Wuthering Heights
Mere Christianity
Madame Bovary
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Crime and Punishment
Hamlet
The Forgotten Garden
These Is My Words
The Help
Ella Enchanted
Princess Academy
The Goose Girl
The Kite Runner
The Great Gatsby
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
The Giver
A Wrinkle in Time
Lord of the Flies
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Ender's Game
}

Thursday, May 26, 2011

it's time to get serious. an lds ebook?

I'm searching for a subject on which to focus in my blog. It's still hard for me to even choose a subject to begin researching for To Kill a Mockingbird because I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to be doing with it. Maybe I should start with the artwork [both professional, amateur, and student work] like classmates Amy Whitaker and Rachael Schiel, to bring some unity into our ideas. But I also really like the approach that Taylor Gilbert took when he found a scholarly article to help me with my research; I've been thinking about the idea for a while now, trying to read the book from a Southern perspective. Unfortunately, as I've been researching there is very little to do with Southern reactions when the book was first published or anything of the sort. It's been frustrating. Anyway... back to the real content of this blog post...

***

In class yesterday, we had conversations about what we would like to do for our final project. The general consensus was an eBook. Now... what in the world would we put in an eBook?

Before I give an idea of the content that should be included, let me give an overview of my vision of the layout:
  1. An introduction co-authored by the whole class 
  2. 1-2 pages for each member of the class (focused on their specific literary work-- check out their selections here)
    1. Within each class member's "article" of sorts, should be different types of media, such as video or audio. It is an eBook, after all; why not use the unique opportunity to include the interesting, non-text sources or things we do ourselves? [such as al gore's ebook that dr. burton mentioned during the first week of class. here's a link to a review in the new york times.]
  3. A conclusion, also co-authored by the class
I mentioned in class yesterday that we have a very unique opportunity to be here at BYU and be able to bring our LDS religion into the classroom. Taylor Gilbert made a comment while I was talking to him about this idea that was really interesting. I'm paraphrasing his idea a little, but he said, "Most of us are not experts in very many things. But we are experts at being LDS; most of us have been LDS our whole lives. Why not use the assets we have?"

Obviously getting the rest of the class's approval and feedback on this idea is key, but, Taylor is right. One thing most of us know for sure is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Using the religious knowledge we already have, we could connect each of our literary works to some type of LDS concept [especially the three pillars of eternity: Creation, Fall, and Atonement], and then put it together with videos of our testimonies [i'm not sure if that would be completely appropriate, but i like the idea] in the conclusion. We could market it to not only the LDS community, but those looking for different views of literary criticism.

One thing I was hoping to get from this class is learning to effectively write legitimate literary criticism that would deserve attention. So far, I haven't seen much of this instruction. As I begin to focus my blog and write a little more formally, I would really appreciate feedback on my writing and advice for improvement. And at least a paragraph or two of legitimate literary criticism should be included from each of us in our eBook.

What do you [especially my classmates] think?

3 comments:

  1. I really like your idea. I had a couple of thoughts about it that I've written in my own blog post. I think that's a really doable project that we do have an established proficiency in, and I think it could be really rewarding.

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  2. I love this idea. I really think that this is what I would like to do. The format sounds good. I especially liked the idea about the testimonies. Is it possible to put video in an eBook?

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