Author: Paige Whitney

Paige Whitney is a sophomore at Bucknell University. She is from Darien, CT. She is undeclared, but has interests in psychology, management, and economics.

Categories
final blog

Final Blog Post

Link to our Website: http://leeshumn100.blogs.bucknell.edu

I have come to realize as I reflect on the past semester that Humanities 100 was my favorite class this semester. I am surprisingly impressed with how much I have learned in such a short amount of time. I signed up for it because it sounded interesting and fulfilled one of my CCC requirements. I did not know what to expect and was slightly nervous after hearing about it the first day of class. Although there were times that were challenging and frustrating, I overall loved how interactive class was and am extremely proud of all the hard work I have put in throughout the semester.

One major skill this class has taught me is how to read for important information quickly and effectively, which was beneficial because I have always been considered a slow reader. I was flustered when I was given the memoir of Harriet Lees that is hundreds of years old because I did not know what to search for when analyzing. It was at this point in the class where I learned the importance of transcriptions. Again, I was a little confused at first, but it became easier and easier as I started completing each assignment. Transcriptions are a way of analyzing a text in a great amount of depth to seek out the maximum amount of important information.

 ] .  . 

Working with Hailey Zimmerman on the memoir of Harriet Lees was extremely fun. The memoir is short, just about twelve pages, which I also enjoyed because we got to read and reread it as many times needed to understand her life story. When transcribing the original document, we split the pages up amongst us: six pages for me, six pages for Hailey. This process was my favorite part of the semester. Hailey and I would sit side by side making out the words and sentences that were written in cursive. We would ask one another when we couldn’t make out a word or phrase, which happened quite often. It was funny to see how some words I could easily read were so difficult for her and vice versa. Although this process was fun, it was very difficult at times due to the unfamiliar handwriting (cursive), sayings, and places in England. It was also difficult because some letters looked so similar to each other, so to resolve this issue we looked back at previous words with the same letter(s) and compared them. It was very critical that our transcription of the memoir was correct and made sense because it is used for every project for the rest of the semester. With that in mind, Hailey and I read through our transcriptions three times and thankfully we did because we found some mistakes. Voyant was the next step in our project. Again, this was a novel tool for both Hailey. Voyant was extremely helpful because it offered us the opportunity to learn about Harriet Lees’ life in new ways and in more depth. Voyant consisted of charts, lists, graphs that highlighted the most frequent words and phrases in our text, which made it easy to see what was of importance. It offered us a way to look deeply into the text and observe what hardships Harriet Lees faced and how she overcame them. Voyant is an efficient and more pleasing way to gain the important information needed from a long text. My favorite tool in voyant I used was cirrus. The next project Hailey and I did was the timeline and story map of Harriet Lees’ life, which was also very interesting and fun. The timeline helped arrange Harriet Lees’ life in a systematic order; which we used three major dates: her birth, marriage, and death. The timeline allowed us to make connections in her life to the world around her in that time. Specifically, we were able to gain a better understanding of Harriet Lees’ suffering and death from tuberculosis. We incorporated pictures to help the viewer envision the information we discussed. The story map was an extremely cool tool to work with, but again I did run into some struggles. The story map we created showed specific places in England where Harriet Lees’ lived, died, and traveled to. A struggle I was referring to earlier was that the memoir did not provide us with enough pages to make a strong story map, but after further research, we chose other relevant places in England that connected to Harriet Lees’ life. For example, we used London as a place and then compared and contrasted the different lifestyles in the nineteenth century. The story map provides a way for one to track the Harriet Lees’ life in a fun and information way. The Google Fusion table was another project we completed this semester. We took words from the memoir and put them into a spreadsheet that allowed us to indicate the important relationships. Hailey and I found that the strongest relationship in the memoir of Harriet Lees was emotion to health, which made sense because the majority of the memoir discussed Harriet Lees suffering from an inflammation in her lungs.

Another important aspect to Humanities 100 that broadened my understanding of the projects and the materials was the homework readings. It was cool to see the correlations between the readings and the projects when writing the blog posts. One of my favorite readings this semester is Grafton’s “Cartographies of Time”. I really enjoyed the timeline project and this reading gave me more insight on the importance dates and how beneficial of timelines can be. Another reading in specific that I really enjoyed was Bodenhamers, “The Spatial Humanities”. I really enjoyed this article because I think the author had a lot of good points that were relevant in my project. My favorite point he made was, “we see space as the platform for multiplicity, a realm where all perspectives are particular and dependent upon experiences unique to an individual, a community, or a period of time” (Bodenhamer 14).

The website Hailey and I created for our final project was extremely rewarding to finish. Our homepage is simple and has a lot of tabs that connect one to more information on the memoir of Harriet Lees. Each tab links one to information on a specific topic. Some of the information we included was the Moravian Church, Moravian Women, Geographical Context, Gender History, and more. Along with the information aspect, we included pictures and links to our past projects. Each tab is unique and provides insight on life in the nineteenth century, specifically Harriet Lees’. It is important to note that although Harriet Lees is one women, her life is extremely important for many reasons, which is explained in the website under the “Research Question” tab. Overall, this website incorporates and combines all the different information and components we have encountered this semester, which will be very helpful for people doing further research.

 .            

Again, thank you so much for this semester and I appreciate all the work you, Professor Faull, Carry, and Courtney have done to help me learn. I will forever remember this class and hope to use some of the skills I learned in the future.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

http://www2.ivcc.edu/gen2002/women_in_the_nineteenth_century.htm

http://www.localhistories.org/vicwomen.html

Categories
Blog #5

blog post #5

A map is a great way to help the audience gain a lot of knowledge on a specific topic. It is defined as a “diagram of collection of data showing the spatial distribution of something or the relative positions of its components”. Where a feature on a map is located is important because it shows the relationship from feature to feature. In other words, it is a visual way where one can make connections from place to place and gain a broader understanding of something. I found it very interesting when Bodenhamer said, “We see space as the platform for multiplicity, a realm where all perspectives are particular and dependent upon experiences unique to an individual, a community, or a period of time” (Bodenhamer,14) because think this is a very strong and accurate point that he made.

I really enjoyed mapping Harriet Lees’ life and gained a lot of insight on her life and England in the 1800s while doing so. While mapping the memoir of Harriet Lees, I understood what the Bodenhamer was insinuating when he said, “Spaces are not simply the setting for historical action but are a significant product and determinant of change” (Bodenhamer 16).

Multiple places were referred to in the memoir of Harriet Lees’ and  while making a map of these different places, I was able to understand why each place held importance in her lifetime. I used maps and spatial thinking to help me understand the complexities and nuances of the history of Harriet Lees’ life. Like I stated before, mapping Harriet Lees’ life broadened my understanding and perspective of her life. This is because I traced each important part of her life discussed in the memoir. For example, I showed that Harriet Lees lived in Leominster, England for a big portion of her life with her husband and how when she got sick she traveled to Leamington in hope for the special healing waters to heal her sickness of the lungs.  Because there were only three places discussed in Harriet Lees’ memoir, I did further research on England in the 1800s and found places of importance as well. Other important places I found were Bath, Bristol, and London, England. I found that Bath England, similarly to Leamington, is also known for their spas and many people travelled there in attempt to regain their strength they had lost from sickness. I found that Bristol, England was relevant to Harriet Lees’ memoir because similarly to Leominster, Bristol was a very religious town where the Moravian church was located. I also researched London which was important because it was the biggest city in all of Europe and a central place for Moravians at the time. Interestingly, I also learned while researching London that the majority of Moravian women did not live in London, but in outside cities, such as Bristol. While researching Bristol on a map, I discovered that Bristol is closer to Leominster than London is, which is cool to think about in historical times.Overall, I think mapping is a very cool and unique way to relay information. David Bodenhamer says, “inherently spatial beings: we live in a physical world and routinely use spatial concepts of distance and direction to navigate our way through it” (Bodenhamer 14). I agree with Bodenhamer and this being said, I think mapping is very useful and fun at the same time!

[iframe src=”https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/6832125f9b54ae55b31ef0b2dc189120/harriett-lees-story-map-1/index.html” frameborder=”0″ width=”100%” height=”800″][/iframe]

Categories
Blog #4

Blog #4

The process of marking up the transcription of Harriett Lee’s memoir has positively affected my understanding of the text. After spending this entire semester working with this memoir making transcribing, making timelines, and especially marking up the transcription has allowed me to understand the memoir so much better. Close reading has allowed me to notice and understand the specifics and smaller, hidden information in the text that I did not see earlier and while I was distant reading. This is an example of differential reading, which has helped broadened my understanding of the text and has allowed me to gain a better connection to the text. While transcribing in the beginning of the semester, I was perplexed and uncertain if what I was transcribing made any sense, but as the semester went on and I practiced differential reading, I have learned so much more about Harriett Lee’s life and about the early nineteenth century as well. Our completion of our memoir this far in the semester is an example of a diplomatic edition, “the two products will possibly contain the same text, but while the first will be a private product, the latter will be a publicly published one. These two objects therefore represent two different stages of the same editorial process, although the first can exist without the second” (Pierazzo 646).
       My overall understanding of how edited texts are predicted changed drastically when working as an editorial board with Hailey. The process of marking up the memoir of Harriett Lees with Hailey was a slight challenge because we had to make important decisions on what specifically to tag. To ensure consistency in our mark ups, we were constantly discussing our opinions on how and what we should tag. Hailey and I decided to make a google doc to help keep our thoughts organized on what we were and weren’t tagging, which was extremely helpful, especially when doing work outside of class.
One example of a big decision we discussed is if we should tag “God”, “Savior”, and “Lord” as a person. There is much controversy over this because each individual has different thoughts and opinions on this, but after a long discussion, we decided that God should not be tagged as a person. We also agreed to not tag “heaven” as a place for this same reason. Depending on the context of the sentence, we decided to tag “church” as an organization because Harriett Lees’s life revolved around religion. We also decided that tagging “brother”, “sister”, “mother”, “doctor”, etc. as people would not be beneficial when reading this memoir. My favorite part of tagging was tagging emotion because it deepen my connection to the text and how Harriett Lees and her family felt when she was so ill.
Through this process, I have come to notice and learn that “the process of selection is inevitably an interpretative act” (Pierazzo 465).
          Hailey and I get along very well and share many of the same values and beliefs, so there has been very little disputes. When a disagreement occurred, we would each explain our reasoning for why we felt a way about marking up the text and then would then compromise on a decision. Our compromise is an example of social agreement that Peter Robinson discussed in the article. The article says, “judgment is necessarily involved in deciding what is in fact present [in the manuscript], as when an ambiguously formed character resembles two different letters; but the transcriber’s goal is to make an informed decision about what is actually inscribed at each point (Pierazzo 466). I think these words are very wise and well thought out.

           Editing digital texts is very difficult, but also rewarding. Strong communication between team members is very important to help prevent any mistakes, such as not working on the newest document, from occurring. All in all, I really enjoyed learning how to edit digital texts and am very glad I learned this skill. I also find it fascinating that technology has allowed us to be able to electronically transcribe documents from so long ago.

These are two examples of times Hailey and I tagged in the Harriett Lees document. For example, we specifically tagged emotions, objects, events, etc.

Categories
Blog #3 contextual research

Paige Whitney’s Blog 3

When examining history, timelines are very important because they allow people to see major changes over an extended period of time in chronological order. Timelines are arranged in an organized way that make it easy and efficient to work with when looking back through history. The small passages about a specific date or time period are very informational. With the advancing technology, timelines now offer pictures and other forms of media to help the viewer imagine the time and place of the event.

Hailey and I formed a timeline of Harriett Lees’s life and included three major dates: her birth, marriage, and death. We gathered more relevant information to Harriett Lees’s life in attempt to make comparisons and connections. When we furthered our research on her hometown, Leominster, we found a lot of interesting and relevant information. This is an example of the geographic mode of representation.

Other major occurrences we came across when researching were the Industrial Revolution, Leamington spa, and lung sickness, also known as tuberculosis. Hailey and I used chronological mode of representation when analyzing our timeline. For example, the timeline allowed us to make the connection and understand Harriett Lees suffering and death from tuberculosis. When deepening our research on the Leamington Spa, we learned that they were seen as healthy places where sick people would go to receive spa waters, doctors, and other medicinal purposes. Again, this allowed us to find a connection between civilians in Great Britain at the time and Harriett Lees.

Tuberculosis was a serious sickness in the nineteenth century and affected many young people.
Photo of the Leamington Spa that is shown in our timeline.

I have learned so much by reading Grafton’s introduction about timelines and going through the process of making one. The use of a timeline has taught me how to make connections between events during a time period in history. It has also allowed me a greater understanding of Harriett Lees’s life.

[iframe src=’https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=13LSz87T6SWQHJEAbTZE6ZBNhhtDZGD5hMGe6mzC-SSY&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=650′ width=’100%’ height=’650′ webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen frameborder=’0′></iframe]