Author: Alex (Page 4 of 21)

Prompt: For Journal #3 Look back over your past humanities courses and assignments and identify three to four of the following: most memorable work(s) you encountered, questions you still think about, a sample of your work you’re most proud of or one you wish you could do over. Write a post that describes what you did then and what you notice about that work now. You’ll drawn from this initial “inventory” (to anticipate a term from Newstok) when you select a revision project.

Response:

1. Most Memorable Work: I think my most memorable work was probably a short story I wrote in Jesse Miller’s advanced fiction writing course. It was my first time being in a course where people were as passionate and serious about writing as I was, so I wanted to really try and do my best on our first assignment. The short story I wrote was title, “Allan Nash”. It was set in the 1960s and focused on the protagonist, Allan, and his relationship with one of the old men he delivers newspapers to. At the time, I got a lot of nice comments and helpful critiques that helped me grow as a writer. Even though my final assignment in Professor Miller’s class was to revise this story, I feel like there are things I can change to improve it. One of the biggest things I wish I could change regards the characters. I feel like I tried to include too many people and too many subplots to make a meaningful work, yet I’m proud of the dialogue.
2. Questions I Still Think About: Last spring, I took a course with Dr. Frank called “Victorian Monsters”. During this course, we would look at monster literature from the Victorian era and analyze their themes. A question that came up a lot during class discussions was, “What makes something a monster?”. To answer this question, the class did weekly QCQs on books/materials we read. The QCQs I created brought up a lot of questions for me based on different quotations and my comments to them. I won’t list all of the questions I had, but one that still sticks with me from this course was about how monster literature changed readers’ perceptions of sexual assault and if it had allowed individuals during the Victorian era to freely talk about those issues without it seeming “monstrous”. When looking back at the QCQ assignments, I noticed that I asked a lot of questions regarding Victorian society, so that could be something I could look into more.
3. Work I’m Most Proud Of: The work that I’m most proud of is from an independent study I did with Jesse Miller. The goal of the independent study was to look at what goes into writing a novella, such as character design, outlining, finding agents, etc. While working on smaller reflections and exercises, Professor Miller had me write about 70 pages of a novella. The novella I wrote is called “Caim and Abel”. It follows a man, named Abel, as he tries to navigate his life while being haunted by a demon named Caim. I’m proud of this work because it really pushed me to write regularly and to have confidence in my own creative choices. One of the things I noticed when looking back at some of my earlier chapters was just how dialogue heavy it felt, but in the later chapters, the amount of dialogue decreases without losing its meaning.
   • Sample: “It would have been easier if Quinn had been disappointed or angry at me for not going in, but he wasn’t. He never seemed to be angry with me. He never seemed to be disappointed with me. Quinn was nothing but supportive and understanding, even if I didn’t deserve that from him sometimes. Nevertheless, he smiled at me and stretched his arms in the air, soaking in the heat from the sun. God, Quinn was beautiful. He wasn’t necessarily fit, but he was lean, and tall, and his hair practically turned into molten bronze at the hint of sunlight.”
4. Work I Wish I Could Do Over: Honestly, I really wish I could redo most of my creative writing assignments based on feedback I received. If I wasn’t already working on the second manuscript of “Caim and Abel”, I would say that I would redo that project. I wrote a story in my short fiction writing class that could’ve been better. The story, called “Six Bullets”, was about an FBI-type agent who has her proposal interrupted by assassins. I rewrote it for my final and changed it to focus more on the characters rather than the action side of things, but it still has a long way to go. On the other hand, I took a grant writing course with Professor Miller a few semesters ago. While I got a good grade in the class, I felt like I could’ve done better on the semester-long project. We had to create a nonprofit and went through the grant seeking process step by step. I wish I could redo that project as I feel like my group tried to add too much into our nonprofit, so there was a lot of miscommunication when it came to the writing process.

Prompt: Part 1: We’ve been working towards a definition of the Humanities. For your second journal entry, think about how you’d explain their significance/why the humanities matter: what do you feel you gain personally by studying and working within the humanities? What do you think you gain professionally? What do you think of claim(s) for the broader social value of the humanities? Use Helen Small’s introduction to The Value of the Humanities as a starting point for your response. Part 2: Part 2 may feel somewhat disconnected, but one of our course goals is precisely to create bridges from your academic study to your professional work. Write a brief description of the kind of work you enjoy doing and/or think you’re well equipped to do. If you could invent your own job, what would it be? What kind of job is this, or what is the main purpose of this job? What kind of tasks would you perform? Which of your skills, training, or experiences would this job call on? How might you explain how your undergraduate study (including your humanities degree) has prepared you for it? In general, you want to think about the nature of the work, its specific responsibilities, the environment you’d work in, who you’d work with, and your qualifications and temperament/disposition.

Part 1: The introduction to Helen Small’s, The Value of the Humanities is primarily comprised of defenses for humanities. Many of these defenses discuss the meaning and (obviously) the value of the humanities within cultural, societal, and political contexts, yet I was drawn to Small’s third defense. The “least trusted line of defense” of the humanities regards the contribution the humanities make to our individual and collective happiness (Small, 5). This can also go along with her ideas of the humanities’ ‘intrinsic value’ on page 6. The humanities, unlike natural sciences, have meaning because of the people who engage with them. The passion and values that people assign to disciplines within the humanities are endless. Explanations and theories can never truly be right or wrong, as the humanities allow for a variety of viewpoints. In a personal sense, studying various disciplines within the humanities has not only brought me a sense of happiness and belonging (similar to Small’s third defense), but it has also helped me grow into a multi-faceted individual. I can see problems in the world that can have multiple solutions and consequences for different groups of people, and I honestly feel as though I’ve grown more empathetic towards people that I don’t necessarily agree with in political, ideological, or social settings. I think that my personal gains are also valuable within a professional context. I’m able to work with others and mediate problems that arise by looking at each solution carefully. Especially within an interdisciplinary context, the humanities has challenged me to use critical thinking skills and different areas of my brain that I feel I am able to adapt to different professional environments and ways of thinking. As our discussion said last week, the humanities, unlike sciences, is expansive and can bring heighten our perspectives and ways of viewing the world around us.

Part 2: I’m not sure I have a great answer to this prompt. My dream job isn’t exactly a job, but it’s something that I feel well-equipped to do. I want to be an author and publish books/works that mean something to people. I love creating characters, worlds, and problems that people can get lost in, especially when they need an escape from the world around them. It feels a little silly to write it out, as it feels like I’m a kid answering the question: “What would you like to be when you grow up?” I don’t know if I can really say what the purpose of writing is. For me, I think the purpose of writing (in the context of fictional works) is to connect readers to different ideas/themes/people/settings that they may not be exposed to in their day to day lives. If I were to answer in a regular conversation, I guess I’d say that there really isn’t a purpose to writing (again, in the context of fictional works. Non-fiction works have a purpose in exploring and passing on ideas/knowledge). I write because it feels right. It makes me feel whole and it’s something I genuinely love, even when the process of rewriting, drafting, editing, researching, and rewriting again gets frustrating. I’ve had a lot of experiences and classes regarding creative writing (and writing in general). The classes I’ve taken at UNE have ranged from creative non-fiction to grant writing, which emphasizes the variety of writing forms. Classes such as these have enabled me to take on different forms of writing without sacrificing my own personal voice. As an interdisciplinary studies major, I’ve taken many classes in the English, history, and philosophy disciplines as well as many natural science courses. This variety has forced me to use different parts of my brain and helped me understand different viewpoints and ways of thinking. As a writer, an interdisciplinary background not only helps me create plotlines, but also helps me develop realistic characters that have rich backgrounds and ways of viewing the world. It also helps me write characters with identities different than my own. Most of the time, writing is solitary, but I’ve learned how to incorporate others into the process through my classes with Professor Miller. The act of writing can be accomplished alone, but I’d love a space to collaborate with others through editing, brainstorming, or reading sessions.

Prompt: PART 1: During historicizes the term “humanities” in order to arrive at a suitable definition. By discussing what the humanities were, he attempts to describe what the contemporary field (or set of disciplines, or objects of study, etc.) is. Bod et al also work toward a definition of the subject whose history they set out to write. For this post, think about how you would describe the humanities to someone outside this area (how this field is different from, say, the social sciences or natural or physical sciences) AND think about the part of During’s or Bod’s articles that best helps you do this. Feel free to discuss parts of the article that muddy things for you, too. Which ideas might benefit from a little ventilation in class discussion? PART 2: Your annotations and work in Part 1 lay the groundwork for this activity, so this is a short one. Focus on “Projects” (p. 25) in Harris and write a paragraph that “expresses your understanding of [During’s and/or Bod’s] project.” Harris wants you to paraphrase and use at least one direct quotation. Makes sense. Since you’re reading two attempts to define the humanities, consider finding passages to make a text-text connection between the two pieces, and/or use one piece to note differences between the two projects: how does reading one article clarify what the other is trying to do?

Part 1: There isn’t one true definition for what the humanities are, as the term “humanities” denotes different subjects in multiple different countries. With an American point of view, I consider humanities to be the study of subjects that enhance our worldview while also leaving room for various interpretations of evidence, whether that be from historical and cultural studies, or from primary sources like literature or art. As During says, “there is no “idea of the humanities”. There is instead a humanities world: a loosely linked conglomeration of practices, interests, comportments, personae, moods, purposes, and values, and the various settings which these practices, interests, and so on inhabit” (During, 2). This is evident in the inconsistencies regarding the humanities throughout the world. Bod gives multiple examples of the humanities on a global scale, from a Westernized viewpoint to Islamic scholarship and Chinese practices (Bod, 3-4). Considering the multiple definitions and viewpoints regarding what the humanities truly are and what they encapsulate, I think that there isn’t a correct definition, or rather, all definitions are correct. It makes me wonder about the scope of how interdisciplinary the humanities are. If the humanities are interdisciplinary, is there a point where we have draw a line between it and social/natural/physical sciences or is there a way that humanities can be all-encompassing?

Part 2: Both the During and Bod pieces insinuate that there is no true definition of the humanities. However, where as During takes a broad approach to the humanities, Bod discusses cultural differences in how we attempt to define it. One of During’s attempted definitions states, “We must allow that the humanities can potentially focus on anything at all: things, texts, actions, performances, natural forces, individuals, animals, concepts, artworks, moods, money, beliefs, social structures, and so on” (During, 4). The claim that anything can be considered a part of the humanities is something that Bod touches upon, though not as explicitly. Bod attempts to ground the reader through Wilhelm Dilthey’s definition of the humanities, “Rather than explaining (erklaren) the world in terms of countable and measurable regularities, the humanities attempt to understand (verstehen) the intentions of historical actors; the specific objects investigated by the humanities are “the expressions of the human mind” (Bod, 3). After this grounding, Bod discusses the concept of humanities, especially from areas outside of Europe and America. Similar to the definition posed by During above, Bod’s recounting of humanities in a cultural/global context supports the idea that the focus of the humanities can be “anything at all”.