Extra-credit blog

1. What were your expectations when you began writing this blog together? How did you think it would work?
When we started this blog post, we had the intentions of relating our readings to things that we enjoy today, such as the TV show Gossip Girl. We expected that our readings in the class would relate to our interests today, however that wasn’t necessarily always the case.
2. Did writing the blog together work as you had hoped it would? Why or why not? What would you do the same? What would you do differently?
I think so! Every week we took turns writing a blog post and a reply and I think the work was divided up evenly which made it fair. We would do the same thing over again if we had to. Although, I missed a week, which is why I volunteered to do the extra credit blog post to earn back those points. We each have a different style of writing and views to bring to the table so I think us both doing posts gave our blog diversity. I am more of a summary and response writer on this blog, whereas Ruben has the brilliant ability to pick apart the texts and throw in some historical facts and even challenge the author’s viewpoints.
3. How closely did you adhere to the "blog manifesto" that you wrote early in the process? (Your blog manifesto was your first blog post.) Did it help the way that you thought about the topics you wrote about? Why or why not?
We didn’t stay close to our blog manifesto. We kind of did our own thing, writing our initial thoughts and feelings on the readings instead of focusing on relating it to something we liked. I think it worked out better this way, because our replies were honest and they contributed to the class discussion over blog posts, which made it easy for other classmates to reply to us and understand what our thoughts were.
4. Overall, what did you learn from this blog assignment?
I learned a lot about the kind of reader I am through this blog post, and through reading other blog posts because I was able to see how others interpreted the same text I read. It was interesting to see how other people connected their ideas to the text in ways I never even considered. I think having an open space such as the blog is really helpful because it allows students to see how other people read texts and opens up questions or ideas we may have that we wouldn’t have thought of without reading someone else’s ideas.
5. Other thoughts and comments?
I learned from this blog post that using the internet is a really great way to have students do homework. Ruben and I are both future English teachers, so we are always analyzing our professor’s assignments and the effectiveness of them so one day we might be able to use the same idea in our classroom. I think having a blog post is really effective because since our generation is obsessed with the internet, it made doing our homework on a social media site seem more fun.

OMG Edna belongs in Gossip Girl!

Spotted: Edna Pontellier smitten over Robert Lebrun. Doesn’t she know, you can only have one?

As we finished up The Awakening this week, Ruben and I noticed some similarities between the novel and one of our favorite TV series, Gossip Girl. Gossip Girl, much like The Awakening, is infused with drama and suspenseful situations that leaves the audience wanting more.
Gossip Girl consists of what some would call “over-privileged” teenagers dealing with a secret source known as Gossip Girl who is exposing all of their darkest secrets via text messages and a weblog. Although this anonymous source brings grief and drama to the teens, airing their dirty laundry makes each character more human and more relatable; behind the couture handbags and thousand dollar wardrobe pick for the day.

The world of Gossip Girl is much like Edna’s background living in an Anglo culture. No one shows their feelings; if they are sad, it doesn’t show. People are well composed and rarely talk about their issues. Much like the people who visited Grand Isle for holiday, Gossip Girl characters are extremely wealthy as well. Edna reminds me of the main character, Serena Van Der Woodsen’s mother, Lily Van Der Woodsen in one particular sense. Lily has two children: Serena and Eric. While she loves her children, she seems to be too preoccupied in some seasons with her own love life to pay sufficient attention to them. Edna loves her children, but doesn’t pay much attention to them or show them much affection. Edna and Lily also have something else in common, straying from marriages. In the upper east side of New York, affairs were not uncommon. Lily seems to never be pleased in her marriages, and always looks elsewhere to fulfill the void.

I have noticed both in The Awakening and in Gossip Girl that social status is very important to people, especially those with wealthy backgrounds. Serena Van Der Woodsen, the “it” girl of the city who comes from a family who is fabulously wealthy. She falls in love with an outsider, “Lonely Boy,” also known as Dan Humphreys. Because Dan comes from Brooklyn, dubbed the “outside and poor” part of New York, Serena must decide what she is willing to lose by dating Dan. Much like Edna struggling to find her identity, and finding it, but knowing what she will lose if she chooses to be her full self, there are always consequences to going against what society’s expectations are.
I am wondering, did anyone find similarities in this novel with their favorite shows, or another favorite book of theirs? The storyline in The Awakening seems to be common and I am sure there are other medias out there that can relate to the plot.

First wave feminism..is it for every woman?

As we discuss The Awakening and the radical ideas of this novel (at least for the time period when it was released), we need to be more critical of our understanding of first wave feminism. In class a student mentioned that feminism had not even began by the time that this novel was released.  First wave feminism actually began around the time that Kate Chopin was born. The Seneca Falls convention for gender equality occurred in 1848— 50 years before The Awakening  was released. This does not mean that feminism was as popular as it is today, but it is wrong to think that there were no feminist groups before this novel came out.

Having that said, we need to move on from first wave feminism and begin thinking of critical race feminism. Kate Chopin writes about motherhood and how not everyone was meant to become a mom—this alludes to the pro-choice movement started by Margaret Sanger. She founded the first birth control clinic in 1916. First wave feminists idolize her, whereas critical race feminists critique the political strategies that she used. Margaret Sanger has been praised for her ties to the Eugenics movement and the KKK. People thought this was a political strategy to obtain rights over women’s bodies. However, women of color have faced forced sterilization and Margaret Sanger was known to have ties to the groups that pushed for Eugenics. The Awakening is rich in its understandings of sexual liberation, but it also follows first wave feminist rhetoric that focused on the reproductive rights of white women.

I would argue that while The Awakening follows some of the rhetoric of first wave feminists, Kate Chopin shows a fluid understanding of sexuality. As a gay man, I related to this story because I understood the social stigma behind different kinds of sexualities—for Edna it meant having sexual pleasure in a world that constricted her to the de-sexualized role of motherhood.

Her relationship to Adele Ratignolle was also an interesting take on relationships and friendship. Chopin writes: “Who can tell what metals the gods use in forging the subtle bond which we call sympathy, which we might as well call love” (p . 18). This was written about Edna’s affection to Adele and they are later on holding hands at the beach. A queer reading of this episode would imply that Edna might have allowed herself to feel romantic feelings towards Adele; this, however, was not further developed in the novel. But it’s an interesting episode that makes me wonder if Edna might have been bi-sexual.

I am interested to see the opinions of others on Edna’s role as a mother. Do people demonize her for not having nurturing feelings towards her children? Or do people see Edna as someone who was forced into the role of motherhood, and it is ok for women not to want to be mothers. 

-Ruben

Tactics of Empire

In "The Man Who Would Be King," Kipling maps out the process of creating an empire. Both Dravot and Carnehan head out to rule pre- existing tribes and show their self righteousness throughout the story. For example, they say: "and it won't help us to know the names of their tribes" (p. 72). This was at the planning stage, and they already had dehumanized tribes to the point that their names were irrelevant to their plans. Their mind was set on having the ability to go to a foreign land, teach natives their waves, and fight whoever crossed their way. All of this was done with the purpose of power.

An interesting take on gender is their relation to the empire. The story began with Carnehan using the "pretty" women from the land as a factor in their decision to move there. Once they arrive, Dravot marries a karfir girl and this shows how women (especially women of color) are used as objects by colonizers. When I read this story I couldn't stop thinking about the narrative of Pocahontas. Disney makes it seem like she fell in love with an English man out of her own will. Once we look at history critically, we understand that she was kidnapped when she was 12, raped, and forced to assimilate to a different culture. This colonizing narrative has withstood time and there aren't many people who inquire about the actual life of Pocahontas.

One of my favorite things about this story is that a woman is the reason for the fall of this newly created empire. When Dravot's wife bites him, she proves that he is not a God and is able to take down the empire that he had created. To Dravot and Carnehan these people were nothing more than bodies that they could use for power. The narratives that they would give them are much like the narratives given to Pocahontas. They would use their bodies, exploit them, and make them assimilate to their ways. And at the same time affirm their self righteousness with their English heritage. This is a narrative that is found repeatedly in history, and it makes me question whether or not the author critiques empires with the story or empowers them. The author has an obvious understanding of how empires are created, but he also has an understanding of how empires could fall. This could be a warning for emperors or it could be a narrative to make people be critical of how empires come to be.

Poetry, Education, and other fun things

This week, we were introduced to a new form of analyzing poetry. I thought this method of looking deeper into poetry was very useful and brought new interpretations to our minds as we were read the poems aloud. Dr. Campbell had us close our eyes and listen to the poems read aloud. As we listened, we were instructed to draw what we envisioned the poem looking like in our minds. As for me, I saw different aspects of the poems come to life through my imagination that I did not consider while I was reading it silently to myself. As they were read aloud, I noticed and caught on to the haunting the poems carried through the voices of the speakers. I noticed a lot more nature in the poems instead of focusing on what I thought the main points were. This was a very interesting way to teach poetry and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Today in class, we read two poems from our course packs. The White Man’s Burden by Rudyard Kipling and The Black Man’s Burden (A Reply to Rudyard Kipling) by Hubert Harrison. In class we touched on the possibility that Harrison was sort of mocking Kipling, and I agree. In my personal opinion, I think although there may have been issues in the white society in that day and age, whites had very little to no right to voice their struggles, and make it sound like no one had it worse than them. Harrison says, “Take up the Black Man’s burden--/ Reach out and hog the earth,/ And leave your workers hungry/ In the country of their birth;” This spoke to me because I felt like Harrison was mocking Kipling in saying “oh no, don’t let your poor men go hungry!” While his family and ancestors have suffered years of enslavement and starvation. I really enjoyed reading these two poems back to back and seeing the injustice brought to light.
Also, in class we were to research a topic in our blog groups. Ruben and I picked education, as we are both going to be teachers in the next few years we thought it would be interesting to see how education was dealt with in the 19th century. I researched African American education in the 19th century, and found a few interesting facts. Education for African Americans was thought of by whites to be a bad idea. They thought if they extended an education out to African Americans it would lead to them rebelling. Until, something called the Freedman’s Bureau was introduced to southern states. This bureau enforced schooling for African Americans from grade school to high school level classes. We are excited to hear everyone else’s presentations next week, as well as share the rest of our own!
Tara Nolan

Goopherd Reflection

In "The Goophered Grapevine" readers find multiple cues of the plantation tradition method of writing. Charles Chesnutt has an obvious stand on the plantation tradition and he culturally enriches readers by bringing narratives from black people of the time. The narrative of an oppressed group tricking the dominant group is both humorous and political. Julius tries to trick the soon to be owner of the plantation but fails. Chesnutt might use this story as political rebellion; however, the ending of the story is problematic because power rests mainly with the plantation owner.

While this story is centered on the theme of post-civil war conflict, I found connections to our current treatment of black men. We have criminalized black men with the War on Drugs and have made it ok to have alarming numbers of black men in prison.  This rhetoric mirrors the "trickster" narrative of Julius' story. The old plantation owner had tricked his slaves not to eat grapes. And today, black people are tricked with the idea of equality when jails have become the new Jim Crow. Many people view racism as individual insults, but academics of color view racism as the sociopolitical institutions that oppress people of color. In the end, the idea that racism is over is a trick to maintain power in the dominant group and to continue the subordination of people based on the color of their skin.

I am curious to know how Chesnutt's audience perceived his work. I feel as if this work was written for a black audience because they would need to understand the tradition of the trickster narrative. Majority of white people in that time would feel as if the ending was unfulfilling because Julius was getting paid for his work. This doesn't make sense because Julius lost more than he earned and is what the author might be trying to get at. For this work to be political, the author had to be subtle on his recreation of the oppression/domination binary. He was strategic in masking his purpose, but I wonder how many people understood what the author was really advocating for.

The continuous plantation tradition writings must have made those in power angry at Chesnutt's writing. He uses the elements of plantation tradition, but at the same time challenges as a strategic manner of critiquing this form of writing. Overall, this was an interesting story with rich historical and social knowledge of post-civil war times in the U.S.

Funsies at the library!

This week, we were able to visit something a part of our library I did not know existed: the MASC. The MASC stands for Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections—and it contains exactly that. At first, I was not too excited about visiting the MASC. I had envisioned over the entire weekend that we were going to a museum sort of place where we could not touch anything or look through any of the books. I thought the whole experience would be dull and boring, however, I was pleasantly surprised how much I learned while in the MASC for only about a half an hour.
While in the MASC, we were paired into groups and were assigned to look through the books presented on the tables and pick out what we thought were the most popular. This was especially fun because we actually got to look through the books. Although they were old and had to be rested on pillow type things on top of the tables, it was so interesting to see pieces of our history that we have free access to. I was very impressed by the amount of original books there are in the MASC. Some of the books were tearing, some had pages ripped off, and some were in decent condition for their age. My favorite part of the older books was the colorful pages. Some of the books had a pretty design on the edge of the pages so when the book is closed it was fun to look at. In my spare time I believe I will make a trip to the MASC. I was so busy doing the assignment that I would like to go back and look at all the books on the shelves.
Another fun part about the library visit was the activity we did in the classroom after our visit to the MASC. We were to go find a book in the library, and that is something I also do not do enough as a college student. My partner and I had picked the question that asked us to get an edition of Punch published in Charles Dickens’ lifetime. That was harder than we thought, because there were so many editions of Punch! I had no idea such a book existed, it was a lot of fun to look through an edition dated in the 1870’s. Punch seemed to be political comics and news stories from London all compiled into a whole book.
Overall, the experience was very worth it. I now know where I can go to find first edition books, and I am very excited to explore the MASC in my spare time.
Did anyone else learn something from the MASC? Does anyone plan to go back some time?

--Tara Nolan