Literary Kinds 2012

Okay, my title doesn't necessarily match the post that I'm about to write BUT it cracked me up at the Re:Humanities conference on Friday. But I disgress. This weekend, I attended and presented at two conferences: Re:Humanities at Swarthmore and the Mid Atlantic Writing Center Association (MAWCA) Conference at Shippensburg University. I got a glimpse of the digital tools that are being implemented at various institutions in terms of student projects and at writing centers across the country and this experience has really made me consider the questions that you should ask yourself when planning on using digital technology. In this post, I want to really gear these questions towards using digital tools in academic writing which this class really allows freedom for.

"With freedom comes great responsibility"

I hate to be really cliche but this is starting to crop up as a theme in terms of writing a digital "webevent" (To borrow Anne's language). I've questioned my postition as someone who is media literate and I've started to realize that to become media literate, you need to start asking the right questions otherwise you will end up with some not-so-great papers. (Check out the link and find some of my experiments gone wrong) So here are some of the things that I will be thinking about in terms of writing digital papers:

So, I was sitting in my English class  at Haverford, Topics in 18th Century Literature, and my professor shows us a website, The Brown University Women Writers Project. It's "a long-term research project devoted to early modern women's writing and electronic text encoding." One of the tabs on the site caught my eye- WWO Labs.

My initial reaction was, Oh Sh*t! My English Lab idea isn't as original as I'd hoped! I'm doomed! Then, after I recovered from my melodramatic thought-explosion, we explored the labs I found the Women Writers Projects Labs to be fascinating, fun, educational, and luckily, nothing like the labs I had imagined in my head- hallelujah.

Nevertheless, these WWO labs truly speak to just how broad the definition of "lab" really is. I implore you all to play and learn. You couldn't ask for a more direct link of science to literature!

http://www.wwp.brown.edu/wwo/lab/

I really liked Aliza's juxtaposition of Plagiarism to Tissue Sampling. Like I mentioned in class on Thursday, I think they're very much same processes. With that claim, I'm also claiming that our physical self doesn't belong to us.

Yes, it's a scary thought. But I really don't believe that we own ourselves. At a molecular level, what makes you, you, is your DNA. Even if you have different mutations that are unique to only you—or your family—the fact remains that 99% of your DNA is similar to every other human being's DNA (Stix). Only 1% of your DNA is different from your next door neighbor, your professor, or even Obama. Thus, our DNA, the building block of the self, is collective property. If we all have similar DNA and it’s the same for everyone, it’s not really yours. It’s shared, collective property that you really don’t have any rights to; if scientists want to take your DNA, your consent is not needed.

Today’s discussion on Skloot’s intentions behind sharing a “melodramatic story” inspired me to continue the discussion. Since “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” is mainly composed of Skloot’s findings about HL's cells and family and the process of obtaining them, she might have wanted to appear more relatable. The details she provided may have made some readers transport themselves to that moment in her life. Emphasizing certain things made her story more truthful for her but not necessarily all readers. I wonder if her desire to tell the readers about her investigation was genuine of was it heightened by a marketing scheme… 

The radio recording "Listening Beyond Life and Choice: The Civil Conversations Project" reminded me that I have to speak up in class even when I do face the faintest disagreement. Frances Kissling, a dedicated activist on ProChoice abortion, refrained from speaking about women's rights to an abortion and  focused on the underlying problems of discourse  between two entities with different ideologies. In her years of activism, she was faced with the lack of constructive dialogue between her ProChoice side and the ProLife activists and described how there may not be a possible common ground when there are deep differences between two groups. One has to acknowledge their position in a debate and have the "courage to be vulnerable with person who you disagree with".

Although I was not in complete disagreement with the "dreams as a reality" discussion in class on Tuesday, I did however was very questioning (in mind) about the topic. I sat back and listened, trying to understand how one classmate may think of dreams as a reality (of multi-realities?). In reference to Kissling's radio discussion, there was no way for me to set a common ground for understanding when I did not share my (slight even if not deep) differences and idea on the topic. 

     After skimming  through “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”,  a group of glossy picture pages assembled at the middle of the book caught my eye. These are pictures of HL’s family and where she was raised etc.  arranged in a chronological order. I asked myself why all these images had to be in the middle of the book and not in different sections(for the sake of the chronology established by the author). I believe this assortment of pictures in “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” could’ve been better organized so that it could be a more efficient “break(s)” in the reading. As a reader I would’ve preferred to know a little bit about the life of Henrietta the woman during her lifetime before reading about Henrietta's cells. (Glossy pages 1-3) and implement the remaining glossy pages at the end of the section the author makes reference to that particular event (s) instead of putting them all in an additional  “Where are they now?” section (about her family) which would only apply to glossy pages 7-8.

I must admit that I enjoy having pictures interrupt my reading for the purpose of enriching my experience. 

Here is a link for my copy of the Law and Order episode called Immortal. Please let me know through my email, kobieta@brynmawr.edu, if you encounter any problems!!

http://www.4shared.com/file/9yG2TxqO/file.html

Hope it works!

I'm just going to post this before I lose this train of thought. I'm really interested in what we talked about in class today about the construction of all of our memories. This made me think of how we constantly mediate everything that surrounds us. I'm going to ground my thoughts in examples and what I'm looking at are class notes:

This is an image of my class notes from today. (Admittedly, they are not as comprehensive as my notes usually because I'm running on four hours of sleep.) If I wanted to tell someone what happened today in class, I could look at these class notes to prompt me. However, reconstructing from this data would be different from the "actual" discussion that we had today because I mediated the points that intrigued me personally. I also included other things that helped me understand the discussion. For example, I have references to other theorists that helped me think through the thoughts in my head. Therefore, if I were to reconstruct the "reality" that happened today, it would be near impossible to "tell the full story".

A better title for this would be: "Your Brain on Stories," but still cool, I think.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-neuroscience-of-your-brain-on-fiction.html?ref=todayspaper