Tag: Anna Elizabeth Rauch

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Blog #5

Blog #5

     Having the opportunity to use StoryMapJs was a unique one that has never been presented to me in any other class. I had done much of the visualization before in high school with tools similar to Voyant, and I had made timelines for almost all of my history classes, but being able to incorporate a whole new dimension, location, into my analysis is really something quite unique.

     While analyzing the space that Anna Elizabeth Rauch and her fellow missionaries covered on a map, I was able to see just how much distance they covered, and I realized the physical toll that this took on them. In the memoir, Anna passed away from rheumatic fever. From looking at this map, I can safely assume that the long travel across all of Jamaica was moderately harmful to her immune system, thus contributing to her demise. I think this is what Bodenhamer means when he says “All spaces contain embedded stories based on what has happened there (Bodenhamer 16). Now that I could see the full space that they covered, I was further able to understand the story.

     Relative to this time period, the concept of space and stance is extremely significant. In 1752, moving transnationally and even transcontinentally was a very strong commitment. Nowadays, it can take hours and sometimes even days to move that distance. In that time period, it took weeks, sometimes even months, to cover that span.

     Spatial Humanities is definitely more relevant to this time period because of the introduction of Geographic Information Systems, or GIS. Bodenhamer is an advocate of this practice, and he states that GIS is a “seductive technology” and that its images “appeal to us in ways more subtle and powerful than words can” (Bodenhamer 17). I feel that GIS is one of the most efficient ways to analyze space for the field of humanities.

     Anna Elizabeth Rauch’s journey did cover half the distance of Jamaica, but once she got to Mesopotamia (in Westmoreland), she mainly went from there to New Carmel and back, thus not providing for much GIS analysis. Also, there were not many maps available that had specific detail about where the plantations exactly were. Bodenhamer believes that GIS “favors precise data that can be managed and parsed within a highly structured tabular database”(Bodenhamer 23). GIS may not have been the best for this memoir, but it should be ideal for most.

     Since the missionaries didn’t move around much once they arrived at the sugarcane plantation, I decided to depict different Moravian Stations in Jamaica for most of my slides. I told the story of Anna, and then mapped a new location that a station was created upon. As Anna and her fellow missionaries completed more work in Mesopotamia, I would show the precise location of other stations, thus conveying the spread of the Moravians. I believe that this was the best way of representing the information in that it could properly give a scope to how large the Moravian movement was in Jamaica, and what overall effect they had on the slave populations there.

Find the link for my StoryMapJs here: https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/cb5a3878723de184037f5257d0519d56/anna-elizabeth-rauch/index.html

 

[iframe src=”https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/cb5a3878723de184037f5257d0519d56/anna-elizabeth-rauch/index.html” frameborder=”0″ width=”100%” height=”800″][/iframe]

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Blog #4

Blog #4

     Marking up my transcription was actually an integral aspect to my understanding of the text. I feel as if being able to analyze the text through breaking down different aspects of the words was really helpful in that it made me feel closer to the actual words and meanings of the text itself. Instead of just reading every small word individually, I was able to see how every word shaped the overall meaning of the text due to tagging.

     I feel as if the Bethlehem memoirs in specific were important with regards to the aspect of understanding how the memoirs interrelate. Our memoirs were different from the other memoirs in that we had several different authors all from the same relative time period, rather than just one single memoir. This method of marking up was also unique with our Bethlehem memoirs in that we had varying accounts of mentioning the word “Lord”, “Savior”, or ”Jesus”. To remain consistent throughout, we decided as a group to tag any occurrences of the Holy Spirit as a person. We had to make some cuts on what should be considered tangible, and what should not be considered taggable. As Pierazzo says, “informed choices need to be made on what to include because it is relevant and what can be safely omitted” (Pierazzo 467).

     Collaborating with the rest of my editorial board (group) also heavily influenced my perspective on the memoirs as a whole. I feel as if when it was just me editing my own memoir, I had a single perspective on which words should be tagged. When I gave it to the rest of my group to revise , they pointed out aspects of my memoir that I hadn’t previously considered taggable, and thus I was able to get a more full sense of my memoir.

     I really enjoyed using TEI with my memoir. I think Pierazzo summarized it best when she said “to all intents and purposes there is no limit to the information one can add to a text—apart, that is, from the limits of imagination” (Pierazzo 466). Using technology to actually be able to analyze all accounts of different aspects of these memoirs was an invaluable opportunity, and is a “much less limiting” medium to engage in analysis. (Pierazzo 464).

     I also believed that learning how to use this software gave me a strong insight on how to apply to this to other literature that I may encounter. I have gotten a much firmer understanding of html and how computer processes and systems work, so I feel like I have a more diverse approach to the digital humanities now. I now have a knack for transcription AND a knack for using the technology associated with analyzing those said transcribed texts.

    Overall, I believe that I have a much more complete and wholistic grasp on the Bethlehem memoirs, but specifically that of Anna Elizabeth Rauch. I now understand more of why she did what she did because I tagged different aspects of her emotions and her health. When I had read the memoir previously, it seemed a little dry, and I was confused about the sequence of events that occurred and why they happened. Now I know how Anna’s emotions and state of mind shaped her journey working in Jamaica on the Mesopotamia plantation.

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Blog #2 contextual research

Grafton & TimelineJS Analysis

Blog # 2

Through reading Grafton’s Introduction, I learned that the two modes of representation are chronology and geography. These two modes immensely help clarify historical events, but they also obscure events. With regards to determining all there is to know about a certain event, these two modes help immensely because we know exactly WHEN and WHERE that particular event happened. With this, we can make deductions or inferences about why that said event occurred.

Timelines are actually less than 250 years old (Grafton 14). All they really are is a way of visualizing the numbers that we use to record our history, but they can also restrict our outlook on life. Grafton says “The timeline seems among the most inescapable metaphors we have” (Grafton 14). It makes time way more linear than it has to be and almost completely removes the flexibility of our concept of time. It has been hard to come to terms with these ideas and modes of representation, but I have done it successfully. By telling us a one-way story, they have told us a chronology of our perception of the world, but have also erased our opportunity to perceive time as a story.

This concept is actually extremely relevant to my group’s project. We were assigned the Bethlehem memoirs to transcribe an analyze. Other groups’ assignments were the memoir of one person, but we had several different writers to transcribe. So as other groups would have one coherent timeline for all of their events, we had 4 or 5 separate, overlaying timelines.

With this in mind, conceptualizing the complex relationship between ideas and modes of representation was near impossible. We were just given seemingly unrelated transcriptions with no background. We had to use different sources to get a deeper understanding of what we read. For example, Professor Faull gave me a book titled “A Tale of Two Plantations”, which depicted the lives of slaves in the Mesopotamian slave plantation in Jamaica, and how the Moravian missionaries brought the Gospel to them.

 

Viewing the timeline as a rigid linearity would be ineffective, as there are multiple stories going on at once. Grafton says that our idea of time “is so wrapped up with the metaphor of the line that taking them apart seems virtually impossible” (Grafton 13). The key here is flexibility, and being able to perceive several chronologies at once. TimeLine JS made this flexible view possible by stacking the different events on top of each other as they occurred.

Overall, using TimeLine JS made analyzing these events easier in that it gave a way to compare the events throughout time. This has given a deeper meaning to all of our separate work; it has integrated everything we’ve worked for together.

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Blog #2

Blog #2

As a group, working on this project has allowed for us to develop a research question about the role of the congregation and if the Moravian people perceived it in a positive or negative way.  From what I could understand about these memoirs, the congregation offered hope and reconciliation with their faith.  

The portion that I transcribed from the Henry Unger memoir was told from the third person point of view and talked about his journey to find mercy and forgiveness from his savior and congregation. It was described as finding “Rest for his poor Soul.” In the second memoir that I assisted in transcribing, Anna Elizabeth Rauch, it talked about her sharing how sinners can seek forgiveness to “Negroes” in Mesopotamia. She struggled with her health, but felt that she was visited by the Lord and needed to spread his word to the rest of the people of Mesopotamia. Lastly, the Rosine Tanneberger memoir talked about her life and journey to find “rest for her poor soul” as well. All three of these memoirs spoke of their religion as a means of solving underlying issues.

When all of our memoirs were entered into the Voyant Tools website, I was able to explore this research through the digital humanities approach. There were numerous key terms brought to my attention that assisted in the answering of this research question. I was able to see how often the words “Heart,” “Year,” “Came,” “Dear,” “Saviour,” and “Congregation” were present in the Bethlehem memoirs. With this website, we could also explore how the words were used in relation to other words. Also, it put the most commonly used words into a visual of a graph that determined trends amongst the words. We compared our memoir to the Latrobe memoirs and found that their most frequently used words were “Lord,” “Dear,” “God,” “Saviour,” and “Let.”

This was more helpful, compared to the traditional humanistic means, because the viewer is using distant reading. As Whitley describes it, distant reading uses specific data like quantitative and qualitative information to create a visual representation of what is read. This is a different form of reading and offers the analyzation of textual data. To quote Whitley “…the virtue of information visualization is that it can make complex data sets more accessible than they might otherwise be, whereas literary close readings often reveal that apparently straight forward texts are more complex than they might otherwise seem” (pg. 188).

The use of Voyant Tools allowed me to visualize the most commonly used terms and actually see how important religion was in the lives of the Moravian people. When I was working on this assignment, originally, I hadn’t paid attention to what I was reading. When I was finished transcribing I read over the material and struggled to find context in the sentences. From the Whitley reading we did for class I learned that many of the tools can pull out words that we don’t necessarily recognize while we are reading, specifically words that we tend to skip over.  This was made evident after I entered the memoirs into Voyant because it became clear to me how often they spoke of their religion and how positively their “Savior” was represented.