Liam's English Blog

Getting Started by Cohen and Rosenzweig:          The short chapter, as I believe it is, discusses the matter of where you should start when designing a website. Cohen and Rosenzweig say that you should think of yourself as an architect, and not try to design the plumbing before the foundation when building a house. While critical elements are still important, getting bogged down in the details can hurt more than help. In the case of building a website, you should be more concerned with the basics of what system (email, word documents, etc) works best before jumping into more complex technology (i.e. the details). Cohen and Rosenzweig also encourage readers to think about what kind of website they're trying to create, whether it is one with a "zoomable" map that can be interacted with, or just a series of essays with complimentary pictures to assist the thesis. Building An Audience by Cohen and Rosenzweig:           As the title s...

Literature Reviews:          The first of two documents on literature reviews, this document explained the most important aspects to consider. A literature review is based on the idea that you want to summarize the key ideas of an article. That is the simplest explanation, although the document also mentions that you can include synthesis, the reorganization of information, to better serve your purpose or reinterpret the document's data. The document also has much to say on the organization of a literature review, stressing that this is one of the most important aspects of writing one, as the bit on synthesis suggested. Lastly, a focus on the relevance of your sources, how current they are, and how many you need is brought up. Literature Review Workshop:           This document had more of a practical direction, as it was more concerned with directing students to create a literature review from two abstracts. As the abstracts were...

Clement: Where Is Methodology in Digital Humanities?        The article seemed to be focused on how Digital Humanities incorporates social studies and other scientific information. Clement brought up Michael Buckland as one of the most well-known theorists. His theory was of the three kinds of information: information as knowledge, information as thing, and information as process. The first, information as knowledge, is subjective and personal according to Buckland. Information as thing is more tangible and requires physical expression be it a sign or communication. Information as process allows researchers to narrow down a very specific sect of information for analysis. Tan: Four Ways to Show the Value of UX Writing        Tan focused intently on making information more accessible to people with lower reading levels, more objective pursuits, or just less time. Throughout the article she discussed and provided examples for becoming a better...

"Introduction" in "Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019"          Gold and Klein seem to be focusing on the actions of DHers in our current 2019 landscape. They discuss projects, such as digital mapping, that Digital Humanists have created as a means to help those suffering in the wake of hurricane Irma and those affected by child separation. This last point brings the article to its political leanings, as it clearly does not favor the current political headwind. In fact, it refers to these methods as ways for Digital Humanists to "resist" the current agenda that has become common place in the United States. Of course, when this agenda is referenced as "racism, sexism, xenophobia, and generalized vitriol," one can probably understand the authors' desire to find ways to "resist." What's Next: The Radical, Unrealized Potential of DH          Posner's article seems to be focused on the difficulty of projecting visualiz...

Thematic Research Collections:        We focus in this article on thematic research collections, or as Palmer later abbreviates it, thematic collections. These are a collection of primary and related sources that all focus on a theme, collected into one archive for the convenience of scholars. Palmer gives examples of these thematic collections through referencing The Dickinson Electronic Archives  and The Walt Whitman Archive .   In a simpler sense, all the works that are brought together into these electronic archives come from either print or manuscript sources, bridging the divide between standard text and electronic sources. Print Scholarship and Digital Resources:       Warwick's article, similar to Palmer's, is concerned with the mixing of solid books and electronic works. Warwick discusses the complex matters that go into the work processes for creating a solid anthology or collection of texts and information as opposed to buil...

A Political History of Digital Humanities:        This reading, like past readings, seemed to focus on defining what Digital Humanities both is and is not. Digital Humanities prefers lab based research and digital projects to over reading and writing when it comes to studying the humanities. The article also focused extensively on the onset of computers in scholarly learning, the creation of "computer specialists" who were mostly librarians, and their poor worth in the eyes of literary scholars. Jerome McGann and his Rossetti project are mentioned, as well as the necessity of computers in compiling the data required. And in the face of all of this, Digital Humanities is created from the anger and disdain carried by growing Digital Humanists as literary scholars looked down on them. The Scandal of Digital Humanities:       The article was about how people seemed to think that Digital Humanities represented and encouraged Neoliberalism. The aut...

What Are Digital Humanities?             The reading reading that we focused on had one question it sought to answer, and attempted as much through a myriad of ways, but overall the question was simply: what is digital humanities? The answer, of course, was not a difficult one as the author pointed out by googling the term in question and arriving at a fairly straightforward, if a bit lengthy, definition posited by Wikipedia. Kirschenbaum goes on to explain how digital humanities started as a small series of studies, but has grown in popularity over time. People identify as digital humanists and efforts have been made to spread the ideas and values of digital humanities as new ideas gain traction.              I'm still at work wrapping my head around digital humanities as a whole, which in turn may be the problem. Digital humanities seems to me, and indeed seems to be defined, as anything quantified or qualified, s...

April 15-19         As the semester once again comes to a close, I'd like to take a brief look at the increased activity we have and reflect on the semester as a whole. As anyone could have expected, the week prior to finals week is crunch time for many students when it comes to papers. As such, the writing center, a place that, for me this last semester, has been fairly quiet and slow, has been a bustle of activity, creative solutions, and satisfied students. Indeed, the sudden flood of students in the last week would've caught me off guard if I hadn't already completed a semester here in the writing center, but I can say with the utmost certainty that I've enjoyed every minute I've spent with my appointments and walk-ins alike. There is a kind of hidden satisfaction to working as a writing consultant - seeing students come in, having them tell you they're lost on how to continue or approach their paper, but then watching them leave with a renewed sense of d...

April 8-12           Despite not having many sessions this week, it feels like I did more than I have in quite some time. I had two sessions, one being more of an advising session than anything else. The more intensive session was on Monday, and this is what I'll be focusing this particular blog entry on.           The student that came in to see me on Monday was a walk-in and was trying to write their history paper on the Crusades. I say trying because the first thing they said to me was, "I'm freakin' out, so I really hope you can help." Of course, this always puts a bit of anxiety on me as the tutor because it hints to me that this particular student is not only having trouble with their paper, but also on the direction they want to take it. My fears seemed warranted when the student told me that they had only one primary source, which, as I understand it in relation to a history paper, is akin to only having one scholarly source...

April 1-5          Almost had a full week of sessions this week, as students are starting to get their final papers before finals week. Most of these sessions revolved around students being unsure of their own writing capability, but as I've found, most of their papers were quite sound, needing only minor tweaks to grammar and occasionally structure. For that reason, I wanted to focus on something else today instead of just the session and the students' papers: writer confidence. It's an indisputably important aspect of writing a paper. If you don't think you can do something, or just don't want to do it, that can harm your long term ability to put forth any effort on your assignments.          That said, the primary problems in both sessions that I will be citing was this lack of confidence in the students as writers. In one session, the student was writing a paper on Tolkien's Faerie , the idea of fantasy and magic, but feedback f...

March 25-29         Activity is starting to speed up in the writing center, if the last two weeks are anything to go on. Just last week, I must have had 4-5 sessions, making about half a week's worth of sessions for me, good for this semester, while this week I got a very similar number, close as I can recall. Friday felt like the busiest time, however, as my short hour and a half slot had both appointments booked, and I filled in for Kensie's last 45 minutes. The sessions I had on Friday were both relatively simple (I even had a return visitor from one of my past sessions, which is always nice), but both sessions revolved around one thing in particular. Works cited pages and in-text citations. In the first case, it was a matter of being unfamiliar with APA format, while the second was having trouble citing non-scholarly sources, such as the page on a gaming website.          The first student brought in a leadership paper, standard fair...

March 18-22        I actually managed to have a full day of appointments and walk-ins this Monday! The other days were devoid of activity, as usual, however I'm expecting things to pick up as final paper assignments are handed out and we approach finals week. But back to Monday. Three full appointments, two for assignments that I myself am, or was, working on. So needless to say I was familiar with the details of those assignments and capable of helping the students that came in (personal friends of mine). The third, well second technically, appointment I had was a bit of a different story.         The paper that the student had was a business ethics paper, and they were having trouble with citations, grammar, and a clear thesis. As per usual, I asked if there were any places in particular they wanted us to look at, after I read their introduction to see where their paper was coming from, of course. The session went on in a fashion of wh...

March 11-15         The first week back from Spring Break, I wasn't expecting any more appointments than usual, but to my pleasant surprise, two students came in for a walk-in session in the middle of the week. I'll focus my discussion on these two, emphasizing in no small way my relief and pleasure at being able to help student's better their writing ability. It does feel like it has been quite some time since I last evaluated any sessions of mine, but such is the Spring semester.         The first session was simple: a student brought me their cover letter and wanted me to read and give my thoughts on how it sounded - were they answering the questions they were trying to, did it sound "good," and what advice could I offer. The session went fairly quickly, as I was happy to say then, and still am now, that their letter was structured well, adhered to proper grammar practices, and had no misspellings. The only suggestion I made to them was th...

February 25 - March 1         While this week ended with a client coming in for a regular session, the vast majority of the week was spent without any - a common occurrence lately. I will admit, with such a drought of students coming into the writing center this semester, at least as opposed to the Fall semester, I'm beginning to run into difficulties with finding topics of discussion for these posts. Perhaps then the best topic to be discussed in the absence of regular writing appointments - for indeed, the appointment that I did get this Friday was just a simple read through that necessitates little mention - is our continued need for advertisement among classrooms to encourage attendance. The problem, as I find it, with the Spring semester, at least for writing center attendance, is that the majority of the appointments from the Fall semester, those being from Freshman, may no longer consider the services of the writing center as fondly as they did when they fi...

February 18-22          The weeks continue to be uneventful, though I did manage to have one student come in for a walk-in on Wednesday. They were interested in having a second pair of eyes on their paper for feedback purposes. The session itself was rather uneventful as well, however it did make me realize/think of something that I will be discussing here, that being how consultants should have a few basic steps that they cover at the beginning of every session. This would differ from the usual steps of explaining the writing center's services, and focus more on basic steps to get a session rolling, so to speak.          The thought occurred to me as I was starting the session and had to double back a few times for clarification on the assignment. This strikes me as a result of not having many students come in lately, but I feel compelled to make a short list of steps that consultants (and myself) can follow if they're having troub...

February 4-15         This will be a relatively short post, as I continue to go through my time in the writing center twiddling my thumbs. That said, I do expect next week to pick up, as midterms approach and paper assignments are handed out by professors across campus. I would feel concerned that all this free time has dulled my ability as a tutor, but for two things: 1) we're usually advising on structure and other errors, which are easy to spot, and 2) Winter Break wasn't enough time for me to forget my usual methods of advising, so a couple weeks won't be any different.         Now, I believe in a previous post I discussed the merits and drawbacks of taking sessions outside of the writing center. I also said I would discuss this idea further in future posts, so I feel somewhat obligated to continue where I left off. To readdress the perceived problem, there are students who are nervous when discussing their work, and while we have small s...

February 4-8        This week passed as uneventfully as the last in terms of consultations I received. That is not to say that the writing center was empty during this time, however. I noticed several appointments being fulfilled by my peers, notably those with longer shifts in the writing center. It occurs to me that I would be in a similar position had I the time to work a four hour shift this semester, but alas time is not so forthcoming this Spring. Instead of discussing sessions for this week, as I have had none, I think I will consider something more "interesting" or at least worthy of discussion. That is, the location of sessions and the effect it has on a student's 45 minute session.         I will need to expound on this, of course, as the idea is still in its infancy in my own mind, but the basic gist is that I've been thinking about students that may be too shy to speak or give their input during sessions, leading to a one-sided se...

January 28 To February 1         It would seem that I'm regretting the words that I wrote last week, as the slowdown this week was unbelievably poignant. Not a single session all week, and while that gives me time to reflect and talk about expectations for the coming semester, I'd still prefer the happy conversations of having some appointments. But all of that is beside the point now - I think I'll try and dedicate this blog to students that give me the most trouble and how I might come to manage them better.         Even with that set up, it's a bit of an exaggeration. I've never quite had any student that "gives me trouble" per se, more they just come in and expect me to fix things for them. When I try to adapt to their request, maybe pointing something out that they should focus on or asking focused questions, it's a 50/50 chance that they respond well and understand that this is my best way of helping them, or simply looking from their p...

January 21-25          "It's Spring semester, so we're going to be a lot slower now," were the words that I was told in preparation for my first week this semester. However, I can happily say that I have not found this to be true after taking a whopping four consultations this week. Of those four, only one, my consultation just this Friday, was difficult. I believe that the increase in my availability has given room for this drastic change in my number of consultations so early in the semester. Last semester, I was lucky to get one consultation during a four hour shift, but now I'm averaging one consultation a day in a two hour shift.           Moving on to the meetings themselves, I'll focus on Wednesday and Friday, as those were most significant. Wednesday was wonderful! The two students that came in were prepared, ready, and willing to work. The first consultation was all about grammar, but not in the usual sense that we might re...