In Closing

When initially reading the blog post requirements, I wasn’t exactly sure how it would work. I had questions such as: will individual ideas clash with group ideas? Will everyone actively participate? However, after our first group meeting in class I felt confident that these above questions wouldn’t be an issue. I liked how we set it up, that we would rotate each week on who did the comments and posts. Even though we decided to switch off each week with wrote the post, we still interacted as a group. Each week the person sent the post to everyone before they finalized it. This system worked out positively for our group because it allowed everyone to be included, and up to date, with what we were writing about.

As I stated above, I do feel that our blog group and the system we used worked out. I think the main component that worked out was sending each other our blog posts each week, before we posted them. This way we could give our group members, constructive feedback, and help if we saw needed. I cannot think of anything I would change because, I believe that we worked well as a blog group and we adequately produced posts, expressing our thoughts on 19^th century literature.

Looking back, and re-reading our original manifesto, I noticed we did not follow it entirely through out the semester. We had originally intended to focus primarily on beauty, and it relation to literature. While some of our blog posts did incorporate, elements of beauty and imagery, some did not. However, I do not see this as a bad thing. I like that each of our blog posts were different, and showed the individualism, within the whole of our group.

I recently read the blog post by 372 eco, titled “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” as a parody on Western Fiction. I found this post to be particularly interesting because, we did not have time to discuss this writing in class. It gave me an opportunity to see another opinion on the piece, and take into consideration new thoughts. I agreed full heartily with this piece, in regards to it being a western parody. This blog post points out, that the piece successfully allows readers an insight into the western world, yet it does so along the lines of comedy. Overall, I enjoyed this piece and was glad someone decided to mention it, since we did not have time in class.

Overall, I learned it is possible for four individuals with different literary outlooks, to mesh together and share similar ideas. While we did not write every post together, I can honestly say I agreed with every post written by my blog members. They revealed to me components of literature I had not previously thought of, and I hope I shared my knowledge in the same way.

—Claire

 

I had high expectations when we began this assignment (and I have not found myself disappointed!); I figured that, since we were all in the same upper-division English class, we would most likely be able to find a lot to talk about. I wasn’t completely sure how sharing the burden of writing the blogs would work, but my group mates managed to figure that out pretty quickly (the only thing I could think of was highly impractical–that we would each write part of a single blog entry every week. Why that was what I thought of, I’ll never know). I was looking forward to seeing a variety of perspectives on each text, and I think that the blog assignment as a whole really brought in that component. I think that I would personally definitely do it the same next time–what we did seems to have worked out quite well. I’m not sure how closely we ultimately adhered to our blog manifesto, since we initially sought out to specifically explore imagery, descriptions, and other literary devices that defined the works from the time period we have studied. In fact, in looking back over the blog, we seem to have gotten kind of far from that. But we did go to some interesting places and I think that we all learned quite a lot. Overall, I think that this was a great assignment, and I believe that I improved my abilities to collaborate with other people and think critically in a group setting.

—-Shandra

 

My expectation of this blog, to be honest, was that it was going to be a chore. When I first heard of the blog option before reading the requirements I thought that it would have been something that every person had to do individually. I was so pleased when I read the requirements and realized that we could work in a group as well as divide the work how we as a group saw fit. As with any group work, I know I worry about people actually doing the work and it not all being my personal responsibility. I am so pleased with how the blog, Quadrupeds, actually worked. I knew Taylor and Shandra from a previous class and wasn’t nervous about working with them. Claire was a new addition to our group and she fit in just fine. After her first post I no longer had reservations. Overall I had a positive group blog experience.

—Emily

 

I think this blog assignment has been a valuable tool throughout the semester that worked actually almost exactly I had hoped and as our group outlined at the beginning of the project. As we had discussed, each of our four members took turns completely a blog post and comment each week. With extremely hectic college lives, I think this arrangement worked absolutely perfectly. It is often very challenging to meet up in person with groups, especially with four people, when every individual has different schedules. Also, emailing back and forth amongst all of us would still have left one person with more work to do than the others since we would need to synthesize all the ideas into a cohesive post and comment.

The week by week structure allowed us to bypass these issues and made it much easier to complete the assignment each week. Further, the amount of work didn’t amount to too much to handle since each of us posted once a month. We still collaborated by sending the posts and comments to each other before posting so we could give feedback, maintaining the group project aspect while also being more efficient. This structure was also beneficial in another way though — each member of the group was given the opportunity to address whatever aspects of the texts we read, in whatever context, that we wanted to. While we are all reading the same texts, every person gets something slightly different out of them and pays attention to slightly different things. By taking turns, we were each able to engage with whatever interested us without any persons voice begin marginalized. I would definitely structure this assignment the same way if we were to do it again.

As for our blog manifesto, I feel like our group did an okay job adhering to the ideas we put forth at the beginning of the semester. Our manifesto was focused largely on beauty in literature, in its many different forms, which we didn’t always discuss so directly. However, we did sometimes, and I feel our other posts were still discussions very important aspects of the texts. We also connected the literature to present day issues if applicable which was another major point of our manifesto.

I think these contexts did help us understand each topic better, but I also feel like we could now make the manifesto better having completed the blog and really understanding our roles and the things we focused on in our posts. Overall, I think this blog was a really helpful way to vent ideas about the texts that we were either really drawn to or that we didn’t have time to address in a short hour and fifteen minute class. I also think it was a good tool for developing ideas for papers, so that by the time a paper assignment came around we had already done critical thinking about ideas that interested us in the text. It’s a really good assignment in my opinion because, it not only provides an easy way to boost our grades by simply completing the blog, but it also is a method of outlet for everyone’s ideas that allows everyone else to interact with, but in a setting that is removed from the classroom (where some people don’t like talking in front of the class). It was a very engaging assignment that added another dimension to the class.

— Taylor

 

                We the Quadrupeds are in agreement that this assignment was very interesting and a great success. Our group worked very well together, and each individual contributed some very important and thought provoking issue in every post. Despite not following our manifesto to the t, we still came out with rewarding discussions that we think makes up for it. It turned out better than expected and we would recommend this assignment for future 372 classes. Thanks for a great semester!

—QUADRUPEDS

Kate Chopin—You Go Glen Coco

“She was the first woman writer in her country to accept passion as a legitimate subject for serious, outspoken fiction… She was something of a pioneer in the amoral treatment of sexuality, of divorce, and of woman’s urge for an existential authenticity. She is in many respects a modern writer, particularly in her awareness of the complexities of truth and the complications of freedom.”

-Per Seyersted, 1969 in his biography on Chopin

Kate was born in 1850 and died in 1904. She was born as Catherine O’Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri. In Kate’s family she was the only one out of five children to live past the age of 25. When she was young her father was killed in an accident, forcing the family to move. They moved in with Kate’s Grandmother and Great Grandmother. All three of the adult women were widows. Farther more Kate’s Great Great Grandmother was the first woman in St. Louis to legally obtain a separation from her (ex) husband (katechopin.org). After the separation she continued to raise 5 children as well as ran a shipping business. Needless to say Kate comes from a long line of successful, driven and strong women. At the time, this was unique; it also carried over into her real live and her literary works. Her characters were mostly sensitive, intelligent women. She was a married woman when she was 20 to Oscar Chopin who was 25. After they were married they moved to New Orleans, Louisiana. Together they had 6 kids before Kate was 28 years old. Kate herself was a widow at 32. Before Oscar died he was not such a good businessman, his business which was involving cotton and supplies like sugar, flour basically a General Store, took a hit. This forced the family to move. Her life in New Orleans had a large influence on her writing. She was known as a color writer and a feminist writer; because of her characters as well as including local dialect in her writing. In 1894 Kate traveled to Western Association of Writers in Indiana (katechopin.org). Here she published an essay, this is a quote from it.

“Among these people,” she says, “are to be found an earnestness in the acquirement and dissemination of book-learning, a clinging to the past and conventional standards, an almost Creolean sensitiveness to criticism and a singular ignorance of, or disregard for, the value of the highest art forms.”

“There is,” she continues, “a very, very big world lying not wholly in northern Indiana, nor does it lie at the antipodes, either. It is human existence in its subtle, complex, true meaning, stripped of the veil with which ethical and conventional standards have draped it.”