Final Project

This is a link to my final prject

Initially, I was thinking of extending my work on Twine project for the final project, but then I discovered that working on my Omeka project would be more fruitful since it will help me to crystalize and draw clear contours for my research interests. In this new version of the project, I conducted some editorial work to the content of the site. I also did some configurations to the site theme and its layout that would enhance the site’s accessibility. The significant thing I add here is that I included a third exhibits under the title of Arab Occidentalism. I decided to supplement the content of the site with this new trend because it represents a third and different wave in the scope of Occidentalism so the site would include a comprehensive survey of the major and different concepts in relation to Occidentalism. In the new exhibit, I included two pages that cite two major works done by Arab writers on the image of the occidental in Arab writings.

Visualization as a Reading Tool

After I finished reading Sinclair’s article on information visualization, I started to think on this digital tool in conventional terms. In other words, I wanted to find out how this tool can enrich my reading conventional reading of literary texts and how can I teach information visualization to my students? Is it only an assisting tool? Is it only to support our interpretation of literary texts? Sinclair points out that information visualization provides digital humanities reader with “evidence and argumentation.” This statement impels me to think of the function of visualization tool as a tool that can perform close reading of texts. As a reader, I can come up with an argument on a digital text and, based on Sinclair view, visualization can help me to pack up and support my argument with an evident, usually textual one. Does this mean that visualization tool can help us to escape the use of conventional critical theory approaches on digital texts?  Sinclair also points out that “visualization that contributes to new and emergent ways of understanding the material is best.” This can mean that visualization can provide many readings of the text. It even can add new readings that never experienced by readers. So, the question is what values can visualization add to digital text? Can we assume that visualization can interact with critical theory? In other words, how can literary critics benefit from visualization in shaping and reshaping their approaches to digital humanities texts? I agree with the point that visualization can do some functions that readers cannot do in their reading of literary texts such “providing additional insight into small amounts of text or data.” Sometimes the repetition of specific words is of a notable significance, however as a readers cannot count the number of times a specific word is repeated. In this instance visualization tool proves to be useful. Also, visualization tool is effective in a different arena where the reader can compare and contrast between different texts, a thing the reader cannot do in the conventional way.

The Walt Whitman Archive

I mostly attracted The Walt Whitman Archive project because of three primarily and preliminary observations. The first one is that I highly value the specific dedication of the project to a single author and the second one pertains the layout of the main page and sub-pages which makes ensures an easy access and navigation of the site. The third point is the myriad of knowledge the project provides for the reader. What captured my attention also is the way this information is presented to the reader. The editors seem to be painstaking one in the sense that they take care of everything. For example, I enjoyed having a look at some of Whitman’s images and I enjoyed most the information the editors attach to each image in the sense that I feel that each image is a story in itself.

On the other side, one more precise credit which makes this project interesting, insightful and instructive is the editors’ attention to the pedagogical aspect of their digital project. For those who are interested in teaching Whitman’s poetry, this project offers them with necessary and assisting material such as a samples of syllabus with detailed and timed assignments, tools and other supplementary online sources. Furthermore, the inclusion of the news feed bar adds more practical value to the project. First, it shows that this project is under continual update and the editors work hard to provide the reader with most recent scholarships done of Whitman’s literary heritage. Also, this feed bar also helps those who are interested in Whitman’s works to keep track of the activities such as conferences that are organized to discuss or commemorate Whitman’s scholarly achievements.

The Promise of the Digital Humanities

I am really impressed by the paradigms that Digital Humanities are anchored on. The mere idea of democratizing knowledge production and dissemination is influential. I also like the idea of Digital Humanities breaking with the traditional concepts of authorship and readership. Here, we are introduced to the new conception of the authorship as a communal and collaborative act. Even we have a new reader and different and innovative approach to literary text and the process of making meaning out of this text. I felt that the movement toward digitizing the humanities is an effective response toward the pressure that the humanities are encountering in the age of technology and science. The humanities teaching is always attacked on the ground of the assumed impracticality of its outcomes. Here, Digital Humanities comes to reasserts the strong connection between the humanities and practice. It also underscores the adaptability of the humanities in the age of technology in which the humanities and technology are involved to produce innovative knowledge.

Charles Bernstein

In these essays, Charles Bernstein addresses the attitudes and the way in which postmodern poetry is received. He preserves a critical and lamentable tone toward what seems to him devastating and demeaning views that intellectuals, poets and organizations and institutions interested in poetry versification express toward the new form of poetry. Attacks on this poetry stem from its assumed complexity which makes it hard for readers to enjoy reading it. This in return affects the marketability of this poetry which cause recessions in the presses’ and publication houses’ business. What is notable in these attacks is that they are encapsulate the poem as a commodity, not interested in its aesthetics effects or value. Thus, a good poem is that one which easy to read and by which the reader can the reader can experience joy and ecstasy. However, the new emerging poems is called “debt-poems” and “illiquid, insolvent, and troubled poems.” All the adjectives used to describe this poetry are usually used in business context to describe the ineffectiveness of a certain to generate much profits, and so does this poetry in the poetry versification industry. One more thing about this poetry is that it deviates from the norms and conventions of traditional poetry. This trend is problematic in the sense it causes “a massive loss in the confidence in the part of readers.”

In “Against National Poetry Month As SuchBernstein maintains the same tone. He also addresses the idea of the poem, the reader and the marketability of the poem. The disingenuous thing here is that the poem is valued in terms of its sellability and its competence in winning the interests of more readers. Therefore, Bernstein expresses his contempt to what seems to be an institutionally organized movement against “unpopular poetry,” or unsafe poetry for the sake of the more “safe” and “mainstream” conventional poetry. This trend is justified on the grounds that this new emerging poetry, besides its economic failure, articulates negative morals for the readers. On the other side, Bernstein sees that good poetry is what offers something unconventional and different. Good poetry has not necessary to be readable or accessible by wide range of ordinary readers. The whole thing for Bernstein is the idea of innovation and merging poetry with media and in this way poetry becomes really “matters”

 

Mark Nowak

http://teachcoal.org/lesson-plan-coal-camps-and-mining-towns

http://teachcoal.org/lesson-plan-cookie-mining

http://teachcoal.org/lesson-plan-coal-flowers

http://www.forsyth.k12.ga.us/coalmountain

What one can say about Mark Nowak book is that it is a book of education. However, I could not place it under a specific genre, or subject. This book is an amalgam of storytelling, professional lessons plans, manual that can be used in laboratory experimentation. So, is it a book of literature, science, or instruction for teachers? One more thing is that I could not decide if he succeeded in gathering all these things in this book. He deploys three lesson plans dedicated for students aiming at exploring a material and real phenomenon, coal mining. He also incorporated different stories of different people showing some the tragic events that take place in relation to coal mining. These stories seem to be factual that are derived from real incidents happened to coal miners and their families in China. He also incorporates his own story. So, the question now is how to relate all these components of the book to come up with an argument that Nowak is trying to reveal to the reader. As shocking and surprising thing in this book that it exemplifies a premeditated plagiarism. As the attached links will tell you, the title of the book is taken from a name of a kindergarten school located in the State of Georgia. Furthermore, all the three lesson plans are copied and pasted from the American Coal Foundation website with minor changes that Nowak in the layouts of the plans.

 

Mark Amerika

Mark Amerika’s piece title seems somewhat confusing when matching it with its content, so I felt that this piece should be entitled as, How to be an Internet entrepreneur? At first glance, the original title foreshadows some pieces of advice on how to be an internet artist for those who wish to have this experience. However, it appears to me that Amerika means the other way around, what does it mean to be an internet artist? or why you should not be an internet artist. He expresses his satire and critique toward the decline of art in the age of technology and business. Art, business and technology all intersect in Amerika’s piece. However, his language is mostly techno-economic such as branding process, e-commerce, niche market, brand-name, income, consumerism, career, industry leaders, revenues, internet capitalism, tele-dildonic, testosterone economy…….etc. Art language is disappearing amongst the techno-economic one. This would lead to suggestion that Amerika is alluding to factual circumstance, that art is diminished or transformed within this capital consumer-based economy. In other words, art has been undergoing gradual commodification in the internet domain. It has been utilized by industry leaders to produces maximum revenues. Internet art, as Amerika, shows has been reframed and molded in accordance with modern marketing techniques to motivate “post-literature mass of e-consumer.” Precisely, its mechanism relies on seduction, temptation and “dry-humping” of the consumers. What internet capitalism, which art involves in, does is producing “fake identities,” which in return, partake in the mass’s delusion. They address the consumers’ feelings and emotions in order to evoke him to “Be” an e-consumer.

Reflection on Claudia Rankin’s work

This response is a kind of general reflection on Rank’s work. As the reader moves between Rankin’s lines, s/he notices the oscillation between first person pronoun (I) and second person pronoun (You). Rankin by the use of (I) is clearly involved in some of the scenes she projects, but what about YOU? It seems that YOU refers to an external audience, but this audience is not identified. It is not clear whether Rankin has a specific audience in her mind or a large scale of audience. I don’t think that she invites the audience who share her the same race because they are familiar with the experiences that she write about. It seems rather that she address those people who are unaware or different to these experiences. She call these readers imagine themselves in the situations she portrayed, and then to reflect immediately and urgently on their reactions to them. This premise leads to the assumption that margins left in some pages under the stories are allocated for the reader to write down his reflection or commentary.

One more thing about Rankin’s poetry is that are tend to be sung. As I read, I felt that she is singing these lines which are full of emotions. This characteristic make her poetry effectively provocative. Her poetry is also situational. It comes out the spur of the moment in connection to a certain circumstance accompanied by the feelings, behaviors and events linked to this situation.

Rankin’s poetry atmosphere is apparently gloomy. Her poetic lines are infused with anger and despair. This trend is attributed to the kind of issue she tackles in her poetry, which is racism toward black people. However, she deploys this issue in a plain and simple, but political language. The final observation about Rankin’s poetry is her incorporation of sports as potential mediums in which racism is practiced. She recurrently refers to the case of Serena Williams, a well-known American ‘black’ tennis player and the case of the Algerian team in World Cup 2006.