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.

Research Project

At the moment, my group is not exactly sure who they would like to focus on because our group fractured. Right now I am searching for people to focus on, and I think I would like to research on Mark Twain because his name his a common household name for a writer, but I do not know much about him or his works. I am open to any change that we do now since our deadline for a calender is fast approaching, so I am sure that our topic will change depending on what we talk about in class if we have group time. I think that this project will be easily be handled if everyone gets working on it within the next few days.

Diigo can Go

Diigo is pretty useful when it comes to taking and sharing notes on web pages. I haven't perfected Diigo yet, but im sure that when the entire class makes all their annotations public and everyone links their research and ideas together about a common topic it will further our knowledge. About Diigo itself, I do think that the best and most efficient way to use it is to download the toolbar.

Hidden Women, Protective Husbands, and Maddening Yellow Wallpaper

This story has to be one of the best examples of someone slowly losing their grip on reality while everyone around her keeps their distance and attempts to diagnose her. The main character spends the vast majority of her narration describing her hatred and awe over the yellow wallpaper that torments her mind with its varying design.
I will go ahead and jump to the end and say that I am extremely confused because of how vague it is; I thought that she was going to actually hang herself with the rope or something, but then realized that that couldn't work because nobody would be telling the story. In the end it says the husband past out, but why would he pass out if she just tore down the wall paper, unless she is somehow part of it? I am not sure at all. But the extra bit about her writing this after she went through something explains how she was able to create such a realistic situation of a lady losing her mind while the people around her are constantly wondering about her mental health.

MLK Jr.

While reading MLK's letter from jail, the two main quotes I found that stood out to me in relation to the previous material we studied were actually very short. “A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained” and “Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, ‘Wait’” both caught my eye. The first one is talking about how throughout the history of African Americans, blacks will have obtained some ground toward total equality in comparison to whites, but that ground is always shaken and broken down to what was there before. The second quote, in my opinion is very important because it brings the concept of fighting for civil rights to a more relate-able view, showing people how it easy it can be for the people not being afflicted to hold the rights from others. If one person has an ample amount of money, but one person does not, the wealthy man will have a much easier time denying the other man money because he has no experience being the one in need. The concept of not having the experience the blacks have, to me seems like a very good point, but does not really carry much weight in the argument for civil rights; although its true, it can not be used as evidence for support.