September 11, 2020
The first few weeks of this course have been very insightful in a few ways. We started exploring some articles and poems that approach the topic of mental illness and it has been very eye-opening to see the language used to talk about mental illness both then and now. I also refreshed myself on the ins and outs of ePortfolio because it has actually updated its platform since the last time I was familiar with it! I find this new user interface to be refreshing, even though it took some getting used to. After our class time exploring ePortfolio, I was inspired to reconfigure my website and really personalize it to show off myself and my work here at UNE.
I also have been exposed to what exactly a digital edition is and it doesn’t seem as scary as it did when we were first introduced to it two weeks ago. In our peer groups we browsed a sample digital edition done by a former student and analyzed what worked for us and what didn’t. I found viewing this sample to be incredibly helpful for getting a solid idea of what a digital edition actually is. Editors have to make a choice regarding what they annotate in a text and what they don’t. Ideally, an editor should be adding annotations that help provide both context to the literature and also a relevant analysis of the author’s meaning. The importance of the critical introduction also stood out to me today, as I saw how it sets up your readers for your annotations and it also sets a tone for your digital edition as a whole.
September 25, 2020
Since my last post, we dug into our close reading annotations of The Yellow Wallpaper. I was a little worried about this assignment, but I think it was actually really helpful to get a feel for how to do a proper close reading. The Yellow Wallpaper is a really interesting short story. I think it really accurately depicted the struggles women faced during that time period regarding mental health and bodily autonomy as a whole. On the other side of the coin, we started reading The Return of the Soldier, which deals with the mental health issues faced by men during and after World War I. So far, I have found this book to be really interesting! Our class had a meaningful discussion today about how women’s and men’s mental health issues are treated differently. I think the secondary annotation assignment will be a really great way to bring context and meaning to the story, so I look forward to that.
In other ePortfolio news, I figured out how to turn commenting on for this page! So, hopefully that should work now. I’ve also been exploring the possibility of using a new theme for my page because I’m tired of the menu being on the side of the page. It feels messy to me now, so I want to try to clean it up in my free time over the next week or so. Stay tuned for that!
October 9, 2020
We have started to unpack the annotated digital edition project, which is our main project for the course. After figuring out the topic of my project, I’m starting to get excited about digging into the story on a deeper level! After completing the secondary annotation of The Return of the Soldier, I feel much more confident in my ability to analyze rhetorical strategies in a story, as well as to interpret a text’s deeper meaning. I’m looking forward to making my ePortfolio site for my annotated digital edition because I feel that digital creation is something much more up my alley than traditional art!
This week, we started to read Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a play by August Wilson. I rarely read scripts of plays, so I’m finding the format of the story to be a little more challenging than a traditional novel, but it is manageable. I think this story and the supplemental materials that go with it will provide an interesting insight into racial tensions in the 1920s. I’m really excited to explore the connection between systemic racism and mental health. It will be interesting to compare the 1920s to right now, exactly one hundred years later.
October 22, 2020
This week and last week have both been super hectic and busy! I’m sure everyone is feeling the pressure of assignments and midterm exams. The drafting and editing process has started for our annotated digital edition project and the tough part will be to start to flesh out more precise and in-depth arguments. I found that the sense of clarity I had about this project after initially drafting my proposal has quickly faded! I found that I really struggled to write the first draft of my thesis paragraph for my critical introduction. Striking the right balance between summarizing and analyzing is really tricky. I feel as though I might have done too much summarizing, but I’m not sure what I could take out because I feel like context is equally important to set up my thesis and the following argument.
The next step is to start brainstorming ideas for how to make my ePortfolio showcase this project. I know I would like to have a separate webpage for that, but I am struggling with coming up with a name for it. I would like to have the name picked out before I start constructing the website because Prof. Gennaco said the website name cannot be changed without deleting it and starting over. I am hoping to have something picked out soon so I can start putting all these pieces together and editing my work directly on the site.
November 6, 2020
In the week coming up, I plan to spend some serious time with my annotated digital edition so I can start to get my head straight and organized about everything that I need to get done in the following weeks. I reached out to Prof. Gennaco to get the separate site set up for the project. Now that I have access to it, I plan to start creating the skeleton of the site. My next step is to map out everything that needs to be completed. The hardest part will be my critical introduction draft. I’m struggling with the introduction paragraph and what needs to go into it. I think the review we did in class Thursday will be helpful once I actually sit down and start to complete the draft using the feedback I received. I am struggling with what information the reader needs to make my thesis make sense and I’m not sure how to condense this so that I’m not giving an entire plot summary. I think the historical context is important, or at least the fact that this takes place during World War I before the impacts of the war on men’s mental health were known. Again, I think once I start the revision process, this might make more sense. That is my plan so far and I’m looking forward to starting to set up the webpage for it!
December 4, 2020
I’m finding it really hard to believe that we’re at the end of the semester! In August, this moment seemed far away and very out of reach. Despite it being a semester like no other, I think I made the best of it. I tried to enjoy it as much as I could and I did my work to the best of my ability. There is a LOT to reflect on in the last few months, but here are my thoughts on just some of them.
I think reading literature about madness is really important to understanding mental illness from a perspective that a clinical setting or diagnosis cannot give us. Often times when reading, we put ourselves into the story and into the shoes of the characters. I find myself relating to characters when reading about them. Reading is a very personal experience for everyone, and so when reading literature about madness, we are able to see the more personal side of mental illness. I think sometimes it’s easy to generalize certain mental illnesses as rigid standards of behavior or thought; for example, when Forney discusses bipolar disorder with Karen at the beginning of her narrative, they use the DSM. The DSM gives a set of behaviors or tendencies that people with bipolar disorder present, but obviously these traits will show through differently in different patients. Reading literature about madness helps us to destigamatize mental illness by showing us that they are still people.
Additionally, this semester I learned a lot about copyright. I’m surprised that it took me until my junior year here to learn anything at all about it. No other course that I’ve ever taken had discussed it before. I had heard of the different terms, such as “public domain,” but I was never sure of what they meant for me as someone using those works. Luckily for me, Rebecca West’s Return of the Soldier is in the public domain so I didn’t have to figure out how to control who was able to view my site.
ePortfolio was another major skill set that came along with this class. I believe using ePortfolio, rather than printing and stapling word documents, really helped to elevate this project. While our classmates are presenting their sites, I feel so much more engaged as an audience because there is a great visual component to the project. I am also having more fun creating my own site – it is so much more enjoyable to put all the pieces together on ePortfolio, rather than typing up a long paper. Going through my peer group’s sites was so exciting! Clicking on all the hyperlinks to see where they went was like opening a little present and it made it very easy to be an active reader. Because of the amount of work that was required to create a site for my ADE, I am feeling very confident in my WordPress skills. This class was a great refresher and reminder about all the possible uses for my personal ePortfolio site. I’m looking forward to revamping my site to use as a showcase for everything I’ve done so far in my undergraduate career.
Hey Lyle! Great work with opening the comments window! And I love that you are thinking about reworking your theme. That is brave, but also a good idea if you are not happy with the one you have. I am really unfamiliar with the themes that are not the exact one I have used so far, so you are inspiring me to live on the edge and mix things up for myself.
I am glad the assignments and discussions have been helpful to you. I am excited to see where you go with your project as your ideas firm up!
I enjoyed reading your latest entry, Lyle. I’m glad you are getting excited about the assignment and feel comfortable working in this format. I think that it is going to be a skill everyone needs, and you are already showing yourself to be quite accomplished.
I hear what you say about how it’s an adjustment to reading a play–it’s an entirely different way of organizing information, isn’t it? And it forces us to use our imagination in different ways. It’s also somewhat artificial, since plays are written to be performed, not read on the page; that said, I always find it especially illuminating to read the stage directions! Anyway, I am glad you are feeling how compelling the topic is. So interesting that, as you say, we are a century removed from the decade portrayed. It’s kind of alarming, actually, how little has changed. I am looking forward to talking with you about the play again this week!
Hey Lyle, your 4th post was interesting to read. I think your shifting feelings about your project are completely normal! It is likely that some of what you wrote in your intro draft will not remain in that spot–maybe it will get moved to another paragraph, or maybe it will be condensed. But you needed to write through it in order to get to articulating your thesis. That is the beauty of process-based writing–drafts are not commitments! I’ll have feedback to you soon about the thesis.
As for the project site, it’s good you are working on that. You can always go with a safe, generic name for it, like RebeccaWest.uneportfolio.org or ReturnoftheSoldier.uneportfolio.org, or even something more specific like ForgettingBaldryCourt.uneportfolio.org. Or you could just put use your name and the course number: MassoiaEng326.uneportfolio.org. Do reach out if I can help!
This sounds good, Lyle. I admire your focus during this really distracting time, and I think you are thinking really clearly about how to proceed through your process. The questions you are having are entirely normal. Let’s plan to chat when you need to if you want to discuss your introduction and the level of detail needed in terms of plot overview.
Thanks for your generous and thoughtful post, Lyle. I think you capture a really important aspect of the course when you say that literature allows the reader to relate to the characters, and that that serves an important humanizing function. Considering that, often despite health professionals’ best efforts, those with mental illness can feel they are reduced to their disorder, this is not insignificant. I am glad you learned so much in the course and that you’ve exercised some skills you can take with you. I love the new look of your site, by the way! And finally, I enjoyed reading about how much fun it was for you to explore classmates’ sites. I totally get that.