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In Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death, by Kurt Vonnegut, a gutter appears in the form of the novel. Breaks between thoughts and ideas, rewinding time, switching settings are clearly shown by a "..." in between short stories. I'm not sure if the "..." break was used for formatting reasons, one of many possible icons of a break, or if it was intentionally chosen as an ellipsis to point at the untold information. Either way, it breaks the train of thought, filling up the missing storylines with blank space and a "..." for one to ponder. Sometimes, the breaks are used to fill in with an extra piece information, breaking from the flow of the story to note on a detail. It is also used to point at a switch in setting. It makes the reading very conversational, as if Vonnegut is just filling in on the story in conversation with random, not necessarily in chronological order, events. According to Vonnegut himself, the book is "jumbled and jangled...because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre" (pg.24). His intentions in the breaks therefore emphasize the inevitable lack of structure in a novel about a war, against war. The text break emphasize the blanked memories of Vonnegut and the other Dresden bombing survivor O'Hare as they try to reconstruct what happened and the information on the war that probably should not be shared.

(Digital Humanist, Katherine D. Harris tweeting on Hema's and my citation method)

Since my collaborator, Hema Surendrenathan and I have already presented this (at Re:Humanities), I'm posting this up on Serendip with hopes that it helps solve some of the questions surrounding digital citation and citation of discourse. We have produced the barebones of a citation that allows for more freedom with citation yet still gives credit to an individual scholar. As we have discussed the problems with citation in class, I wanted to put this up as a solution to perhaps, some of our problems.

Over winter break, I came across this video for Mr. Pole Dance Germany 2011:

Okay, my title doesn't necessarily match the post that I'm about to write BUT it cracked me up at the Re:Humanities conference on Friday. But I disgress. This weekend, I attended and presented at two conferences: Re:Humanities at Swarthmore and the Mid Atlantic Writing Center Association (MAWCA) Conference at Shippensburg University. I got a glimpse of the digital tools that are being implemented at various institutions in terms of student projects and at writing centers across the country and this experience has really made me consider the questions that you should ask yourself when planning on using digital technology. In this post, I want to really gear these questions towards using digital tools in academic writing which this class really allows freedom for.

"With freedom comes great responsibility"

I hate to be really cliche but this is starting to crop up as a theme in terms of writing a digital "webevent" (To borrow Anne's language). I've questioned my postition as someone who is media literate and I've started to realize that to become media literate, you need to start asking the right questions otherwise you will end up with some not-so-great papers. (Check out the link and find some of my experiments gone wrong) So here are some of the things that I will be thinking about in terms of writing digital papers:

After reading Thrice Told Tale and discussing the importance of different retellings of the story, I wanted to further investigate the process of documenting a story. In the case of this collection, this story was chosen to be told by people outside of the community. As we discussed in class, community memebers did not express interest in telling the story of Mrs. Tan. Researchers outside of the community decided that this was a relevant story to tell; based on its appeal because of drama and suspense, it makes an interesting story to write about. Readers of these accounts have three different ways of thinking about Mrs. Tan, but all three stories relay information that presents an image of chaos and community disruption. Mrs. Tan's story is probably not the story that memebers of this community would want to share with others. This incident does not represent the entire community and is not a way of sharing stories that represent a more accurate and informed picture of this society. Researchers, writiers, and other documenters enjoy positions of power because they allow themselves to enter an existing community or situation and choose what they would like to write about. They can afford to write what they want and express what they see because often, they are not the ones who put a part of their identity on the line for criticism. Although maybe others disagree with the way Margery Wolf documents the findings, what readers focus on most is the content of the stories.

Last weekend (opening weekend) I went to see The Hunger Games in the theater.  I had read the books while I was in India and my friends and I had long been awaiting the release of the film.  However, this isn't really a post about the Hunger Games... I'm more interested in the dialogue on the internet about race in the Hunger Games and thinking about how well it connects with some of the themes we've talked about in class.  

For those who haven't read the Hunger Games, or have no idea what I'm talking about when I say "race in the Hunger Games," I'll try to briefly summarize the issue.  The Hunger Games is the first book in a trilogy and tells the story of a dystopian future where the government forces each of twelve districts to give up two of its children (a boy and girl) to fight to the death.  Not a great description, but that's the basic plot.  So in the movie, three of the characters were cast by black actors and apparently this is an issue for some people which they have chosen to express freely on the internet.  In the book, two of those three characters was described as having "dark skin" and the third was not described racially at all.  

Since Tuesday’s conversation, I have been thinking about what it means to be an n effective change agent and ways to challenge the system/dominant social structures. It just dawned on me after class on Tuesday how linear and ineffective my approach has been for my desired objective.  Before class and for the last four years, I believed that in order to disassemble the system you must first situate yourself in a position of power within the system. And then, only then, can real change occur through top down processes.   But that’s such a contradiction. Following the rules and guidelines of dominant discourse to mobilize upward and move into power only validates the system I would try to disrupt. If I use the system to mobilize into position of power, I am only reinforcing the idea that this very elitist and exclusive pathway is the only way to create change.  I have disregarded my agency.  Going into interviews I can wear whatever I want or talk however I want  to demonstrate I am still qualified for the position regardless if I conform to standard conventions- superficial conventions used to divide and exclude. They are not real indicators of the skillset, intelligence, work ethic etc.  I encourage others think of ways in which they can resist the system, without completely sacrificing their ethics or objective to advocate for change.

So, I was sitting in my English class  at Haverford, Topics in 18th Century Literature, and my professor shows us a website, The Brown University Women Writers Project. It's "a long-term research project devoted to early modern women's writing and electronic text encoding." One of the tabs on the site caught my eye- WWO Labs.

My initial reaction was, Oh Sh*t! My English Lab idea isn't as original as I'd hoped! I'm doomed! Then, after I recovered from my melodramatic thought-explosion, we explored the labs I found the Women Writers Projects Labs to be fascinating, fun, educational, and luckily, nothing like the labs I had imagined in my head- hallelujah.

Nevertheless, these WWO labs truly speak to just how broad the definition of "lab" really is. I implore you all to play and learn. You couldn't ask for a more direct link of science to literature!

http://www.wwp.brown.edu/wwo/lab/