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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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Blog #2

Blog #2

Research Question: How do the frequent terms within voyant relate to the theme of John Willey’s memoir?

 

The memoir Rosemary, Jacob, and I transcribed is written by John Willey’s children after his death. Willey was a honorable servant of the Lord in the Brn Church. Willey comes from a religious family; his father, brothers, and himself all held active roles in the Church. Unfortunately, John Willey’s mother passed away when he was just six years old. But Willey’s courage and love allowed him to still live a great and loving life. Willey’s eventual passion for religion at 21 years old gave him the faith and love for something greater than himself. Willey attended and taught at religious schools, growing love for his pupils. Eventually, Willey was given the honor of becoming a minister, one of his goals in life. Later, Willey marries a teacher he worked with, named Susan Hutton, whom Willey had four children with. One of his daughters passed away in her early infancy. Despite a long and happy life, Willey suffered through medical issues his last six years prior to death. Most of his vital organs were affected, and Willey was mostly unable to commit to his duty to the church. He maintained a positive outlook on life through his suffering. Willey was still extremely faithful and believed everything would workout well. All he wanted to do was get back to his duty as a minister. The memoir ends with Willey’s family comforting him through song as he passes away. Willey and his family maintain positive up through his death, believing he is leaving his suffering to go be happy with the Lord. Overall, the memoir of John Willey is an excellent story of a man who lived an honorable life as a servant to his Lord, and eventually had his spirits lifted to be with the Lord.

 

The Willey memoir consists of 3,519 words in total. Of those words, 1,106 were described as unique word forms, displaying the complexity of Willey’s texts. Additionally, Willey’s memoir seems to have a pretty standard sentence structure to todays writing, considering the average sentence length of 33.5 words. Through using Whitley’s tool described as distant reading, I was able to see the key patterns emerging in Willey’s text. For example, illey’s frequently appearing words are years, time, great, Lord, life, love and Jesus. This leads me to believe that Willey lived a happy life, filled with faith. Through comparing Samuel Tippett’s memoir with Willey’s on voyant, there are some clear patterns emerging across their lives. For example, both these memoirs are filled with religion. Common words emerge, like Lord and savior, clearly portraying both these men’s passions toward religion. Additionally, love is a word appearing in both texts, perhaps showing that their faith towards religion promoted a sense of love in their lives. Overall, through examining Willey’s and Tippett’s texts, and skimming through a bunch more, there is a clear sense of a passion towards religion in these memoirs. This is very interesting, considering the different locations and time periods these men lived their lives.

 

Visualization, is a tool especially prevalent on voyant, which was introduced to me by the Whitley reading. Almost every tool I worked with on voyant has some form of visualization to it. For example, the cirrus is an excellent resource for compiling all the key terms. Then, using collocates is a great way to further examine which of those words often relate to each other. For example, I noticed that great and years often appeared near each other, as well as savior and Lord. This leads me to believe Willey had great years in his life and viewed his Lord as his savior.

 

Through examining voyant tools, as well as reading through the Willey text, my research question was clearly answered. There is a very clear connection between the frequently appearing words, and the common theme of Willey’s memoir. For example, the words like years, great, Lord, love and Jesus all clearly portray that Willey’s life was a happy one filled with religion. This is reflected in my reading, as Willey devoted his life to his religious workings and seemed to be happy with this choice. Willey also used his faith to maintain happiness in his suffering toward the end of his life. Similarly, Whitley explains how human brains are able to easily notice patterns in their reading. Interestingly, voyant tools put all those patterns in one place, allowing me to notice the same themes I picked up on while reading.

 

 

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Blog #2

Blog #2: Distant Reading

The document, Harriett Lees + Family was a memoir about a thirty year old women, Harriett Lees who was born on February 11th, 1811 in Woodford cum Membris, the country of Northhampton. She was a wife to thirteenth brother, William Lees, and a mother of two sons. Her marriage on June 4th, 1838 William Lees sparked and advanced her religious beliefs. She was became a member of the Brn’s Church where she found herself attending regularly. She was extremely religious and believed God “will not lay upon us more than we can bear”. She often quoted the bible throughout her memoir, which was very compelling. Two instance in her life where she demonstrated her spirituality and religious beliefs was when both her brother and sister passed. She was distraught and found that attending chapel was the best way to cope with her sadness. When others recommended staying home instead of attending chapel due to her poor health, she would respond ‘”I am able to go, the Lord blesses any soul more than the effort injures my feeble frame'”. She would attend chapel as long as she had strength. Harriett Lees’s “health was delicate” and “she was often subject to bad colds attended by severe cough” (5). She struggled with her  health through her pilgrimage and two pregnancies, which ultimately led to death.

After transcribing and reading the fascinating text, Harriett Lees + Family, Hailey and I became very interested on the research question, what is the typical language of a married sister in the Moravian church? When responding to our research question, the use of Voyant was useful and helpful. This tool highlighted the most frequent words and phrases in our text, making it easy to see what was of importance. It offered us a way to look deeply into the text and observe what hardships she faced and how she overcame them. Voyant is an efficient and more pleasing way to gain the important information needed from a long text. For example, some words cirrus highlighted were sister, savior, time, strength, church and mourning. With the most frequent words displayed, I was able to make some accusations about the text. For example, with seeing the word strength and time, I was able to understand that Harriett’s health was at stake. I was also able to sense that their was tragic events and her emotions were scattered with seeing the frequent words mourning. And at last, seeing the common words church, God, and Savior demonstrated that Harriett Lees was extremely religious. Voyant is helpful in many other ways as well. For example, Voyant showed me that the Harriett Lees memoir Hailey and I transcribed is 2,099 words and includes 731 unique words, which I found slightly surprisingly.

Voyant was also useful because it featured the key and distinctive terms in the memoir. Hailey and I used the Memoir of Br John Willey to get accurate distinctive words from the Harriet Lee’s Memoir. The words that were displayed include tho, fit, partner, oh, and lee. The one word that is most relevant and of importance to answering our question we proposed is “partner”. The distinctive word “partner” was used when discussing Harriet Lee’s marriage with her husband. This was significant in throughout the memoir when William supported Harriett through her sickness and births of her two children. There marriage was strong and they shared a true love with one another. Voyant helped me make connections and understand the memoir a lot better than I had before.

One of Whitley’s methods I used throughout this process is visualization. Visualizations sparked new ideas and questions about what I was transcribing, which was very fun! Three specific ways I used spatial reading on Voyant was through the tools of cirrus, collocates graphs, and bubbliness, which is shown below. Bubbliness visualizes and distributes the terms in the text, while collocate graphs represent key words that occur in close proximity. Cirrus is another visualization tool that measures the top frequency words of the text. All three ways are a unique way to analyze text.

https://voyant-tools.org/?corpus=df109f8e08232a569e886362ca2e885b

My personal favorite method  I used throughout this process on Voyant is spatial reading. Spatial reading is the “idea that reading and understanding large amounts of texts can be overcome if the information is transformed into a more spatial manner/ representation because it can be explored by our visionary processes (Whitley 194). I find spatial reading very effective and more enjoyable than sequential reading. Another technique I used in this process from Whitley’s reading is distant reading. Distant reading is “the act of stepping back from the text you’re reading and study the “broad patterns that emerge when you consider a wide swath of texts”(188). I started looking at the most frequent words and their contexts, which provided me a lot of important information.

 

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Blog #2

Blog #2

The full transcription which I entered into Voyant had a total of 3,807 words with 796 unique word forms. There are an average of 1,269 words per sentence. Visualization tools like Voyant make texts much more understandable. Our Moravian memoirs were challenging to grasp, and so using Voyant helped me greatly. Voyant allowed me to interact with the text in a new way and helped me to answer our research question of how religion and faith play a role in Samuel Tippet’s transcription. The Cirrus word cloud and the Corpus Terms allowed me to view the frequency of words in the text. The most frequent words in the corpus are heart, times, time, poor and love. The Cirrus word cloud presents frequently used words in  larger text for emphasis. This is a practice of spatial reading, which I found to be very helpful. Seeing texts in visual form allowed me to view the text more clearly. As Whitley explains, “such visualizations help us to perceive patterns in data that we might otherwise miss” (187). The Corpus Terms provided me with data that showed exactly how many times each word was used in the document. It was interesting to see that the word “heart” was used 31 times and that “Jesus” was used 13 times. These tools exposed the very religious nature of the text. “You find your perspective broadened through a series of unexpected discoveries” (185). Through Voyant, I was able to participate in Distant Reading, a concept explained in the Whitley text. Through Distant Reading, I was able to make connections and see the greater picture rather than closely reading every text and miss important aspects of the memoir. I might not have been able to draw such conclusions about Tippet’s memoir through reading it plainly without Voyant. These tools “challenge us to read texts differently than we otherwise would” (186).  The bubble tool shows the key words which are most frequently used as the ones with biggest bubbles which makes it easy to visualize rather than reading terms off of a list. I like the visualization tools because they allow me to understand the information better.

Tippet was born in 1711 in the Parish of Bitton. He discusses his struggles in his family life. His father died when he was quite young, and he relied on God to get him through this massive loss.  It seems that he is troubled and due to some dark statements throughout the piece.  He mentions that he, “wishes he was never born”. He criticizes himself extensively and describes his reliance on God in order to move past issues in his earlier life. By asking ourselves the question of ‘how does religion and faith play a role in Samuel Tippet’s transcription’ we are able to analyze and understand the writing better. This question also helped us to compare Samuel Tippet’s memoir to Esther Latrobe’s memoir. For the Esther Latrobe memoir, the key terms were lord, dear, god, let and savior which is why our research question on religion pertains to their piece as well. The key terms for the pieces combined are Lord,time, heart, dear, and oh. The many tools available in Voyant allowed me to analyze and understand these memoirs. Tippet’s memoir is much shorter than Latrobe’s. Latrobe’s memoir is a much longer piece with 8,460 words. Using some of the tools such as terms berry, tells the Voyant user that the word ‘God’ was used 26 times in the Latrobe memoir.

http://humn10001fa2018.courses.bucknell.edu/files/2018/09/voyant-screenshot1.pdf

http://humn10001fa2018.courses.bucknell.edu/files/2018/09/voyant-screenshot2.pdf

http://humn10001fa2018.courses.bucknell.edu/files/2018/09/voyant-screenshot3.pdf