Tag: Elizabeth Grundy

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final blog

Final Blog

For our final project in this class, we were assigned to construct the design of a website and input all information involving our memoir that we have gathered this semester that helps us answer our research question. For my group’s memoir, Elizabeth Grundy, we formulated a research question around the women’s religion and family – were there different relationships between allegiance to family and allegiance to church in Moravian lives?

The Memoir section is primarily focused on how we comprised the initial electronic writings of Elizabeth Grundy. The effort that went into careful identification of words in the first few pages because by the fourth or fifth page most of our group had mastered it. The most difficult part of this was trying to identify some names of people or places. Unlike Professor Faull, my group was not well versed in the locations in Northern England so we messed up a lot of place names when transcribing. Once we electronically transcribed Grundy’s memoir, we were able to transport it into a TEI file to dive deeper into the life of Elizabeth Grundy. With a TEI file comprised of the entire memoir, we began to mark it up by tagging words or phrases in the writing that we thought would be important: placeNames, persNames(person names), roleNames, objects, health, emotions, and events. All of this work did not help us answer our research question, but it was the first, and most important, step to do so.

Before we marked up our TEI file, we made a copy in a electronic document of our completed memoir to use for Voyant Tools. Voyant is a text analyzer that allows users to interact with their data digitally and also what my group used to gather the data found under the Visualizations tab. Voyant gives access to an extensive amount of tools that allows you to analyze your documents. Two key tools my group used in our analysis of Grundy’s memoir were Trends and Word Tree. Trends is a visualization that displays the frequencies of certain terms within a document whereas Word Tree shows the collocates of certain words. These tools gave us our first data to answer our research question because they help us, “perceive patterns in data that we may have otherwise missed”(Whitley, 187). Trends showed us that the words Grundy used most frequently were “savior”, ”jesus”, “god”, and “son” and Word Tree showed us that the first three terms were used in very religious ways(“dear savior”, “my savior”) and that the most used collocate for “son” is “my”, which means she loves to talk about her son. This helps us understand that while Grundy does pledge herself highly towards religion, she still loves her family a great amount.

Two more tabs that are visualizations but we considered to have more information are the Story Map tab and the Timeline tab. These two both engage users much more in the geospatial visual that Bodenheimer believes in. This geospatial elements is a, “complex relativistic view of space [that] has reinvigorated geography”(14). The timeline and story map help a lot with the understanding of this geospatial element. When I was writing and reading Grundy’s memoir, I never actually considered where or when it was all happening. This element actually helps me answer our research question. Based on our story map and timeline, we can tell that Grundy did move away from her family and her kids to be more involved with her faith. However, it’s not like she left the country to somewhere remote; she stayed very close to where her family lived. She even visited her daughter at certain times – one being when she gave birth and sadly passed away. This helps my group understand that even though Grundy’s allegiance to faith was very important, she still wanted to be close to her family. This would have been something I would not have pieced together had it not been for the timeline and story map.

The final tab we worked on was Moravian Women. In my opinion, this was one of the most interesting tabs because I got to read about other Moravian women other than Elizabeth Grundy. For this section, I went a read a lot of sections of different women from Professor Faull’s book: Moravian Women’s Memoirs. Of the few sections that were available for free, I was able to read about some single and married Moravian women. This was perfect because Grundy was a widow so, in total, I was able to read about three different types of Moravian women. This gave me so much information to work with. The single women I read about were Maria Barbara Horn and Eva Lanius. Horn was completely involved in the Single Sisters and devoted her entire life to it – she moved to America because her Savior wanted her to. It was much different for Lanius: when she was rejected she began to live her life normally. A direct quote from Lanius after she was rejected from the Congregation in Bethlehem was that she, “began to like the world again.” Yet once Lanius got later accepted into the Congregation, her faith was rekindled. This showed me that if a woman was allowed the chance to join the Congregation, then her life was 100% committed to her faith, yet if she wasn’t, then she was more committed to family. For the married woman I read about,Johanette Maria Ettwein, her situation was a little different. She was married to a brother of the church so her family and faith were connected. Ettwein could live happily with her husband and serve her Congregation at the same time. Something I did not include in the website but I found interesting, was some reports of Moravian men on Professor Faull’s website (katiefaull.com). One of the ones I looked over was of Johannes Jungman. When he was younger, his allegiance was completely to family; he did everything with his family and everything his father wanted him to do, including moving to America, helping with his father’s distillery, and learning copper works. After nearly losing his leg when his sister burned it with brandy, he decided to meet up with his neighbors who happened to be brothers of the Church. They got him to move to Bethlehem, ditching his family to join the Congregation. This gives us another source for Moravian lives and different allegiances to family and faith. In his early years, Jungman loved his family and did everything he could to help, but eventually moved on to give full love to his Savior.

Overall, we found many different relationships between the allegiance to faith and the allegiance to family in Moravian lives. For some, their entire life revolves around the Congregation and for others they grow up until they realize what they truly believe in. All of our Voyant tools and geospatial visualizations helped us understand these relationships. When we started this semester, I had no idea what to expect of this class, but it turned out to be a very in depth and interesting course.

 

http://grundyhumn100.blogs.bucknell.edu/

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final blog

Final Blog

After finalizing our transcriptions and analyzing them, we were able to create a website using WordPress. WordPress allows us to choose a theme for our specific website. We can then add different tabs for each part of our project. The different sections of our project consist of: about, memoir, Moravian women, storymap, timeline, and visualizations. In the about tab, each one of the authors added a short biography of themselves.

A short summary of Elizabeth Grundy’s memoir was provided in the tab labeled memoir. The next tab, Moravian Women, provides viewers with an analysis of Professor Faull’s book, Moravian Women’s Memoirs. In this book, many of the women speak of the struggle they encountered when choosing between family and religion. One of our group members analyzed the difference between single women and married women in regards to which they prioritize, family or faith. After researching the topic, we were able to find answers to support our research question, were there different relationships between allegiance to family and allegiance to the church in Moravian Lives? It was determined that single women tended to devote their entire life to religion whereas married women were able to find a balance between the two. Those who did not have a significant other had their life revolve around their Savior after joining the Congregation. For the married woman that was researched, her husband was a part of the Brethren Society. With this, he family life and religious life overlapped a bit; it was easier for her to focus on faith at some times in her life and family at others. This showed that there were, in fact, definitely differences in relationships between allegiance to family and allegiance to the church in Moravian Lives. From our research, it showed that it tended to depend on one’s marital status, and if they were married, who they were married to.

Storymap JS was used to map out different places in Elizabeth Grundy’s life and connect these places to each other. We were able to see where the important events in her life occurred and find relationships between them. We could determine where her important religious events took place as well as her familial events and see if they occurred in the same places or ones that were close to another. We were able to see if she had to drop everything to travel far for something else or if things were connected.

There were several different visualization techniques used when analyzing our transcription and determining the answer to our research question. “A digital edition can represent many more features than a print publication can,” (Pierazzo 472). Pierazzo speaks of the many benefits of using a digital edition over a print one. The visualizations tab on our website contains many subsections: Moravian Lives, Oxygen, TEI File, WordPress, Voyant, and Google Fusion.  Moravian Lives was the tool we used when first transcribing our memoir and gave us our first glimpse into the amount of times she spoke of her family and the amount of times she spoke of religion. It was very easy to realize, after reading through the memoir once, that these two things were incredibly important in her life, and her entire life revolved around them both.

Oxygen allowed us to create tags on specific words that we felt were important in analyzing the memoir. Our markups were recorded in a TEI file. This allowed us to see the amount of times she spoke of her family, i.e. son and husband, as well as religious figures, i.e. Lord and Savior. We could also see the different places she traveled as we tagged place names as well as important events. Through the tags, we had the ability to see which tags were near each other to determine if there were relationships among her two allegiances.

There is a subsection called WordPress that explains the usage of the tool in organizing our final project. We were able to use WordPress to put all of our research and information in one spot to help viewers in understanding our research question.

The Voyant tool gave us multiple ways to find determine relationships in her memoir. The specific tools we used were StreamGraph, Trends, and Word Tree. When thinking of our research question, StreamGraph and Trends provided us with the frequencies of key terms used throughout Elizabeth Grundys’s memoir. We were able to gain an idea of how often she spoke of her family and how often she spoke of her faith, determining which was more important to her at which part of her life. Word Tree graphed connections between key words and their surrounding terms throughout the memoir. We were given the ability to see if there was ever an overlap between religion and family. “With the tools that are now available, such as Voyant 2.0, Antconc, Jigsaw, Gephi, it is possible to extract textual digital data (plain text files) from transcriptions and/or translations and quantify and visualize verbal patterns,” (Faull 18). These tools give us the ability to analyze texts in different ways.

Google Fusion provides users with an analysis between two specific tags. We could see connections between key words and ones that surround them through graphs.

Menus are embedded in the website to aid in the navigation. Users can access information through many different ways. Users can also search key terms in order to find information on them.

With all of these tools, it helped us answer our research question that there are different relationships between allegiance to family and allegiance to the church. In Elizabeth Grundy’s case, she was able to find a balance between the two. Her son was heavily involved in the religious community which made it easy for her to prioritize both, often at the same time. Even when she ad a husband, she still kept religion as a priority. She moved to some areas for religious reasons and other areas for familial reasons. As she was dying, the most vulnerable point in her life, she had her son next to her while she spoke of religion. This exemplified the importance of these two things in her life.

Our group did not encounter many difficulties throughout the entire project and even when creating the website. Our main issue occurred when trying to incorporate menus into our site. They were difficult to figure out at first, but we were soon able to complete it. Choosing a website design and adding pages was easy to do.

I really enjoyed this class. It was something totally different from my major. It was nice to branch out and study new things. I found it very interesting.

 

 

 

 

http://grundyhumn100.blogs.bucknell.edu/

 

 

 

 

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Blog #5

Blog #5

The geo-spatial data helped us make sense of the history of our authors because it gave us a visualization we have not yet seen involving our memoir. We have used a timeline as a visual to allow us to understand what Elizabeth Grundy did over time, but a geo-spatial visual has allowed us to engage so much more into her life . The spatial element is a component of our memoirs that allows us to understand how Elizabeth Grundy traveled throughout her life. Bodenhamer described the spatial element very well as a “complex relativistic view of space [that] has reinvigorated geography”(14). He not only mentions that it is a view of space, but also that it plays an important role in geography. While transcribing and editing Grundy’s memoir, I never actually considered where this was all happening. I knew it took place in Northern England, but I could not connect the place names in my head; creating this story map allowed me to make those connections. Grundy traveled a lot throughout Northern England, but her stops were all relatively close. She was born in Chowbent, Lancashire, made a stop in Dukinfield, Cheshire, and then made three stops in Western Yorkshire (Baildon, Fulneck, and Huddersfield). I liked how in his article, Bodenhamer challenged humanists saying that they disregard geography: “[Geographic Information Systems] demands the use of spatial questions, whereas most humanists think rarely about geographical space”(24). The fact that humanists can do all this work and not take into account the locations where everything happens is mind-boggling. There are so many questions that can be thought up when considering the geography of a memoir: why is this space important?; is it well connected?; is it urban or rural? Questions like these can help readers understand the complexities of the history of a memoir. By simply finding the locations on a map, these questions can be answered. In Grundy’s memoir, her stops are all pretty well connected, not too far away, and they are a bit more on the rural side. From this information, I can deduce that this space is important because Grundy never wanted to move too far away from her children. She grew up with very strict parents and wanted to make sure that her kids never felt the same as she did throughout her whole life. This shows when she even went to visit her daughter in Huddersfield. Mapping is a great way to assign spatial-data to a memoir: “It aids but does not replace expert narrative”(Bodenhamer, 28).

 

https://storymap.knightlab.com/edit/?id=tracing-the-life-of-elizabeth-grundy

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Blog #5 Uncategorized

Blog 5

Elizabeth Grundy traveled throughout Northern England during her lifetime. When transcribing the memoir, I was able to read all of the places she visited, but did not realize the extent at which her and her son traveled. By creating a map of these specific places, I was able to match places with important events and determine which towns were important in her life. I had never really thought about which events took place where and the fact that not all of the important parts of her life took place in one town. They were scattered throughout Northern England but specifically close to Lancashire and Yorkshire. When reading the transcribed memoir, I was unaware that Elizabeth Grundy moved around as often as she did.

 

In a more general sense, mapping can be used to link together different pieces of history. “But what we can do is inform the present more fully with the artifacts of social memory, the evidence of recall from various times and various perspectives,” (Bodenhamer 26). Sometimes, historians have information about a specific event and where it took place but are unsure about the timing. If they find another event that is related to the first, and it occurred in a place nearby, they can link these two events together and estimate a date as to when it occurred. They can also link together different towns across the globe if they plot the linked events. “We select and interpret these cultural artifacts to frame our understanding of the past and present,” (Bodenhamer 25). Historians are able to come up with lists of important events that occurred in several different places and realize how complex each event was and the effort that was involved in each one. “We must direct technology if it is to help us open the past to the multiple perspectives and contingencies we know existed in the past,” (Bodenhamer 26). Mapping allows us to explore these perspectives and allows historians to draw conclusions that they are unsure of.

 

Some important story points in my map that I included were the places where she was born and passed away. I added the town in which she started her School for Girls because this was an important point in her memoir. I also added some background knowledge about her son and his wife that may be missed when reading the memoir because it is mentioned briefly. The reason I added a slide for this was because Grundy’s son was very important to her and this was something important from his life. I also added a slide of a town that related back to her parents and life when she was younger. It provided readers with a sense of how religion became such a large part of her life. Readers are able to gain a sense of how each of these English towns influenced Elizabeth Grundy and her family throughout her life.

https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/43564e909fe38e64bb34700eca852209/koczur-grundy/index.html

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