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Thoughts After Class - Week 12


Thanks for going over all the details about the final project, midterm grade, etc. It’s always helpful to me to go back through everything, even if we’ve already discussed it several times.

Peer Review Comments

The Jane Project: This is such a neat project! I would definitely love to interact with the final result! My favorite part “Mapping Janes” page. The idea of there being a standard “Jane” throughout history and how the name “Jane” is used and associated with various things could easily lead to really interesting research and discussion.

Western Fiction Novels of Zane Grey: Greg mentions also incorporating some video clips featuring scenes from Zane Grey movies that show specific locations. I was thinking it might be interesting to perhaps include a specific passage from a Zane Grey novel where he describes a specific location and provide a side-by-side of his written description of a location and an actual image or video of the location. I think it would be interesting to see how effectively a written description of a location can convey the actual visual experience of seeing some of these places.

The Loves of Cass McGuire: I’ve never read this play, but the description of this project makes me want to read it.

Dragons in Literature: Jennifer mentions creating a tree to illustrate the connections between all of the dragons. I’ve seen a couple of presentations where people used the Smartdraw tool to create tree diagrams. I’ve never used this tool before, but it looks like it would be fairly easy to use, and its free. 

My Project Progress

Overall, I feel like my project is coming together nicely. As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, I will be focusing on Steinbeck’s nonfiction work in my dissertation, so that’s what I also chose to focus on for this project. Steinbeck had connections to many notable people and events throughout the twentieth century, and I would like for my project to illustrate those connections to events and people.

Currently, I’m focusing most of my enery on completing the “About” section. This is the portion of the project that I am most overwhelmed by, and I’m worried about effectively “connecting all the pieces” of my project and everything we have covered this semester. It’s coming together, but I feel like there’s still a lot to be done. I’ll probably be spending a good chunk of time on this part of the project over the weekend.

I’m still a little confused about exactly how we’re supposed to present our related DH project and other resources. I think I’ve heard Dr. Carter say that each of these portions of the project should list the particular content and then provide a short annotation or our rhetorical precis. Is this correct? Did I understand the instructions correctly?

Also, I’m terrible with titles. So, the brief discussion about titles from this week’s class meeting really got me thinking, and I really haven’t gotten anywhere as far as an interesting and engaging title goes.

Here’s the link to my project site. As I’m sure is the case with nearly everyone, it’s obviously still a draft; a work in progress. Any comments, suggestions, or feedback are appreciated.

Comments

  1. ShannonApril 17, 2019 at 5:15 PM

    Your presentation of your final project will look a lot like the one you did for the existing DH project you presented to the class. You won't need to present each part. Not going to be time for that. Hopefully you'll find this useful: https://www.zotero.org/groups/2271010/dh-613/items/collectionKey/4TUM5JN6/itemKey/GCVPH5GM

    On the "about" page: you won't need to connect your project to everything we've read/discussed this term, just the bits you find most relevant. The goal is to situate this project as part of the conversation, but as we discussed via the Burkean Parlor metaphor: you'll be huddled up in conversation with only some of the people in the DH parlor, not the entire room. Pull from the stuff that most directly relates. First thing that comes to mind with respect to your project is the Republic of Letters project mapping we discussed during the first day of class. Something like that. I hope that helps.

    As far as the title: Don't spend tons of time and energy on this. Sometimes the perfect title hits. Sometimes it simply doesn't. Some of the Dh projects we explored together had really clever project titles. Many don't. It's just a flourish to consider. It's not the main point.

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