Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Cooley and Sharer - Thursday readings

Dear Seminar Members:

Thank you for an enjoyable first day. Between now and Thursday's class, you will be receiving an invitation to our course weblog, via e-mail. Simply follow the link in the e-mail invitation to get signed on to our blog. Feel free to let me know if you have trouble signing on.

For Thursday, we are reading excerpts from Cooley's novel The Archivist and a brief article by Wendy Sharer on family archives. When we meet, we'll bring them into conversation on the concept of "archive" -- what are the various ways we define, understand, and value this concept; how does each of our readings present the "archive" or the archivist? As a reminder, Cooley's novel moves back and forth in time -- between 1990 and 1965. Of course, you may feel some gaps in the plot line that we can talk through when we meet.

Have a good week until then,
-Professor Graban

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Welcome to the Course!

Welcome to English L470 and Gender Studies G402 for the Fall 2010 semester! This dedicated blog space will host announcements, updates to our course calendar, gateways for assignments, and a forum for conversation as we embark on our research. Feel free to browse the links at right to preview (or review) any of our course documents.

-Professor Graban

Course Resources

If you are off campus and cannot access any of the following databases or repositories, log in first through IU Libraries.

LOCAL ARCHIVES AND REPOSITORIES
Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection
Herald-Times Online
IU Archives and Office of Records Management
IU Archives Finding Aids sites
Lilly Library
Monroe County Historical Society


NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND REPOSITORIES
Archive Grid
National Archives and Records Administration
National Archives on Women
Smithsonian Library and Archival Exhibitions on the Web


UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES AND REPOSITORIES
Archives for Research on Women and Gender (UT San Antonio)
Emory Women Writers Resources Project
Midwest Women’s Historical Collection (UIC)
Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture (Duke)
Schlesinger Library on History of Women in America (Radcliffe)
University of Michigan’s “Women’s Education Evolves 1790-1890”
Women and Leadership Archives (Loyola)


PRIMARY TEXTS ONLINE
Black Women Writers
Digital Schomburg African-American Women Writers
The Internet Archive (e-books and texts)
Library of Congress “American Women” Project
Library of Congress “American Memory” Project
Library of Congress “National Woman Suffrage” Collection

Making of America (
Cornell and Michigan)
19th-century Schoolbooks Project (Nietz Collection at Pittsburgh)
North American Women’s Letters and Diaries
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories

“Scribbling Women” Public Media Foundation

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000

Women Writers (U Virginia Electronic Text Center)

Women Writers Project (Brown U)


GENERAL WRITING AND RESEARCH

Archival Terms Glossary (SAA)

Archives and Archival Memory (Maureen Flynn-Burhoe)

Citing Electronic Sources from Library of Congress

Evaluating Information (IUB)
JSTOR journal archive

MLA Style Tips from Diana Hacker
MLA Page Formatting (Hacker Handbooks)
Online Writing Lab (OWL at Purdue)

Oxford English Dictionary Online (OED)
Project Muse journals online

Worldcat Libraries Database

Writing Guides at CSU (Disciplinary)


Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Research Journal Prompts

Prompt #5 (for 11/23)
For your last research journal [rejoicing, exuberance, applause!], I'd like you to synthesize your research findings to this point. By "synthesize," I don't mean putting together summaries of individual articles, but rather discussing -- as coherently as you can -- a tentative "answer" to your research question, and drawing heavily on your sources to explain that answer. Think of this as a mini-thesis with an explanation, based on your research so far. Since I am unfamiliar with most of your sources, I'll need you to accommodate me as much as possible by unpacking terms and concepts from what you read. Educate me as much as you can so that I know why and what you are drawing from each text.
It will probably take you several pages to do this (3-4, with separated Works cited), but I think it will give you some momentum before the Query-in-Progress paper. And, I'd like to challenge you -- just a bit -- by asking you to draw on at least 2 sources from the research bibliography I distributed, at least 2 chapters from Steedman's Dust, at least 2 sources from the coursepack, and any other sources you have located via JSTOR or Project Muse, as well as the key primary texts you'll be discussing from the Hennel Hendricks Collection.


Prompt #4 (for 11/9)
In 2-3 pages, discuss and justify whether you think women in archival spaces are best represented by one of the following terms: location (Jarratt); assemblage (OED, SAA Glossary, handout); or re/map (Bordelon). As part of your justification, discuss which aspects of each term make them the optimal choice. While your response will likely focus on the appropriateness of one term, you may also wish to discuss the inappropriateness of another, or to do some comparison of terms in your justification. Feel free to use either the Hendricks collection or one of the digital collections from Problem-Solving Report #2 to aid your response. Please draw heavily on all texts that you use.


Prompt #3 (for 10/7)
After completing both accounts of the Martha Ballard Case Study, in 2-3 pages discuss what kind of narrative or history each account allows you to construct. What are some of the reasons for that construction? Consider how the concepts of “absence,” “remembering,” or “representation” (from Steedman and Yakel) can help you discuss what you observe. What other questions did this activity raise for you?


Prompt #2 (for 9/28)

In 2-3 pages, compose a response to one of the following questions. Draw on Blouin, Steedman, Heilbrun, and/or Jarratt to help you make your response:

  • What can or should be the relationship between archives and their subjects, and between subjects and their histories?
  • How could we justify archiving as a distinctly "feminist" project, and what are some reasons why we might want to do so? Not do so?
  • How could we justify archiving as mediation, interaction, or intervention (choose only one), and what are some reasons why we might want to do so? Not do so?

Prompt #1 (for 9/7)

Identify a collection held by you or your family and write a brief finding aid for it, in which you describe its origins, scope, arrangement, or organization, purpose, and contents. In a couple of pages, discuss the humanities (or other) research potential for such a collection. What principles from our readings (Cooley and Sharer) influenced how you would ultimately describe, arrange, or justify this collection?

Archival Problem-Solving Exercises

Problem-Solving Exercise #2
Digital Repositories and Archives

For this Problem-Solving Exercise, your group will consider all of the implications – archival, organizational, historical, social, and critical – of representing women in digital spaces. Locate and examine one collection from each of the repositories listed below (for a total of 6 collections), paying attention to scope, aim, arrangement, navigation, and anything else noteworthy:

Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture

Library of Congress “American Women” project

University of Michigan’s “Women’s Education Evolves 1790-1890”

North American Women’s Letters and Diaries

UVA “Salem Witch Trials”

Pennsylvania State University Eberly Archives

Consider the following:

  • Who seems to be the audience for the collections you have examined?
  • What have been the criteria for selecting and preserving them?
  • What principles seem to inform the arrangement, description and accessibility of materials in these collections?
  • What are the factors that you think have guided the re/construction of these collections, and how might those factors be prioritized?
  • How can the locations (or historical placements) of women in these archives be construed as both limitation and agency?

Now consider the decisions you and your group have made about how best to process the Cecilia Hennel Hendricks collection, and compare them with the factors and the principles you have noted above. What possibilities and constraints can you notice in all of these collections (including yours)? In other words, what should archivists keep in mind when deciding how best to represent the social, rhetorical, and/or literary activities of women in digital spaces versus in print spaces?


Problem-Solving Exercise #1 (Part Two)
Beyond the IU Archives

Next Step - Option 1: Ever since you learned that Hatt was an early Fulbright Scholar for South Africa, you have decided to write your final paper for the class on female Fulbright scholars. Where would you go to unearth information about other female scholars, their countries of service, and their influence on the profession?

Next Step - Option 2: Because of your research, you have become interested in the pioneering status of Richard Dorson, known as the “father of American folklore” and Warren E. Roberts, the first person to earn a Ph.D. in Folklore in the United States. You are hoping to write an essay on either of these pioneers for a brand new undergraduate research journal published by the Mortar Board Senior Honor Society. Where would you go to find other information on these scholars, particularly links between their work and local or national genealogical societies?

Next Step - Option 3: Your sociology professor was so impressed with your program that she suggested you take on an independent study and write a paper about campus civil rights protests, broadly construed. She thinks it could work as your graduate school admissions essay. Where else can you go to find good information about how IU’s civil rights activities fit in with other universities’ activities in the nation?

Next Step - Option 4: You have decided to look further back chronologically, especially since some of your findings on Women’s Clubs have raised your awareness of trans-Atlantic precursors to what have become known as distinctly American literacy practices. One of your classmates mentioned a woman by the name of Jane Johnson as having some presence in one of the campus collections. What can you find out about Johnson, both on campus and off? Where could you go for the most comprehensive information on how Johnson’s collection impacted domestic literacy practices in the new world?

Next Step - Extra Credit Option: Your Herald Times article gained so much positive attention that your public history professor has suggested you write an honors project focused on stories of early transit disasters in the middle west region of the United States. Where else might you go for anecdotes, information and images?


Problem-Solving Exercise #1 (Part One)
In the IU Archives

Option 1: You have been assigned a report on IU alumna Mary Geraldine Hatt for your Gender, Culture, and Society class, and you need to know what year she graduated from IU, what her degree is in, and her address while on campus. How would you locate this information, and what are the answers? What else can you find out about her?

Option 2: As a summer intern in the department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, you are helping to develop an exhibit on Folklore Studies. You know that the IU Archives has a somewhat strong, but mostly unprocessed collection. You want to include some artifacts in your exhibit, but have had little luck so far. How would you locate this information? What is available?

Option 3: For the next Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration, you are creating a program on civil rights protests for the Office of Student Organizations and Leadership Development, and you want to include some information about the range and type of activities that have occurred on IU’s campus and in Bloomington to commemorate these protests. What types of resources would be useful for your program and how would you locate them?

Option 4: In your Women and Literature class, you recall reading an article about the importance of women’s clubs, parlor groups, and literary circles on the formation of women’s discourse in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Someone told you that “The Dames Club” met on IU’s Bloomington Campus and you are interested in learning more about what they did. How would you find out about the Club’s history, and what kinds of records can you access and would you use to learn more about their discourse practices?

Extra Credit Option: Your stellar work on the Indiana Daily Student has landed you a paid internship at the Herald Times for the summer writing a town-and-gown history column. You’re starting with an article for a local newspaper on the historic Purdue train wreck of 1903 (which your history professor mentioned in passing one time). The Purdue football team was traveling to Indianapolis to play the annual IU-Purdue game, and you would like to know if the IU Archives has any information on it. Where would you look up this type of information? Briefly describe what’s available.


Assignments

Research Journal

On the first day of class, I will ask you to create a research journal as a record for your work. A research journal is not a diary or informal notebook it is a place where you systematically record, analyze, reflect on, and discuss how you are synthesizing the goals of the class. It should be formal and clear, and it may be some of the most important writing you do during the semester. If done well, your journal entries can provide you with concrete ideas (and even polished prose) for your archival research project. They will also help me to know how you are navigating the project and the course. Your research journal should have three sections:

1. a “log” section in which you keep a record of what you do, read, and discuss inside and outside of class. Where relevant, be sure to log the titles of outside sources, page numbers, archival call numbers, etc. Think of your log as a focused method for taking important notes. This section may be handwritten, but each entry should be dated.

2. an “assignments” section for the actual prompts that I will give you in class throughout the semester. This section should be typed and formatted in MLA style.

3. an “analysis” section in which you comment on the work you have done up to that point, reflect on your assignment, make connections between your research/archiving activities and class discussion, ask questions, and/or discuss future goals for the next journal. This section should be typed and formatted in MLA style.

All sections should be legible and show careful thought and consideration. Although I will ask you to bring this journal to class each day, I will collect and grade your research journal in five batches. In each batch, I will look for evidence that you have taken risks with the course material, demonstrated some understanding of the process of archiving, and/or genuinely engaged with the concepts of the course. The voice in which you write should be your own, although you will likely “speak through” some of the theorists and writers we read, using in-text citations where needed. Consider how titles, headers, and subheaders can help you to shape your responses creatively and clearly.

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Archival Problem Solving Reports

Twice during the semester you will work in a small group on problem-solving exercises that are intended to help you identify, use, and apply various archival tools – print and electronic. You will collaboratively compose a written report based on each small-group problem-solving exercise. In these reports, your group should demonstrate how you are building a critical, even theoretical, understanding of what you are doing. Each report should contain the following sections and be formatted in MLA style:

1. a brief summary of how you solved the exercise, as well as the successes and challenges you faced as a group. For example, did you discover several routes of investigation, and were some more productive or efficient than others? How did you or your group handle dead ends? How might the research process have been made easier for you as researchers?

2. a response to the actual problem-solving exercise assigned to your group;

3. a focused analysis in which you draw connections between the problem-solving exercise, the readings we have done to date, and some of the discussions we have had throughout the semester. For example, how have the archives you consulted been constructed – are they clearly marked by their subjects or their “archons”? Are there gaps in the archives you consulted that should be filled or can be filled? What other concepts from our readings are clearer – or more complicated – as a result of this problem-solving exercise? What other research questions were generated for your group as you worked?

All sections should show careful thought and consideration and reflect a true collaborative effort. In each report, I will look for evidence that you have taken ownership of the activity, reflected on the process, and/or genuinely engaged with the theories and concepts of the course. I will expect you to attend to language and organization, to use sources accurately and responsibly, and to cite the sources you use. As with your Research Journal, consider how titles, headers, and subheaders can help you to shape your responses creatively and clearly.

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Archival Research Project

Over the semester, you will work in small groups on different aspects of processing the Hendricks collection. This collection will serve as the basis for your archival research project. Assignment details with evaluation criteria will follow, but here are the essential components:

Project Proposal: On October 28, you will turn in a project proposal (1-2 pages) that outlines the archival project your group has begun for the IU Archives and proposes a complementary individual research project inspired by critical questions of the course, and framed by one or more of our theoretical readings in the course. This proposal should be typed and formatted in MLA style, including a brief list of Works Cited. I will ask you to sign up for a one-on-one conference with me to discuss your interests and goals for the project.

Query in Progress: On December 2, I’ll look for a brief (3-4 pages) analysis of your archival project in which you describe its status (what work remains to be done by you this semester or by an archivist in the future), analyze its potential usefulness for the Hendricks collection, and link your activities to the theories and methods of the class. I will also ask you to discuss, describe, or explain your individual research query as it currently stands, including what you have found out about it and what your sources are telling you so far. This query-in-progress should be typed and formatted in MLA style, with a list of Works Cited.

Archival Component: The archival component will consist of what you do in small groups to process the Hendricks collection, and it will culminate in an individual presentation to be given during the last week of class in which you demonstrate what you consider to be significant connections between the processing work your group has done and your own individual research query. More information on the nature and format of these presentations will follow. Philip Bantin, representing the IU Archives, will be asked to help evaluate the usefulness and effectiveness of this archival component.

Research Component: The research component will culminate in a well-investigated, senior-level paper generated from an original question based on your work with primary texts (~15 pages), but you might also find ways to integrate visual artifacts if you decide that they are a necessary part of your investigation, or if their analysis will enhance your project. Your options for this project are vast, and your project may involve one or more disciplinary methodologies, e.g., a close reading, a rhetorical analysis, a theoretical discussion, an historical examination, etc. The project as a whole should help you demonstrate not only your commitment to the IU Archives and the Hendricks collection, but also your critical understanding of the nature of archival practice, its use in humanities research, and where it converges with feminist or other theories.