Welcome back – from Reading Week and to blogging! I have some suggestions below to get you started (along with the standard set of prompts I created last semester). As you plan and write your post, remember that point of our research blog to practice our skills in developing and sharing results of our scholarly research, and in particular the methods of qualitative literary analysis. So in your 500-700 words, I look for the post to:
- Develop a research question or questions that address a high-level idea or issue;
- Explore the research question through analysis of a specific research site (a case-study),
- Discuss, as part of that analysis, specific examples, quotations, and other low-level details that you show / explain as illustrating the high-level ideas.
- Provide links to examples AND provide reporting expressions and citations.
- Connect, as always, in some explicit way, to the broad topic of “life narratives” and the issues and ideas we engage in ASTU
What could you write about?
- Return to our discussions of Facebook / social media, Humans of New York, PostSecret, and StoryCorps.
- Work with the reading from Carter, and/or the archives we are discussing on Tuesday (PARI, Mass Observation, and High Muck-a-Muck)
- Look ahead to the Rare Books’ archival collections we’ll start working with on Thursday: the Bamford family papers, Japanese Canadian research collection, Chung collection, Jack Shadbolt fonds, the Kosaburo Shimizu fonds, the Olive Allen Biller collection, the Langmann family papers, Gilean Douglas
- Other archives or archival-related materials: for example, you might be interested in this article, about the digitized archives of 19th coroner’s reports from the American south, which explores how they contain “hundreds” life narratives the coroner collected about his subjects. (I’m wondering: why did the coroner decide this was important work to do, at all?).
- And of course anything else that fits the criteria of being related (or relatable) to ASTU
While you’re here, another post I recommend: Zoe Gray, who took my ASTU class last year, blogged about how archives have used Tumblr to increase access, something that might be of interest to you as you think about your own archival projects. Check out her post for the academic study she cites as well as the many links she includes to archival Tumblers.
Posts are due Mon noon & comments (on THIS post) Tues by 9:30. For full credit on the comments you must comment on 3 separate blog due dates, so if you missed the January post you should comment on each of the next 3.
The idea of how conditions under which one’s life is written about influences the portrayal of their life stories is discussed in both Elena’s and Maya’s blog. Elena looks at how the posts of Humans of New York change depending on the location from which Brandon Stanton is writing from. She explores some similarities including topics (love, loss, dreams), in addition to the differences such as the length of the posts. Through looking at the differences of posts between cultures she highlighted the way in which some lives are able to be portrayed through the work of a coaxer; therefore, what is deemed important is not the work of the individual. This idea connects with Maya’s blog which explored what was information was included in the CSI: Dixie Homicide files. She notes that the information which was considered important for this bureaucracy was class ranking and cause of death. This gives us insight into what is important in the context of this society. From this finding she raised many interesting questions about what is important in one’s life. One question which stood out to me was does of what is important in a society change over time? I found both of these blogs made me think about what factors are a part of a person sharing their story.
I liked reading about Gabi’s and Gurveer’s posts. I found it really interesting how they connected Archival work to two of the texts we’ve been reading in class (Persepolis and Missing Sarah). They both pointed out how the autobiographies could be archival works in different ways. I hadn’t connected the texts we read to archival work yet, so I was enlightened by their connections. I also enjoyed reading about Gurveer’s idea of time capsules and how they could be archival. Then how she connected time capsules to archeological sites, then further connected this to the Namesake of Persepolis. I thought it was really clever!
Using Anna and Selena’s ideas on how archives are important for remembering the less idealistic historical moments, this idea made me consider Western (or North American, which may be more accurate in this case) societal norms in terms of what a “normal” life is. Anna’s blog discusses eugenics, which reminds me that until more recent years, wrongdoings against the Indigenous population in Canada had been unacknowledged for far too long; and for what reasons? Was this gruesome aspect of Canadian history unacknowledged to maintain the “diverse” and “welcoming” reputation of modern Canada?
Paige’s blog on how Facebook suggests life events that are directed towards middle-class citizens of the West may suggest that there are Utopian ideals in our society, as Selena points out. The questions that are raised to me: in what ways does social media contribute to this pressure to maintain the impression that our lives are filled only with positive elements? As archives are kept as a way to document the reality of what events occurred, in what ways can social media act as an archive in this way?
Anna’s blog post was one of the many I enjoyed reading. She focused on how archives, specifically online archives, are striving to spread awareness of Canada’s dark past of eugenics. I found her blog very relevant to today, as she touched on the efficiency and accessibility of online archives as well as our generation’s ‘oblivion’ to eugenics. Anna emphasised why archives are of great significance in our lives – something that has made me excited to start doing research for my archive project.
I enjoyed reading Maya and Kwezi’s blogs, which both addressed the importance of power dynamics in the impact of life writing. Maya brought up the question to whether a life narrative’s success reflects what the audience thinks as “justifiable”. She talked about how the dominant audience’s perception of a narrative can give a narrative more power than another. Narratives that are widely circulated and whose values are agreed upon are often seen as a story that tells the “truth”. This brings me to think about what Kwezi talked about in her blog. She mentions that “truth is highly flexible and dependent on one’s perspective” and that one case of an individual’s life narrative was not taken into account because of the power dynamics of the audience’s/public’s expectations and beliefs. After thinking about these two blogs together, I am wondering whose values are dictating what we see from popular archives and life narratives today.
In this set of blog posts, most of us (myself included) did some work with archives and the article by Carter, while a few of us worked with social networks. Namely, I found Natasha, Nicole, and Paige’s blog posts on social media’s hegemonic potential through representation and filter bubbles particularly interesting.
In Paige’s blog post, she argues that Facebook creates a model of an ideal self that reflects a particular class or background. Facebook does so by narrowing and offering specific options for profile details, implicitly suggesting that a user should conform to these standards. Paige’s discussion reminds me of sociologist Erving Goffman’s theories on self-representation, and in this manner Facebook changes how people see themselves and how they think others see themselves.
In Nicole’s blog post, although she examines a different site – beauty videos on Youtube -, representation is a similar topic of interest. I found her topic exceptionally interesting in that one does not immediately think of a website that relies so much on user-generated content to have an immediate bias in representation. On second thought, however, we see that popular Youtube channels and Youtubers often belong to a very similar background and class as well – the white, young, middle-class American is a very common demographic of popular Youtubers. Indeed, many Youtubers even live in close proximity to one another in Los Angeles, near the Youtube headquarters.
I found Kwezi’s blog on the potential of diaries to act as archives interesting because she examined the criteria that society utilises to determine legitimate archives from illegitimate archives. The questions of power in relation to archives link to what we have discussed in class in regards to autobiography as well. We have discussed how Western publishing companies tend to frame narratives in a specific way to cater to a specific audience. It seems that archives also face the challenge of misrepresentation as dominant frames (like the “myth about the early demise of gifted artists” Kwezi mentions) filter what is deemed an archive. I also liked the ideas that Maddie brought up in her blog post. It was interesting learning that Laferriere argues that the fiction components of his writing are as valid as the truth because they encompass his dreams and feelings: both important aspects of who he is. I never considered the potential of fiction in autobiography, and although Maddie raises the point that the validity of a text may be questioned if fictional components are added to it, I appreciate the recognition that these writers give to the complexity of emotion.
I really enjoyed reading Elena’s blog as it was really interesting to me. I also wrote about Humans of New York for my blog but I did not consider if Stanton would write differently when talking to people coming from different countries. However, he would still write about similar themes for his posts.
I also found Natasha’s blog to be interesting. I also agreed when Natasha mentioned how her dad would read actual news broadcasts such as BBC or the Guardian while we younger people would go to social media to get our news. Similarly, my parents do the same thing. They would even grab newspaper when boarding a flight. Young adults would usually get their news updates from social media.
The following comment is also posted on the indicated persons blog, where we can all possibly have a discussion:
Eva
After reading your blog post I better understand the reading by Rodney Carter but also how it applies to more than just archives. Also hearing this story of a man being acquitted of murder for a reason such as, just doing “what most men would have done in such a case,” reminds me of another story. It reminds me of the Canterbury Tales, one in particular. Where a man sexual abuses a woman and instead of being sent to prison he instead is given a chance to escape imprisonment if he can answer the question, what is it that all women desire, and be granted a wish of his choosing.
In Elena’s blog, she raises an interesting point: that the posts on HONY are chosen by Brandon Stanton. Indicating that Stanton pick the people and the quotes that are portrayed on his website and Facebook page. Similar to what Carter argues in his article about archives, and how archivists can help choose to communicate the information that is presented. That often this “bias” is not imposed on the subjects of the archive but can also be chosen. Therefore, in Elena’s blog, about HONY being presented in similar ways was an interesting point. Which raises the question: do the people on HONY choose what they want to say or is it said for them?
One of the many blog posts I enjoyed reading was Karyns. I liked how she used examples of elderly couples from Humans of New York while talking about prioritizing what is important in life. They worked really well together and this blog post made me stop and think about what is important to me in my life.
I also found Natasha’s blog post on social media as the main source for people to get their news very interesting. She talked about how snapchat has a discover page where there are places to read news which many people use and I connected with that because I read those almost everyday.
I read Maddie and Nicole’s blog–and found them very interesting. Maddie’s blog hits on the idea of authenticity and the use of fiction, which can be a difficult topic to discuss since it is impossible to judge what exactly the readers are thinking. To add, it seems that war movies that are able to capture a visual representation for viewers can begin discussions about wars and certain traumatic experiences (e.g. sexual abuse, human trafficking, World War II). Then, to discuss Maddie’s blog–it seems that throughout media outlets there are different, and constant, examples of people’s standards of beauty. These standards of beauty seem to be connected with what celebrities are idolized at that particular time. It would be intriguing to look at users who have the most followers to see whether there are people commenting on looks and beauty, as a form of measuring how important beauty is on social media.
I found that Eva and Kwezi both brought up an interesting issue pertaining to archives and how power affects the stories that are shared- like what Carter shares in his article. However, both gave examples as to how an archive or certain piece of information had been changed because new sources were acknowledged or looked at with a 21st century lens. I find it is relevant of the two of them to bring up the fact that just because an archive is created, that does not always mean it is totally correct and that there is the potential of changing what was recorded. At first, the idea of modifying an archive- something that seems so final- felt strange to me, but as Carter discusses there can be bias in the way archives are made (226), so it makes sense in trying to fix that. Yet as he states throughout the article, it is the marginalized/’silenced’ who should have the say in whether they want to be included in a record/story.