ever live, and I won't listen to anyone who says otherwise); I'm taking about looking back to the beginning of the semester when the class that inspired this blog and final project began! Okay, so - believe it or not - there were assignments that came before the posts you have all thoroughly enjoyed here (shocking, I know). When my professor told us to upload those documents, I started wondering: should I just upload the Microsoft Word documents I originally created, OR should I post the reading responses I got back from my professor with feedback? So many times my students see the work of others and think, I could never write like that, but that's only because they don't see the many stages writing goes through. A books of poetry, novel, scholarly article, etc. all go through many cycles of write, edit, re-write, re-edit, proofread (and then repeat those all in random orders for an infinite numbers of time) before a work becomes "finished." Even the word "finished" is a difficult term (is anything ever really finished (or do we just eventually decide that whatever IT is, is good enough and give up). I know, I'm getting a little weird here, but when I really took some time to think about this, I decided to scan my responses with feedback and upload them here for those who want a peek into what writing is like for many people. These documents have errors, suggestions, scribbles, etc. I am not ashamed. I'm actually quite proud, and I'm happy that whomever visits this will get to see my messy compositions in all their subpar glory. Are they good? Sure. But they could definitely be better. I hope you all see that and enjoy. I wanted to put this all at the top of my blog, because I do feel like this is an important introduction to a very difficult process I experienced this semester (I had only used Weebly once before, never used Adobe Muse, and had definitely never read any of the material I discuss in my responses both in the attachment here as well as in my other blog responses). I'm happy to share this experience, and I hope there's something here for people to learn, experience, and interact with during their visit. Thank you all. ![]()
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My website, in all its gloryThe time has come the walrus said to talk of many things... BUT MOSTLY MY WEBSITE BECAUSE I FINISHED IT! (Sorry C.S. Lewis, I totally downgraded your work, but this is a very exciting moment for me.) Okay, but seriously. When I woke up this morning, I had no idea how Adobe Muse worked. I had never even opened the program before. However, as of about five minutes ago, I designed my very first website! To all you pros out there, this site may not be the cream of the crop, but to me - it is my crown jewel. So seriously, so visit. http://digitizingenglishstudies.businesscatalyst.com/ If you have questions, please feel free to post them here. Thank you all so much for hanging in there and supporting me. ![]() Cheers to feeling like Kevin Bacon. (I took a Valentine's Day celebrity match quiz hosted by my high school my senior year and Kevin was my number one match, so I thought this was only appropriate.) Seriously though... books... Robert Darnton is someone I wish I could meet. Seriously, he is the man. From his astute words about news and journalism to his superb commentary (I'm usually not this generous with cliche adjectives, so this is really saying something) on publishing for tenure in collegiate communities, Darnton highlights a considerable amount of issues (both potentially good and bad) in our societies. If I'm being honest, print text was never really something I thought about until I had to resort to downloading digital copies of the textbooks I couldn't afford (the G.I. Bill does not pay as well as many may think). If I didn't know it before, I definitely prefer reading texts in print form, especially if the text is lengthy. Like Darnton, I genuinely love books. There's something more permanent about books (although, I suppose that's debatable too) that I like. I like being able to hold a book, flip through the pages, annotate with my pen, and dog-ear (cue the collective gasp, I know) my favorite pages. Digitization, at least to me, has it's place. There are many texts that are worthy of digitization, and although I may not be a fan, books certainly fall within that category. Digitization should be about increasing educational equality - making more texts available to more people. Sure, some people don't have access to computers, but for those who do, considerable strides could be made to level the educational playing field in respect to what's available and to whom.
However, with every possible positive, there will always be a possible negative. Google is a monopoly who could, one day, use their powers for digital evil. The publishing process for those who complete dissertations could be improved by digitization, but it could also continue to slump into its world of many issues even further (lack of funding for both publishers and libraries, as well as limited shelf space in libraries). What Darnton does here is provide many sides of many issues, and although he does make suggestions about how certain situations could be improved, he provides enough information so that the reader plays his or her own part in selecting the appropriate trajectories for different issues. Is Darnton a book lover? You bet. But does he also identify worthwhile options such as e-booking dissertations in ways that inspire "a new kind of reading" (Darnton 76)...? You better believe it. This text is not only worthwhile and incredibly well-written, but it is also a necessity for anyone currently in or considering entering into the field of English Studies and / or education (I want to enthusiastically advocate for everyone to read this, but I understand that may be a little over the top). Reimagining what once was into what will beSo... after talking through my paper with my classmates, I have arrived at what I think is a good idea for my senior project. I intend to use this piece, in its new, digitized form, as one of my submissions for my application to graduate school. Below is a tentative list of my plans: 1. Because I had a double major in English and secondary education, I wanted to make sure that I also include some pieces to support my passion for education. My paper discusses the allure of metaphor, but for those who aren't as familiar with what a metaphor is and how metaphors are used, developing an appreciation for my paper's focus is going to be difficult. I plan to complement my paper by providing several videos that discuss metaphors, with each video sorted into a specific group based on its target audience (primarily by age / ability level). Below are some of the videos I would like to use. I plan to critique these videos based on the target audience, and give each one a "star rating" based on how well each video would prepare someone to approach my paper. 2. Another addition I would like to make to my piece is this: Art. While writing is certainly an art, in many ways, I would like to add drawings, photos, paintings, etc. - basically whatever I can find to add a more visual element to my piece. I will of course credit any and all creators I decide to use and will contact them if necessary to ensure I can use their pieces. While words can certainly do the trick, learning is so much more than just encountering words on a page. We consume considerable beauty every day, and withholding a more visual element from this assignment would certainly be an injustice. Some pieces I have investigated for both Wallace Stevens and Nathaniel Hawthorne are as follows: The first three pieces are for Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the last three are for Wallace Stevens. While I do think the Hawthorne selections are relatively self-explanatory, I will provide a brief explanation for Stevens' pieces. * The tree refers to the first two lines of the poem: “You like it under the trees in autumn, / Because everything is half dead” (ll. 1-2) * The dirty hands refers to the hard work many humans do when working with "hammers" and "steel against intimation" (l. 19) and searching for meaning and guidance in their lives. * This last image is a picture of the Library of Babel - and references a similar moment in the poem to number two. In the library, men search for meaning and vindication. In the same way Stevens talks about people searching for meaning and purpose in seemingly rudimentary lives, so does Borges. Do either of their subjects ever find it? A huge part of my paper is Reader Response Theory. I will include a link to a definition and some other valuable digital avenues for my readers to pursue: I will of course post links to both texts. Wallace Stevens: Nathaniel Hawthorne: Please vote in the above survey! I'm excited to hear feedback and am of course willing to adjust my flight plan (and please see my previous project post if you would like to read my paper). Also, just as an FYI, my faculty advisors for this project will be: Dr. Wielgos (the professor teaching this course) and Professor Hayley Miller from the Communications Department (who will help with the actual digitization element of this piece). Thank you all so much!
the library of babel & other such things The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges plays with the difference between the act of writing / composing and the meaning that’s derived from the language when read. As I’ve learned and continue to learn about the use of computers and different technologies in my Digitizing English Studies course, I realize more and more how often I take writing for granted. I don’t think I ever really considered pen and paper a medium, because pen and paper are things I’ve had available to me my entire life. Last week I was going through some boxes with my mom and I was able to read a notebook I had with my friend Katie that we used to write letters back and forth to each other in Spanish (I think it was my junior year), and I was able to read teacher feedback on my report cards. I realized that I was appreciating authors such as Dalbello for identifying the benefits of web archiving and computer-based research, I was negating opportunities to appreciate a certain type of archiving that I had been participating in my whole life (mostly thanks to my mother for keeping all of my notebooks and sketchbooks from my childhood). This is one of the many things that The Library of Babel really gets right. We as human beings take legible, comprehensible language for granted. We write and read pages of information every day with little to no reflection on the medium or our ability to understand it. What if we lived in a world like the one Borges describes? A world where almost everything that’s written is incomprehensible and, although strangely valued by the world’s inhabitants, actually has little to no value (or so many think). Writing exists in Borges’ world just for the sake of existing – no one is able to interpret it or analyze it (and when they tried, it resulted in violence, enhanced greed, and tragedy). Borges uses language to communicate with us, and his characters clearly use it with one another, but for some reason, the written language is incomprehensible. Could it be because we have 26 symbols and are therefore outsiders to the universe of the library? Is that why the man in the text can’t read it as well? Did men go from speaking the same language to speaking many languages because of their desire to acknowledge their own accomplishments instead of glorifying God, and that’s why people can’t understand the language written in the books of the library?
I'm not going to lie... when my professor told me I had to take a previously "completed" work and make it new, I was not excited (especially because I knew what work it had to be). I originally wrote this piece in 2015, with the allure of metaphor as my main focus. Wallace Stevens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and I got pretty close during the composition of this paper, and it was exhausting. Analyzing the work of these two accomplished writers was and still is not easy. So, for the first part of this assignment for my Senior Seminar course, I will simply upload the paper in its original form (I attached it as a downloadable file, so it doesn't take up as much blog space). The ultimate goal of this assignment is to reimagine the initial assignment into a much larger, multimodal assignment (and I have no idea where I'm going with this). As this current semester progresses, I will find a way to make it new: more digital and more in line with the huge surge in technological options for creation. If anyone has any suggests, please feel free to share. Thank you all so much. Please pray for me during this stressful time. ![]()
Also... let us remember...
Response to The Promise of Digital Humanities: |
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