Blog Post #13 (2, 6, and 7)

Blog Post #13:

Mark Sample argued that one of the most unspoken assumptions both students and faculty make is that writing is always writing for an audience of one. This statement is correct, not in that we write for an audience of one, more so that there is an assumption in the academic community that our writing has the intent to merely be read by one. One of the ways we changed that earlier in the class was by doing a group discussion and reading someone else’s post from the blog. This forced us to tailor or work in a different manner, because typically we write or have written to succeed through the eyes of the teacher and tailor our work in that sense, however now we needed to write at a substantially quality. This not only causes our grades to go up, which I know we all enjoy, but more importantly it allows to practice becoming better writers, because we are needing to appear as more intelligent so that we can become a credible source of knowledge.

Through the analysis of other individual’s work we also need to, in a sense, become teachers, because it is the work of our friends and peers that allow for us to do better and become better writers. This has made us better writers, because it allows for us to learn from constructive criticism and gives us the ability to practice reading our peers work in the hope to make them better writers as well. I have been able to do this in other classes, because having the opinions of a classroom of peers has truthfully enhanced our vocabularies to the point that each of us, at this time should have essentially become walking thesauruses. As for my work alone, there has been a steady improvement in my grades for this class particularly, but other classes as well. Although, it could have been me coming out of the summer academic coma at the start of the semester, but I do not think that is the case, nor will I allow myself to think that is the case.

An additional example of providing evidence to my work is that a friend of mine was struggling with a creative writing assignment, so I took the initiative and sat down with him as he and I bounced ideas off one another. Once he had printed out the initial rough draft, I came in with the red pen and marked up the paper in order to make it flow better, so that his audience (of more than one) would be engaged and interested in finding out how the story actually was going to end. Mind you, I have never done a creative writing class, nor have I gotten the urge to sit down and write creatively myself. He turned in the paper after altering the revisions, and his teacher was blown away, because he had been handing in C+/B- work the entire year. However, on this one occasion, with a helping hand along the way, he was able to turn in an A paper. I do not think that this class is the sole reason that he was able to turn in that caliber of a paper, but the writing skills that he gained through sitting with me and verbalizing everything made all the difference in his grade, for that one specific assignment.

Blog Post #2:

Dime novels made their biggest climb in becoming some of the nation’s “go-to reading material” during the mid 1800’s. This was done because a nation that was primarily built as a working-class society was just now beginning to relate to people in similar situations through reading stories published by people living the same lives they were. The fascinating thing about the early dime novels was that the ones that did not take place in cities, were most likely written by people who had never been to the places they were writing about, but were merely writing a collection of stories based around stereotypes and generalizations.

The audience of dime novels was the type people who were living a life by barely squeaking by in America, along with that much of the audience were immigrants and those that knew language as something that is spoken rather than written. Knowing this, the publishers and writers began to use intellect and dialect to their advantages by using incomplete sentences, words that were only spoken, which came of as sounds to emulate tone more than anything, because they knew who was buying the material. “The ideological debates over dime novels and the working class that I have outlines were precisely such an exercise of cultural power, drawing and policing a boundary between the genteel and the sensational.” Michael Denning continues, “This boundary was a moral as well as aesthetic one, dividing the culture of the ‘middle class’ from the ways of the ‘lower classes’, and giving very different inflections to apparently similar stories” (Denning 59). This merely proves the ability these writes had in targeting the cultural power of the middle-class to that of the lower class, and essentially creating a microcosm of morality and aesthetics for what was going on between the societal differences of the classes.

The origin of dime novels was created in newspapers that had a series of repeating sections and stories, which allowed for the stories to grow and develop into a legitimate profession. “The place given to sensational fiction in two newspapers, the Workingman’s Advocate, a national weekly ‘devoted to the interests of the producing classes’ and the Labor Leader, a Boston weekly that was close to the Knight of Labor, indicates a complex range of responses by the organizers and leaders of working-class culture and politics to this new commercial cultural form” (Denning 42). Once again these stories targeted the working-class individuals that resorted to this material as relatable and were targeted due to their social class. This quotation also shows the roots in where dime novels originated from, which were in fact a series of weekly newspaper installments that were from newspapers with the sole purpose to target class.

Dime novels, unlike other economic factors, strived during periods of recession. “Paradoxically, the dime novel business seems to thrive in periods of depression. Cheap books were most successful when regular book publishing was in disarray, when prices were generally depressed, and when the cost of printing and writing labor was low” (Denning 19). These cheap books emerged during the Panic of 1837, slowed down when the panic was over, reemerged during the Panic of 1857, once again slowed down, and finally the nickel and dime novels emerged during the Panic of 1873. (Denning 19) Once dime novels emerged, they took the place of cheap books in a permanent fashion by dominating the publishing community due to their price and accessibility. The lower-class reading audience during this time was too poor to purchase actual books that held any sort of legitimate literature, however instead of giving up on reading all together, they began to pick up dime novels. And once they hit the shelf, the economics of the printing had effectively been altered.

Citation

Unknown, Author. “Beadle’s Dime Books. Novels and Library of Fiction; Biographies; Song-Books; School Series; Hand-Books for Popular Use; Hand-Books of Games, &c.; &c., &c.” The North American Review 99.204 (1864): 303-09. JSTOR. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/25100563?ref=no-x-route:9023346eb6f46ad47ecf379e9c718fb7&gt;.

2 Questions: 1) Dime novels began to die in the 1920’s, why did they not reemerge during the Great Depression? 2) While the lower and working classes were reading dime novels, what were the 19^th Century elites readings?

Blog Post #6:

Westward expansion brought two primary vastly different elements into eastern culture, which was the notions of the West being a land of adventure, barbarianism, savagery, and uncivilized nomads wandering a barren wasteland. The other element was the impact of presenting a myth such as these notions to untraveled and unknowing eastern peoples. A quotation from the authorless PDF file seems to touch on the notions as previously stated, and the myth that is created about the West,

In looking at the history of the American West, it is important to keep in mind the myths that arose around the settling of the West in the second half of the nineteenth century. In his famous paper presented at the American Historical Association in 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner described a uniquely American personality forged by the experience of taming the wilderness and critical to the success and growth of the United States. That view of the West as a frontier where heroic white settlers and cowboys struggled to bring civilization to a savage land framed popular and scholarly thinking for years to come.^{(Footnote 1)}

While this block quote does not directly discuss the ideas about an untraveled and unknowing eastern people, it does however suggest that there is a myth in the settlement in the West. Upon further reading, the myth stems from the original Lewis and Clarke Expedition that followed the purchase of a vast unknown territory, which involved many dangers that were then made open to the public.

Coincidentally the other hyperlink that I chose was also about the teachings of Fredrick Jackson Turner, while his last reference was in regards to the myth of what the West is. The other quotation is, “Drawing upon notions of Manifest Destiny and the supposed Anglo-Saxon will to conquer, Turner argued that the American character and American institutions were definitively shaped by the recurrent necessity of having to subdue an ever-advancing western frontier.” This quotation could be addressing the eastern families that are sitting on their butts, which merely view life as a linear journey in that they are born, grow up, marry, have children, and die. Turner is encouraging people to explore the West and take advantage of the open space that comes about through the ideas of Manifest Destiny.^{(Footnote 2)}

The final hyperlink I will be discussing further proves the point of the preconceived notions of the West that hold no truth. The final quotation will give insight as to why people would move out to the West. “More pointedly, it designated the action-packed adventure of capture and rescue, disguise and revelation, pursuit and escape, that were generally set in Western territory—be it the western New York of the mid-eighteenth century or the Wyoming of the late nineteenth century.” The book edited by Bill Brown, once again authorless, continues, “In these frontier settings, law appears as mere luxury, major and minor disputes were resolved violently, and the moral order is momentarily stabilized only by the superior strength and intelligence of a handsome, well-built hero. Violence was obviously part of the attraction.”^{(Footnote 3)} This entire book is on the influence of Western dime novels, however this section draws the reader in by talking about the typical formula of what makes of the so-called “West”. This author seems to represent the myths as presented by Turner, because the West was not always settled in man to man combat, however dime novel authors continually presented the material as such.

Citation

1. Turner, Frederick Jackson., author. “The Problem of the West.” Article. The Atlantic Monthly. Volume

78, Issue 467, September 1896, pp. 289-297. From Library of Congress: The Nineteenth

Century in Print: Periodicals.

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/ncpsbib:@field(DOCID+@lit(ABK2934-0078-42_bib)) from the webpage http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/primarysourcesets/westward/pdf/teacher_guide.pdf.

2. Turner, Fredrick Jackson. “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Frederick Jackson Turner.” National Humanities Center, May 2005. Web. 09 Dec. 2014. http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/gilded/empire/text1/turner.pdf.

3. “Reading the West: Cultural and Historical Background.” Reading the West: An Anthology of Dime Westerns. Ed. Bill Brown. Boston: Bedford, 1997. 1-2. Print.
4. Guinn, J. M. “HISTORICAL DEBRIS, OR THE MYTHICAL AND THE FABULOUS IN HISTORY.” Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California Los Angeles.Vol. 3, No. 2 (1894): 67-75. JSTOR. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/41167585?ref=no-x-route:13df1c0abf40892f953d1a952b991320.

2 Questions: 1) How did the West eventually draw in the Easterners, when all they were reading was about the dangerous myths? 2) How were fights handled in the East compared to the West?

Blog Post #7:

My first blog post was underdeveloped, and lacked serious insight that I have gained throughout the progression of this class. Since the first blog post I have gained valuable insight as to what the studying of digital humanities does, and how it has the potential to enable a new style of learning, which can be put to use in other classes. This allows for a greater understanding of ways to present material to people in ways that would have otherwise become unknown. Now when a teacher asks for a presentation in a class, everyone else will continue to choose a PowerPoint, because that is the easiest way to do things, but what I have gained the ability to do is to have new insight on the development and utilization of ideas through a new medium. A digital map that has the ability to link together geography and time becomes much more interactive and, quite frankly, more fun to present, which allows for the audience to have a different form of a visual aid from PowerPoint’s, which more often than not dull the audience aside from the teacher.

Through the creation of our project our group, with the fearless leadership of “Group Leader” (also known as Matt Massey), has prompted, encouraged, and demanded excellence in all areas of our presentation. His Mock Grant Presentation demonstrated what his idea of a digital road map is supposed to look like, and truthfully I would not want to have anyone as a group leader except for him. The combination of Jack and me has given the group a bit of life as Jack handles the preparation of the map, Matt does overall analysis of the dime novels, while I enter and compile a list of 25-30 dime novels into a variety of cells.

The influx of technology in the 20^th and 21^st Centuries have allowed for our group to have access to some of the most essential technological improvements. “There has never been a great age of science and technology without a corresponding of the arts and humanities.”^(Footnote1) This quotation goes to show that we have all this access to extremely impressive mediums of technology, and that if we do not utilize them effectively our project has the potential to appear mundane and regular. The objective however is to not appear as mundane, because in order to keep the audience excited about the material in front of them they need to be engaged. Through our interactive digital map, we are able to track the progression and significance of Western dime novels, and how the years that they were published could have influenced the overall transformation from being a country based in the East to a country that uses its’ full spatial potential expanding from coast to coast.

Citation

1. Davidson, Cathy N. “Humanities 2.0: Promise, Perils, Predictions.” PMLA 123.3 (2008): 707. JSTOR. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/25501892?ref=no-x-route:91303938398af6498a44a9ac22794be7&gt;.

Group Post 12/1

One of the most important aspects of creating a Digital Humanities project is to draw in the reader with fascinating and enticing visuals. In this way the opening to a website is very similar to a strong topic sentence, which has the ability to draw in the audience and make them want to learn more. With a weak opening or topic sentence, an audience will most likely be less inclined or hesitant to continue exploring the page. When each of us were assigned to do an analysis of a Digital Humanities project, we were able to point out the strengths of the website, as well as the weaknesses. The aspects that we looked at were as specific as analyzing the font, font color, stylistic set-up of the page, and presentation of the content. Through these forms of analysis our group has been able to critique our own site, in order to make the overall content and presentation better. One of the areas that we ran into an issue was during the decision to figure out whether or not to use Caps Lock with a smaller font, or to use the same size font, but with a different font. Ultimately we decided on using Caps Lock and a smaller font, because a site that keeps font consistent allows for a more fluid reading and comprehension of the project material.

The overall influence of visuals pretty much makes, or breaks the potential of a site, because if it is overcrowded with pictures and videos it will be hard to read, and if there is not enough, than it will look like a dictionary, which is not very welcoming. One of the other things that is important when talking about the presentation of visuals is that while they are important to have, if there are too many the site will appear as congested and will become obvious that the contextual evidence is weak and therefore space needs to be filled with pictures. Fortunately for our group, we have been able to create a balance between contextual material and the usage visual imagery. Another important thing to do is to not make the website look like a dictionary in the sense that it would be taken over with words.

One of the projects that I was able to analyze was the Greenfield Foundation and Bryn Mawr College project, which focused on the improvement of women’s rights and liberties as they have progressed throughout time. It lacked some very serious components that our project would like to have in there, such as video interviews rather than audio interviews and it lacked a timeline. Our project will heavily focus on the aspect of having a timeline, for ours will primarily be an interactive map, which can be organized depending on the viewer’s discretion. Our project also differed in overall content, because ours emphasizes time and space, whereas the Greenfield/ Bryn Mawr project focused on the content and analytical aspect. Ours will serve as more of a database and collection of dime novels and when they took place, which will allow for more of a spatial and temporal organization.

Blog Post 11/17

The idea of collaboration is essential to a project like this, because it allows for the input of others along with the criticism of others. Each of these two elements is essential to the idea creating the best ideas, because we can see what other people have to say. Luckily for me, Jack and Matt are both very smart people so there ideas are often well received. When discussing collaboration, it is important to discuss the notion of team chemistry. Jack, Massey, and I are all pretty good friends out of class as well as in class, but this means that each of us are able to tell one another if we are doing something correctly or incorrectly. If criticism is presented to any of us, it is not taken personally, it is merely taken as trying to find the best answer for the betterment of the group, which would not have any impact on our out of class friendship.

Due to our outside of class friendship, we do not take criticism, as anything other than merely criticism, so our friendship remains intact. Collaboration is important for our project, because of the diversity of our backgrounds, so we each bring a different perspective to the table. Our group is able to function well, because no one person’s opinion means more than anyone else, unless it is our team leader keeping Jack and I on track. Typically I would say that working with peers could be difficult, especially because sometimes it is hard to hold one another accountable if people from the group do not feel inclined to do equal work, because they know that it will get done either way.

Personality conflicts can arise throughout most groups, but once again the chemistry that our group has enables us to maintain a positive relationship both in and out of the classroom. Knowing that the 3 of us will be friends after this class is great, because it creates the perfect combination of criticism and positive energy that lets us make the best product. Some other groups may encounter personality conflicts, but Jack is very easy going and will find something interesting in small things, which brings a unique dynamic to our group. Massey is the perfect team leader for us, because his idea was the most thought-out and well presented, he brings the aspect of organization to our group, which may have been difficult for Jack and I to do without Massey.

The thing that is exciting about a collaborative project is that different areas will be stronger than other areas, because people who work harder will be noticeably more knowledgeable in the subject. Whereas those who sit back and let the others do the work will be noticeably ill-prepared and therefore would receive a lower grade. Collaboration allows for each of us to contribute in our own unique way, but collaborating gives insight into what the other members are thinking in the aim to creating the best possible idea for the project.

Group Post due 11/24

Matt Massey, Jack Williams, and I have been working on a scholarly project that combines statistical analysis of Western dime novels and to try to recognize trends between years, location, characters, plots, and the publisher and author’s tendencies. Our group’s objective is to create a map and to place each of these trends onto the map, which allows for a different approach to teaching and learning from static text, because by doing this we are able to combine modern technology and what is understood to be “ancient” forms of media. Dime novels allow for us to see what the general public was reading during industrialization and urbanization, whereas if someone in the future wants to see what we are reading today the most likely place to start would be to look at our Facebook’s, or start reading our texting conversations. In reality many of the people my age are not reading unless they have to, so this means that most of the reading this generation is doing is done through texting one another.

This project differs from a typical research paper, because the essential elements of writing a research paper are based on writing in chronological order, the organization, and the overall generic-ness that embodies a typical research paper. What digital humanities allows us to do, is to put an unorthodox spin on the idea of getting information to the general public, whether that is through blogging or using social media to our disposal. There are many similarities that will never change throughout time, and these similarities are doing the fundamental research, citing the sources, and finding a medium to present the material (although digital humanities allows for a wider variety). The fascinating thing, about this class specifically, is that although our current focus has been on the progression of our projects, the students continue doing work with a similar medium as other classes, except we post them to a blog as well.

Jeffery McKlurken is correct in the idea that digital humanities is different from any other form of learning, because as the world develops and progresses the worldly inhabitants need to be able to access new forms of media all while using these new forms of technology. As a history major, research papers have become my calling, but that was while I was thinking single-mindedly, but this class in particular, but other digital humanities classes as well, have expanded my single-track mind and allowed for a new way to approach information. There is a gradual evolution of schooling and education, but as our world develops, it becomes harder and harder to keep up with the new ways to access information. If we look at the progression of how schooling has taken place, it starts in literal ancient times, which consisted of mainly spoken word, and that was the way to expel knowledge to one another. Then it evolved to using paper and handwriting everything, from there the first keyboard came out in the form of a type writer, but that was not good enough yet, so the digital era made its’ initial push when the digital keyboard attached to a monitor was invented. From digital keyboard and monitor, the digital era started coming up with new things almost year to make learning, educating, the presentation of material, and the technological advances all to make education easier. The remaining question is where will we go from here?

Group Post #2

When we look at our country’s history and growth, it is important to notice where we came from. So in this website analysis I will be looking at some of the information that prompted our western settlement. The interesting thing about western settlement is that America owned the land, the Native Americans’ occupied the land, most of America was living in cities, and there was no formal institutional set up west of the Missouri River.

America owned the land from the Louisiana Purchase. This land was explored with the Lewis and Clark expedition and throughout the Oregon Trail and California Gold Rush of 1849, more and more city folk were beginning to expand to the West. American cities were very focused on industrialization and becoming prosperous. That was one of the targeting subjects in dime novels, because the objective was to focus on the working class individual and their ability to succeed in becoming the hero.

Native Americans were also targeted in dime novels, because the publishers and writers saw them as an easy target. They were stereotyped as aggressive, “red-faced”, uncivilized, savages. In the reading for my group project I learned that the Natives, used the general stores (mainly to buy liquor) that the Western Settlers used with little segregation. However, the Sioux tribes in the Dakotas were not as pleasant and their reputation held true, because they did not like people being on their land.

The general progression of western settlements typically started the same. It started with fur trappers and wanders using the rivers to set up trading posts, but people needed to work the trading posts so people looking for work started the adventure into the unknown to become residents with jobs. These residents needed to be primarily self-sufficient, until trading posts started having enough people to be established as a settlement. Once these settlements started having enough people and started to set up shops, they started to become towns with more and more permanent residents. Once towns became larger, some of the residents would move into other areas of the West. The growth of the West should be credited to fur trappers establishing trading posts, these posts turned into settlements, and the settlements into towns.

My discussion questions are 1) “How did the establishment of cities in the East and towns in the West differ?” 2) “How major of an impact did the Native Americans have on the growth and expansion of the West?” My quotations are “They were bold hearts who first found passage over the yellow flood, and established their homes in the heart of the wilderness.” I chose this quotation, because of the poetic nature of the writing. And “Proper care for such demanded the building of houses, usually of logs, sometimes of earth, or even stone, and the gradual development of the Indian trading-house into a general store, where white as well as red could find their necessities.” I chose this quotation, because of the historical relevancy and accuracy when discussing the influence of Native Americans.

Parrish, Randall. “The Beginning of Settlement in the American West .” The Beginning of Settlement in the American West. Legends of America, July 2011. Web. 09 Nov. 2014. <http://www.legendsofamerica.com/we-settlement.html&gt;.

Group Blog Post 1

Click to access teacher_guide.pdf

This link was really intriguing, because of the teaching methods that were discussed. One thought that was suggested was to put yourself in the shoes of settler and to attempt to write a letter home to an Easterner that would try give them insight into the new Western way-of-life. That section alone could be useful to our group project, because it could instantly start a discussion around what life was like in the American Westernization and how difficult it would have been to switch from the East to moving into the unsettled West. This was a Primary Source that also went on to talk about how immigrants were part of the new West, especially with their role in the settling of California.

As a secondary source, I have chosen to use the book “West of Everything” by Jane Tompkin, because this book serves as a historical novel. The fact that it is a historical novel creates an interesting perspective when trying to figure out whether to examine it as an English book or a historical book. Historically speaking, it talks about the role of women and the role that death played in the settling of the West. Through an English context, the story is a fiction that is written through a personal narrative that has characters that emulate historical figures such as Buffalo Bill and Zane Grey. This is similar to dime novels, because historical figures were often involved in the stories.

This dime novel, like many others, used historical figures and created their roles to be different than what they actually were in real life. The dime novel also makes Native Americans look like devilish, uncontrolled, uncivilized, savages based on the way they were drawn. They were colored with red faces and skeletons on their backs while they danced around a dead body this was one of the reasons that the West and Native Americans started to be stereotyped as a land full of uncivilized savages.

http://daveschifrin.com/2010/05/26/reminder-arizona-is-awesome/

The image in this link that I am specifically discussing is the picture of Monument Valley. This picture focuses on openness and free space that embodies the West. It shows how open the West is and the image aims to make that the focus of the shot, because the sky is full. This image itself is very notorious for embodying the West and this landscape is one of the most popular images when talking about the West and its’ ideals. The image (on the same page) with the full moon has an extreme focus on the sky, which in the West is one of the most ideal images, because the sky becomes full of stars due to the fact that there is less light pollution. This is important to the project because images are one of the key insights for visualizing the West.

Assignment 5

Michael Woods

Professor Belanger

Blog Post #5

9/28/14

In the final two chapters of Mechanic Accents, something is brought up that we have been discussing as a class. And in these two chapters, we finally got the insight we need to help answer the question, “How did women influence dime novels?” They heavily influenced dime novels and even had their own genre of romantic mystery. One thing I learned about dime novels was “Almost all dime novels have a romantic plot; the strikes and murder mysteries are intertwined with seductions, romances and rivalries in love.”[1] Just as in our current era, the late 19^th Century was full of winning over a woman’s heart in two primary distinctions. The manly approach, which consisted of fist fighting and the other approach, was by self-improvement, which consisted of making improvements on themselves to prove worthy enough to have a woman’s hand.

In the current time men have to fight less and less due to the wide variety of individualism taking place in the 21^st Century. One of the reasons a woman often fell for a man through the “manly” approach was, boxing was the most popular sport of the time and a man who could fend for physically fend for himself made him more attractive. “The ‘fistic duel’ as it was called in Tony Pastor’s dime novel, Down in a Coal Mine, has a place of honor in these stories; it is a ‘salient experience’, a structuring event in the history of ‘manliness’.”[2] An expression I live my life by, probably due to my upbringing, is, “Chivalry never dies.” This can be classified as one of the ways to get a woman’s heart by self-improvement, by showing your character to a woman, she may be more inclined to pick you over someone who is less inclined to show his true character. A quotation in Mechanic Accents that suggests this is, “Often this education is tied to the romantic plot; both John Armstrong and Job Manly fall in love with their teachers. The ‘ladder of love’ propels the heroes to self-improvement in order to be worthy of the women they love.”[3] This quotation pairs fairly well with a quotation from Nineteenth Century in Print, “works of self-help and self-improvement, from advice on domestic economy and agricultural practice to hints on how to acquire the attributes of personal gentility that might speed one’s entry into a higher social class.”[4] This quotation gives insight to how self-improvement is not only used to find a mate, but could even be used to climb the social class system.

The University of Delaware article brings up the quotation from Virginia Penny, who worked as a schoolteacher, “Descriptions include the effect on the worker’s health, wages, time required to learn the business, prospect for future employment, and the comparative superiority or inferiority of women to men in each field.”[5] This quotation clearly states how women knew that they were an inferior gender during this time, and that men dominated all the fields of work in terms of health, wages, and assimilation period in the workplace. These are arguments that are made by women in today’s world as well. Mechanic Accents, also sheds light on the idea of a male dominated society when Denning writes, “Job Manly is himself a rhetorical figure, a personification of a ‘manly job’; and David Montgomery (1979, 13) has noted of the word ‘manly’ that ‘the craftsmen’s ethical code demanded a ‘manly’ bearing toward the boss.” His point is enhanced when he continues writing, “Few words enjoyed more popularity in the nineteenth century than this honorific, with all its connotations of dignity, respectability, defiant egalitarianism, and patriarchal male supremacy.”[6] Male supremacy has been an issue with all aspects of equality in the workplace and in domestic life, because men tend to base their claims that they have the right to be supreme for they are the bread winners of the house, or they are too stubborn to acknowledge the indifference of the sexes.

The Young Brides Book by Arthur Feeling brings up ideas of an amiable temper, conceal faults, and of a womanly influence. Each of these things suggests that women of this time did not have the strength to tell their man that they were angry, because they had to conceal their faults (even though men have faults too, they just did not realize this back then), and had to subtly influence their man’s world. The quotation that caught my eye was, “pleasant cheerful wife is a rainbow set in the sky, when her husband’s mind is tossed with storms and tempests; but a dissatisfied and fretful wife, in the hour of trouble, is like one of those fiends who delight to torture lost spirits.”[7] It caught my eye partially because of the beautiful literature and phrasing that is used, and partially because it agrees with the idea I brought up about women lacking the strength and confidence to tell their man something was wrong. Within the dime novel Leonie Locke; or The Romance of a Beautiful New-York Working Girl, an issue arises between the main character, and the person who she falls in love with, that happens to be a criminal. “The plot, which is a series of abductions and escapes, pivots around two issues: the problem of the cross-class marriage with its contraries of love and money, and the dilemma of a forced and false marriage.”[8] In both quotations, the issue of not having the strength to stand up to their man becomes an issue.

The issues brought up in these dime novels of a “manly” persona, self-improvement to get a female, the inferiority of females, and the issues of a cross-class marriage are repeated throughout many dime novels. Reoccurring themes are common within dime novels, due to the plot formula, which always has the middle and working class succeeding. But these two chapters begin to shed light on the female’s role in the working of dime novels, and their overall influence on the late 19^th Century in regards to the workplace and the domestic life.

2 questions

Why did Michael Denning wait until the final two chapters of his books to talk about the female’s importance to the dime novel era?

Why are women continually attracted to the man that beats up another guy for her love?

http://www.oberlin.edu/library/special/popular/dime_novels.html

This article talks about the origin of the dime novel and why it was so widely popular. This article also talks about why many issues were made about The West and Buffalo Bill. Many authors helped create this page. Citation found below.

Authors, Various. “The Walter F. Tunks Collection.” Oberlin College Library. Oberlin College, n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2014. <http://www.oberlin.edu/library/special/popular/dime_novels.html&gt;.

[1] Denning, Michael. “Arthurian Knights in Connecticut Factories.” Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working-Class Culture in America. London: Verso, 1987. 170. Print.

[2] Ibid. 175.

[3] Ibid. 171.

[4] Authors, Various. “Nineteenth Century in Print, Books: Special Presentation- Self-Help and Self-Improvement.” Nineteenth Century in Print, Books: Special Presentation- Self-Help and Self-Improvement. Nineteenth Century in Print, n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2014. <http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/moahtml/mncspself.html&gt;.

[5] Fisk, D. E. “University of Delaware. Defining Her Life: Working Women.” How Women Can Make Money, Married or Single. University of Delaware, 1870. Web. 28 Sept. 2014. <http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/women/working.htm&gt;.

[6] Denning, Michael. “Arthurian Knights in Connecticut Factories.” Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working-Class Culture in America. London: Verso, 1987. 170. Print.

[7] Feeling, Arthur. “The Young Brides Book.” Nineteenth Century Advice Literature. Nineteenth Century Advice Literature, 1849. Web. 28 Sept. 2014. <http://www1.assumption.edu/WHW/advice/ideal.html&gt;.

[8] Denning, Michael. “Only a Mechanic’s Daughter.” Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working-Class Culture in America. London: Verso, 1987. 189. Print.

Assignment 4

Blog Post #4

The influence of current events in dime novels was truly astounding to me, because I had no clue that some of the stories in dime novels were taken from real life occurrences and merely paraphrased. The plot formula that is used in these stories always has a “hero” that serves as the protagonist opposite a “villain” or antagonist. That is the general rule of thumb for all stories; someone has to win and someone has to lose. However, the brilliant thing done by these writers was in the choosing of who is the hero was going to be. They often chose the working class individual, because it allowed for the audience of readers to have something to relate to, rather than merely liking a character. The hero was not always American either, which allowed for an even wider audience to read these dime novels, because this gave immigrants a break from continually being targeted and allowed them to become assimilated as American citizens with an ethnically foreign background. “And though the hero, Harry Morgan, is Welsh, the story is careful to show, as one Irish character says, ‘that although there may be some mean, misguided Irishmen, we are not all as black as some would paint us’” (Denning 132-133). First, this quotation goes to show that the hero did not always need to be an American, and it actually enhanced the amount of followers of dime novels, because now immigrants were not being portrayed as “dirty”, “foreign”, or “mean”. Second, the quote defends the plot formula that is used throughout dime novels. Third, it brings to light the differences between newspapers and the way that dime novels perceived the current events in the media. The purpose of newspapers is to demonstrate unbiased news that informs the general public. The amazing difference between newspapers and dime novels is that newspapers had to print the truth, whereas dime novels could print what they wanted. In the case of the Molly Maguires the events seemed to be more of a paraphrase than an actual demonstration of how events unfolded, and this is shown through a quote on page 128. “Thus Doyle’s fictionalization of the vigilante Wiggins Patch murders of December 1875 shifts attention away from the acts of the Mollies themselves; without exonerating the Mollies, he succeeds in making the vigilantes the villains” (Denning 128). This quotation suggests the idea that the characters within the dime novel stories were occasionally based on real people and events, but the important distinction is that the writers using the plot formula were merely paraphrasing real-life occurrences and altering them minimally enough to have them fit within the formula.

http://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-3B9

This link talks about the historical significance of the Molly Maguire story. This is relevant because this was the focus of the reading this week. Three authors joined to create this website.

Two Questions: Does the plot formula ever change, if so, could the ending ever be with the hero dying, or the heroic actions being destroyed and beaten down? Why was the distinction between mine superintendent and mine boss so important to the idea of monopolization of the coaling industry?

Assignment 3

Michael Denning and John F. Kasson write in regards to the late 19th Century. While Kasson focuses primarily on statistical evidence to create his point, Denning’s chapters primarily focus on the influence of societal class and how it influences the way people access their stories. It seems that Kasson is not as focused on the importance of Dime Novels or Serial Stories, but the population statistics that he writes are certainly one of the reasons that Dime Novels and Serial Stories were successful. Denning brings up the point that depending on your social class and whether or not you had a family would influence your reading between Dime Novels and Serial Stories. Denning writes, “… employed the ideological rhetoric of the new public of mechanics, the republican articulation of ‘virtue’ against ‘corruption’ and ‘luxury’, of ‘equal rights’ and the ‘public good’ against ‘monopoly’, defending the Republic and the Revolution against a new ‘aristocracy’” (Denning 90). Dime Novels were a way to promote good behavior and to help the younger generation have access to reading, furthermore to learn what is socially just behavior. These stories strongly helped educated youth not to steal, not to act pompous, and most importantly what it means to act virtuously. Children would be able to become attached to a character and witness how he develops into a better individual. One of the reasons Dime Novels became so strong was because of the heavy urbanization going on in the four major growing cities in America; Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston. The Mid-19th Century was “the most rapid urbanization in American history” (Kasson 71). Kasson goes on to write, “The largest city in 1820, New York, swelled from a population of 125,000 in that year to 800,000 by 1860, over a million including Brooklyn” (Kasson 71). This large amount of urbanization allowed for Dime Novels and Serial Stories to take over the working-class’ person lives. Because these stories either cost a nickel or a dime, people could buy them at will, although inflation would have changed the price in today’s economy, it was still relatively accessible for the middle-class to read these virtuous stories. The Kasson quotation further proves the point that cities were the backdrop of many of the Dime Novels, because of the amount of people in cities that were reading these stories. It was not rural individuals reading these stories; it was the urban population that had access to them, so from a publishers perspective, “Why would you not make the setting in a place that people know?”

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/riseind/immgnts/

This link focuses on the immigration in the late 19th Century. I am unsure of the author, but I believe that there were multiple forms of input that helped create this source. It is relevant to our class because immigrants often flocked to cities which is where Dime Novels flourished.

Two Questions I have are: How many women read these Dime Novels? And, with a population where maybe half the youth were formally educated, how did the dialect help them to read what was written?

Post 1 revised

Michael Woods

Professor Belanger

First Day Assignment

 

 

1. “A Guide to Digital Humanities” “[Digital humanities] asks what it means to be a human being in the networked information age and to participate in fluid communities of practice, asking and answering research questions that cannot be reduced to a single genre, medium, discipline, or institution. […] It is a global, trans-historical, and transmedia approach to knowledge and meaning-making.” Northwestern University Library. “A Guide to Digital Humanities” http://sites.library.northwestern.edu/dh/

I was unsure of what ‘Digital Humanities’ was, but this quotation seemed to suggest that digital humanities is how our society adjusts to learning new things with a new medium that is formed from the creation of the internet. The important thing to notice is that the Internet is always changing and adapting, as is the way we receive information. The Internet is the way that our younger generation gains access not only to learn new things, but as a way to keep up in our online social groups.

 

2. “’Manifesto’” of Humanities” “We appreciate and respect immigrants’ contributions, but natives bring a critical new perspective – we need to be prepared to take over.” Composition of 14 Undergraduate Students at Bloomsburg University. “Bloomsburg U. Undergraduate “Manifesto” on Digital Humanities http://4humanities.org/who-we-are/bloomsburg-u-undergraduate-manifesto-on-digital-humanities/#sthash.4CL91HFn.dpuf

This quotation is saying that America is the country that is most responsible for the Internet takeover, while the immigrants are responsible for aspects of the online web. This quote speaks to the dominance of the American web. The article, as a whole, demonstrated how drastically things have changed through this new medium of technology. Something as traditional as teaching has even adapted, after examining the pictures the adaptation of teaching became evident.

 

3. “A Short Guide to Digital Humanities” “Digital Humanities understands its object of study as the entire human record, from the prehistory to the present. This is why fields such as classics and archeology have played just as an important role in the development of digital humanities as has, for example, new media.” Various Authors “A Short Guide to Digital Humanities” http://jeffreyschnapp.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/D_H_ShortGuide.pdf 

This article distinguished the difference between what are digital humanities and what isn’t included in defining the characteristics of the study. It shows where much of our historical context is stored in the online global database. This also seems to suggest that classic writings, archeological studies, and new media are equally important to the expansion of digital humanities.

 

     4. “Building and Sharing” “The heart of the digital humanities is not the production of knowledge. It’s the reproduction of knowledge.” Mark Sample “Building and Sharing (When You’re Supposed to be Teaching) http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-1/building-and-sharing-when-youre-supposed-to-be-teaching-by-mark-sample/

 This quotation makes it very clear that the information highway (Internet) is a collective thing and there is a phrase called “collective intelligence” and it is defined as “none of us can know everything, everyone knows something, but together we can combine our knowledge to know everything”. It speaks to the idea that as we societally progress, we begin to rely one another to enhance our knowledge. As far as projects go it makes it much easier to gain information, because we have the access to many different sources.