Sources Sources Sources

The past two classes me and Nina have been collecting sources that we have found to contain Twain's thoughts on imperialism. Our sources so far range from autobiographies, books, and interviews from various newspaper articles. I admit that I did not do a blog for the previous day because we only found a few sources and had little to report back, but now I am confident that with the materials that we are gathering that we will soon be able to create a much more defined area to research and our questions to guide us to our thesis.

Mark Twain and his views on imperialism

During class today I really dove into Twain's views on imperialism and conquest. Twain calls himself an anti-imperialist, and at various times I found defends his views. I think that this topic would be something good to, like you said in your previous comment, look deeper into. I also found a very nice and organized website with a large collection of authoritative sources on and by Twain himself including his autobiography. I think that finding this website really will make our project much easier because it pulls a vast majority of the sources that we will most likely use together. The website is also very well respected because it has been labeled authoritative by MLA.

The seed has been planted and begun to grow into a real research project

Right now our project has began to take shape and begin to move on towards progress. Last night Nina and I made the basics to our calender and decided that our research will center on Mark Twain and his works. As of right now we are not sure yet where we would like to take our project, but I am hoping to take it to a topic relating to something satirical in his works. I would like to analyze various aspects of how Twain address various social situations of his time such as people's struggle to survive financially and even his views on slavery. I hope this project is one that does not just burden us, but lets us explore something that we are interested in.