I'm Soooooo Nervous

I Take it Back... THIS is my Final Submission

Upgrading Folklore for the Digital Age

The Internet has become our primary mode of communication. On the Internet, people participate in multiple communities by remixing and sharing information. Because of the remixing and sharing functions of the Internet, traditional folk tales, beliefs, legends, and material culture have been given new life. The Internet not only preserves and enhances traditional forms of folklore, but also gives rise to emergent genres particularly suited to the medium. This repository of lore lays virtually untouched by the majority of folklore scholars. The remixing and sharing of traditional folklore and the new genres emerging on the Internet deserve more scholarly attention.  

Traditions require creativity in adapting to current situations. Eleanor Long’s research on personality types of performers of folklore highlights the need for creativity. When passing on a joke, preservators too often forget the punchline. Integrators use validating formulas to make the joke funnier to their audience and recreators create a whole new joke, following the original’s pattern. This creative alteration of tradition keeps it alive, as opposed to killing it by losing essential elements.

Creativity is not just characteristic of face-to-face interactions. When folklore is adapted into literature, it often undergoes great change, such as the contemporary spin Shakespeare put on folktales about moneylending in his play, The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare differentiates his version from earlier tellings by casting a Jew as the moneylender and making his story an oikotype of the Elizabethan Era when Jews had been expelled from England and folk superstitions surrounded them (Rogers).

In like manner, when people share texts or materials online, they often change or add details that make them relevant to their community: a phenomenon they refer to as “remixing’. Items of traditional folklore are remixed by many hands as they are shared online. The remix culture of the internet is the perfect venue for the creative preservation of tradition.

There are also emergent genres of folklore particular to the Internet. Examples of these genres are memes, photoshops, hashtag jokes, and items folklorists have yet to label like viral videos and their remixes. These genres are what Howard calls “amalgamations of institutional and vernacular expression” (192). As early as 1990, John Dorst asserted a collapse between consumer culture and the vernacular (188-89). His assertion challenges traditional conceptions of the definition of folklore, but this “penetration” of the vernacular is inherent to the nature of participatory media on the Internet and does not diminish its creativity (Dorst, 188).

In Folklore and the Internet, Trevor Blank writes, “Creativity is at the center of folkloristic inquiry, and the manifestations of online identity formation, artistic expression, folk religion, and the social dynamics of community construction are all important venues for analysis" (12). “Folkloric expression [on the internet] is reflective and serves as a 'mirror' of [contemporary] societal and cultural values” (Blank,4). It is this mirror that folklorists ought to be studying and teaching about if they want to keep the field relevant into the digital age.

Sources:

Dorst, John. "Tags and Burners, Cycles and Networks: Folklore in the Telectronic Age." Journal of Folklore Research. 27.3 (1990): 179-190. Web.

Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World. Ed. Trevor Blank. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2009.

Howard, Robert Glenn. "Electronic Hybridity:  The Persistent Processes of the Vernacular Web." Journal of American Folklore. 121 (2008): 192-218. Web.

Rogers, Jami. “Shylock and History.” Masterpiece Theater: Merchant of Venice Essays and Interviews. PBS. Web. 25 Jan. 2012.

Proposal Submission TODAY!

Submitting this 500 word proposal to the American Folklore Society Conference in one hour. (The first paragraph is my 100 word abstract as well as my intro paragraph.) I know I'm my own worst critic but I think it's terrible. Wish I had more time to do background research before I submitted. I feel sick.

"The Internet has become our primary mode of communication. On the Internet, people participate in multiple communities by remixing and sharing information. Because of the remixing and sharing functions of the Internet, traditional folk tales, beliefs, legends, and material culture have been given new life. The Internet not only preserves and enhances traditional forms of folklore, but also gives rise to emergent genres particularly suited to the medium. This repository of lore lays virtually untouched by the majority of folklore scholars. The remixing and sharing of traditional folklore and the new genres emerging on the Internet deserve more scholarly attention.

Traditions require creativity in adapting to current situations. Eleanor Long’s research on personality types of performers of folklore highlights the need for creativity. When passing on a joke, preservators too often forget the punchline. Integrators use validating formulas to make the joke funnier to their audience and recreators create a whole new joke, following the original’s pattern. This creative alteration of tradition keeps it alive, as opposed to killing it by losing essential elements.

Creativity is not just characteristic of face-to-face interactions. When folklore is adapted into literature, it often undergoes great change. Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice draws on folktales about moneylending in exchange for flesh that probably came to Europe from the Orient during the Crusades (Ryan, 28).  Shakespeare differentiates his version from earlier tellings by casting a Jew as the moneylender. This makes his story an oikotype of the Elizabethan Era when Jews had been expelled from England and folk superstitions surrounded them. Changing this detail of a popular folktale made Shakespeare an integrator.

The Internet is a culture of sharing. When people share texts or materials online, they often change or add details that make them relevant to their community. When this process of alteration is done online, it is called remixing. Items of traditional folklore are remixed by many hands as they are shared online. The remix culture of the internet is the perfect venue for the creative preservation of tradition.

There are also emergent genres of folklore particular to the participatory media of the Internet. These genres are what Howard calls “amalgamations of institutional and vernacular expression” (192). As early as 1990, John Dorst asserted a collapse between consumer culture and the vernacular (188-89). This “penetration” of the vernacular is particular to the nature of participatory media and the Internet (188). Examples of these genres are memes, photoshops, hashtag jokes, and items folklorists have yet to label like viral videos and their remixes.

In Folklore and the Internet, Trevor Blank writes, “Creativity is at the center of folkloristic inquiry, and the manifestations of online identity formation, artistic expression, folk religion, and the social dynamics of community construction are all important venues for analysis" (12). “Folkloric expression [on the internet] is reflective and serves as a 'mirror' of [contemporary] societal and cultural values,” a mirror that folklorists ought to be studying, if they want to keep the field relevant into the digital age (Blank, 4).

Sources:

Dorst, John. "Tags and Burners, Cycles and Networks: Folklore in the Telectronic Age." Journal of Folklore Research. 27.3 (1990): 179-190. Web.

Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World. Ed. Trevor Blank. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2009.

Howard, Robert Glenn. "Electronic Hybridity:  The Persistent Processes of the Vernacular Web." Journal of American Folklore. 121 (2008): 192-218. Web.

Ryan, Patrick. Shakespeare’s Storybook Folk Tales that Inspired the Bard. New York: Barefoot Books, 2001. Print. "

Comparable Work - Annotated Bibliography of Books and Articles about Digital Folklore

Primary Text: 

Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World. Ed. Trevor Blank. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2009.  

Suggested to me by Dr. Eric Eliason. The introduction by Blank himself is great and the articles inside are a good sampling of what kinds of things folklorists are looking at on the internet. 

Early Works:

Dorst, John. "Tags and Burners, Cycles and Networks: Folklore in the Telectronic Age." Journal of Folklore Research. 27.3 (1990): 179-190. Web.
Sent to me by Lynne McNeill and suggested as background knowledge of my subject. 

Howard, Robert Glenn. "Electronic Hybridity:  The Persistent Processes of the Vernacular Web." Journal of American Folklore. 121 (2008): 192-218. Web.
Sent to me by Lynne McNeill and suggested as background knowledge of my subject. 

Call Me Butter cause Im on a Roll: Why Digital Folklorists are the Best People to Know

I just got an email back from Trevor Blank who is pretty much THE leading scholar in the field of Digital Folklore (he wrote the book). He said he'd be happy to mentor me as I continue my research. He is really funny and enthusiastic too - he wrote four postscripts to his email (two in separate emails. Lol).

I'm going to send him my annotated bibliography of articles and books I think I should research and see if he has anything to add (or take away) and he has promised to hook me up with Jorgensen who he went to school with at IU.

Unfortunately I missed the boat on collaborating with them on their Digital Folklore panel for AFS2012 cause he already submitted it, but he says he's always happy to work with students.

He also let me know of work that is upcoming about Digital Folklore which I'm now excited to read in the coming years: "another edited volume, Tradition in the Twenty-First Century (which hits on some of your interests in Digital Age stuff impacting tradition) will be out in Spring/ Summer 2013, and my first solo-authored book, The Last Laugh: Folk Humor, Celebrity Culture, and Mass-Mediated Disasters in the Digital Age will be out in Fall 2013".

Anyways, I'm excited to have his support. Thanks Trevor!

---------

Update:

Oh yeah! I forgot to mention this for you Dr. Burton:

"We have several grad students at Penn State Harrisburg who also went to BYU, and when I asked, they remembered your professor, Gideon Burton. I wonder if you know any of them! "

Twitter List of Digital Humanists/ Folklorists

I've started building a twitter list of people I could contact or learn from about Digital Humanities/ Folklore. Check it out. :)

Nothing Makes My Day like Success with Social Proof

I wrote Lynne McNeill, the folklore professor at USU that Dr. Eliason suggested to me as a good person to contact about Digital Folklore, last night and she responded this morning! She was amazingly helpful! It has totally renewed my interest in and excitement for my subject, which was flagging after my muse and inspiration left me to myself last night while trying to rewrite my submission.

I told her the direction I am heading in (to advocate the remix culture of the internet being the perfect venue for both the dissemination of existing traditions/lore and the creation of new genres of folklore and thus requiring more attention from folkloristics) and she confirmed that I'm heading in the right directions, saying: "Right now, your question of remixing is a good one--not only are traditional forms of folklore being revived on the Internet, but new forms, like image macros and memes, and coming to prevalence.  There's not much general writing about it all yet--lots of conference papers and lots of individual case studies as articles and book chapters, but no prevailing work on it other that Trevor's book."

I asked her to point me in the right direction as far as sources for my research of folklore on the internet and methodology for studying Internet folklore, and told her what sources I had already found. She confirmed that I had "found many of the main resources out there" and gave me additional direction. She not only recommended a book and certain articles, but also attached PDF copies of those articles to the email! Talk about helpful! (and of course, I sent her a huge thank you email right back).

AFA2012 Submission In Process (heaven help me)

Here's the link to my rough draft submission for the conference. I welcome comments and feedback. It needs a lot of work before the deadline tomorrow.

----

Update: Oh heavens! I feel slightly better. The deadline is Saturday, not tomorrow (Friday).

Repurposing Outline / Ideas

This is how I write ideas. It's messy; I know. But here you have it... a paper in process. I have to rearrange my current content to fit this basic outline.

The idea of remixing the works of another is incredibly present on the internet. People are constantly remixing content they did not originate. (youtube examples, memes with photo stills from movies, etc).

The idea is not foreign to folklorists either. Folklore is creative traditions, beliefs, art, and stories that are shared person-to-person by the people. It’s difficult (if not impossible) to find the originator of content. But there are all kinds of people who pass it on and many of them remix it in their own style - adding details or just keeping the main theme and recreating a whole new story. (Eleanor Long’s storyteller types).

Folklore is not just remixed as it is passed on in the traditional sense. Artists, authors, playwrights and other creative geniuses borrow folklore and remix it in their work as well. Use examples of authors and artist who have done this. Possibly the world’s most famous author did this constantly - Shakespeare! (specifically use proverb from LLL play example but show other - borrowing stories from folklore origins, etc).

So why is the folkloric community ignoring the presence of folklore on the internet? People are remixing old stories and even old forms of folklore and sharing them with their online audience. Only a small number of folklorists have followed folklore to the internet - most are studying traditional folklore. Such a rich treasury of culture that is being ignored.

"Folklore theory holds that folkloric expression is reflective and serves as a 'mirror' of societal and cultural values; folklorists should therefore use this mirror to analyze society and culture. This ought to encourage a scholarly examination of the Internet, due to this format's status as a major agent of communication. Still, folklorists of the late twentieth century have not budged." (Blank, 4).

This folklore has the capability of keeping the discipline of folklore alive and also enabling us to understand our culture better. the unique lense of the folklore discipline is important in understanding what is happening culturally online.

Talk about how folklore online both preserves and challenges the “continuity of traditions”

also, include that these are emerging traditions and forms of folklore... amazingly creative as they preserve culture and relational ties. The description of the conference's theme states: "One of our field’s key concepts, tradition involves both conservation and change; the creativity that exists within tradition and shapes change invites closer examination." I want to somehow talk about the importance of change and adaptation in tradition, this creativity aspect, especially in a world, the majority of which moves at a very fast pace.

Perhaps quote and mention Jorgensen's post and her dissertation subject/ defense experience:

Folkloristics is a discipline obsessed with tradition; we tend to use traditionality as the measure of whether we want to study something in the first place. If you can’t prove that something is traditional, even if it’s an emergent tradition or something that is traditional to a tiny group of people, then folklorists would question why we’d want to study it. Somehow related is the fact that a lot of folklorists tend to be luddites; this is very chicken-or-egg in my mind. Is someone drawn to the study of tradition since they want to live a more traditional/old-school lifestyle, or is someone who studies tradition going to be more and more into the idea of incorporating what they study into their lifestyle? I doubt it’s as simplistic as either A or B, but it’s a trend I’ve noticed.

Social Proof Contact List

Get this... My post from last week where I just took notes on the introduction to a book I read as I was repurposing my content got a ridiculously amazing comment... unsolicited attention from the author of the article! How cool is that?!

So you better believe he is on my contact list for THIS week! He's going to "hook me up" with other folkloristic articles which of course will lead me to even more contacts. 

I'm working on repurposing my content first (at least writing the two required abstracts), because my submission is due this Friday (no pressure). But I've found ways that the following individuals will be helpful within my repurposed content (which I'm going to write a post about next):

Jaquie Thursby here at BYU could tell me more about the use of folklore in literature/Shakespeare. This is important because part of my argument is that people remix folklore in literature all the time, as did Shakespeare, so who's to invalidate the remixing of folklore online? 

Greg Kelly of Guelph University in Canada studies folklore online. I thought I'd look up articles by him and then contact him as I'm rewriting and lengthening my article. 

Lynne McNneal is up at Utah State. She is all over the eFolklore idea. She will also be useful as I rewrite. 

Dr. Burton suggested I take a look at Jeana Jorgensen who has been tweeting about digital humanities and folklore today:

Anyways, lots of options! Can't wait to write Mr. Blank back!

Trailer Content Plans

Problems with previous video content:
- too academic sounding
- too rehearsed
- nothing to look at except my face (break up the monotony a bit)
- tad too long
- ties to only one student paper (and that tie won't work for repurposed content)

Ideas for 2nd draft:
- less formal*
- 90 seconds*
- rehearse but make it casual
- strips of paper with words/ ideas (fast and easy)
- use a Shakespeare quote*
- possibly do quick screen shot of presentation/ visual to enhance point (I really like this idea)
- tie to both Ashley and Ariel (talk about folklore's ability to reflect culture, how essential it is to study our present folklore to understand our present culture, and how identity is tied to culture)*

*designates a requirement

Love's Labor's Lost and Folklore in the Digital Age

We live in a remix culture. This is extraordinarily problematic when considering current copyright laws, but that is a discussion for another day. In our culture, we take things we've heard, seen, read, or experienced and incorporate them and remix them for our own purposes. In academia, this is as simple as quoting someone and expanding upon that quote to support your argument (and then citing them so as to protect their intellectual property). On Facebook, this could be taking a movie still and commenting on it with your own words to make a witty point. On YouTube, this is taking clips from several different romantic period movies and putting music over it to make a romantic music video.

There are a billion and a half ways we remix, but this concept of remixing wasn't born of the digital age. Authors have always borrowed from others authors, reference popular culture works to make a joke, and taken age-old fairy tales and made them their own (a nod to Mr. Disney).

Notes on a Book: Folklore and the Internet, Vernacular Expression in a Digital World

I loved the introduction to this book! It makes many of the same arguments I was already thinking of and gives me points to spring of from where my argument differs. Here are some quotes:

"As the Internet developed as a communications facilitator, folklore emerged as recognizably on it as it did in "the real world." From the earliest moments of the modern Internet's existence, folklore was a central component of the domain, moderating the intersection of computer professionals with hackers, newfangled lingo, and the dispersal of stories, pranks, and legends (Jennings 1990)." (page 2)

"But while folklore emerged on the Internet, folklorists generally did not follow it" (3).

"only a small handful of thoughtful folkloristic articles on the burgeoning Internet culture appeared (Baym 1993; Dorst 1990; Howard 1997; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1995, 1996; Roush 1997)" (3). - check out these studies if I can find them.

"Each year, the American Folklore Society's annual meeting boasts more papers and panels on folklore and the Internet than the year before, yet these papers have not found their way to a culminating publication. ... No comprehensive work that details the folkloristic approach to the study of the Internet has been produced to date" (3).

"'It is here, in the heat of a nascent technology,' writes Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 'that we can contemplate what folklore's contemporary subject might be,' adding that 'electronic communication offers an opportunity to rethink folklore's disciplinary givens and to envision a fully contemporary subject'" (3).

A Call for Help

To be frank, I've been avoiding repurposing/ rewriting my paper. And here's why: I feel almost like I have to start from scratch.

My first argument: The church's condemnation of the Elizabethan stage was because of Shakespeare's use of powerful folklore (part 1) which is similar to educators' condemnation of "the Internet" because of it's use as a powerful vehicle for folklore (part 2).

But now, I want to focus on the audience of folklorists and aim more for getting them to study folklore on the Internet which is something that is just not common in the field, that prefers to study the weird and archaic over folklore that the majority of people participate in because that feels more like popular culture or something (still trying to understand why people don't study folklore forms on the Internet when they're so obvious). But it's not like anyone is outright condemning or fearing the Internet or even saying that it isn't a valid vehicle for folklore. They're just plain not heeding it. Most of the studies are about folklore transmitted face to face but they're missing out on this rich world of new folklore genres and forms.

American Folklore Society Annual Conference Submission?

I'm looking around for conferences I could submit my paper to. I'm still in the process of redirectioning and repurposing my paper, so I haven't yet written an abstract. I'm just looking for an audience for when I do. 

Missed Opportunities:

I just missed the boat for the Western States Folklore Society annual conference. It's being held the day I graduate (April 20th) in CA, but abstracts were due back in February and it costs a fee just to submit. It's too bad because they were accepting student papers, and I would have loved to aim for something like this. I also just missed the Folk Alliance International conference which took place at the end of February, but I couldn't find any information about paper submissions anyways. There is a Folklore and Fantasy Conference being held in the UK on April 15th. I missed the deadline for that in late January, but I think it would've been a great audience for my subject. I might still write them and see if my topic would've even been interesting to them (just by asking if they take late submissions). Another conference I would've loved to have presented at is WKU's student research conference which seems much less intimidating to me than others, but again the deadline was in February and the conference is this Saturday.  

Major Possibility: The American Folklore Society Annual Conference

I finally found a HUGE conference who's deadline hasn't passed though! The American Folklore Society, or the AFS, produces an annual meeting each October that brings together more than 700 folklorists from around the world to exchange work and ideas, and to create and strengthen friendships and working relationships. This year's conference will be held on October 24-27 at the historic Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans, Louisiana. This year's theme: "The Continuity and Creativity of Culture" is perfect for my paper's topic! I can challenge the assumption implied in the theme's description that the "disruption" of "cultural continuity... threaten[s] well-being and long-standing social interactions" by talking about online culture's ability to enhance and further relationships and social interactions through the transmission of folklore. 

If I choose to submit to this conference, I have till March 31st to solidify my direction, do my social research, finish my paper and make sure that it follows the guidelines set for submissions, write both a 500 word abstract and a 100 word abstract and there is a registration fee of $95 (not to mention, if my paper was actually selected, travel costs to get to New Orleans in October - though there are some grants I could apply for). I would be informed by June 1st, if my paper was accepted. It's a tad intimidating though... Do you guys think I should go for it? 

(Oh and just as a reminder to myself, there are more folklore resources I need to remain aware of here)

Research Connections - Ashley and Ellie

Ashley and Ellie and I couldn't meet via Google Hangout as planned, so we did a group chat to try to find a string of logic or similar theme throughout all of our papers that we could use to tie them together. We came up with some really great ideas during our chat. I've posted the chat below so you can view our process. I've highlighted major theses development.

10:12 AM ashley.lewis.2432@gmail.com has joined

  Arielle has joined

 me: hey! :)

 Arielle: :-)

  sorry about that

 me: np

 Arielle: I have a project due next class so I will need to get off around 10:30

  what is going on?

10:13 AM me: ok we'll make it short

 Arielle: what has been said so far

  ?

 me: we waited for ya

 Arielle: oh thank you

 me: so let's discuss connections to your paper first ellie

  ashley, what connections did you see in your paper to ellies and ellie to ashley?

10:14 AM I thought you both drew on the concept of the persona and talked about not being able to take control of identity in the characters of ophelia and hamlet

 Arielle: I agree

10:15 AM ashley.lewis.2432: exactly, the psychological affects of situation

  *effects

10:16 AM Arielle: I saw a connection from what Ashley saying about Ophelia not being able to express herself -as an inability of the unconscious and the conscious self to integrate. Both Hamlet and Ophelia could not integrate and therefore their "self" dies

  it was very fun to read your paper Ashley

10:17 AM ashley.lewis.2432: Thank you :)

 Arielle: :-) YW

  What about you Bri

  what are some obvious connections between the two

  of our papers to yours

  do see any?

 me: yep. but it was tricky cause i changed directions a bit with where i'm going with the ending

10:19 AM Arielle: Ashely we just lost Bri

 me: wait

  found it

 Arielle: you got it

  !

 me: weird

10:20 AM technology. anyways

  i wondered if the revenge cycle was something that showed up in folklore so I did some preliminary research and it does. that's a loose tie we could follw up on...

 Arielle: cool

10:21 AM me: but i think the better one is the importance of ability to work with images (and mediums: ie. new images that could help hamlet besides his father and new tech that holds new
kinds of folklore) thatare unfamiliar to us instead of hanging onto the familiar: father and traditional means of studying folklore.

  does that make sense?

 Arielle: sure

 ashley.lewis.2432: yes

 Arielle: so how would we connect that with Ashley's paper

  ...that Ophelia was unable to integrate the images of the unconscious

  because the males in her life

  would not let her?

10:22 AM me: yeah, i think we could work that angle as a thread through all our papers

  do you think ashley?

10:24 AM or talk abou tthe development of identity. hamlet with his unconscious images, ophelia with choosing to find her own identity instead of one defined for her, and modern folk through the internet

  (i talk about a fear of defining yourself online in my paper)

 ashley.lewis.2432: That might work. I feel like with all three papers there is an influence of words and information upon making decisions and forming opinions, as well.

10:25 AM me: can you explain further?

10:26 AM Arielle: so Bri in other words you are saying...media can help us to become whole by giving us the power to define ourselves and integrate those unconscious images that rise through the stories that are displayed?

 me: yes, instead of having others define us by not knowing much about us...

  as well

 Arielle: hmm...I like it

10:27 AM couldn't academics argue that the interenet is the wrong place to define ourselves

  because we can give a false view of who we are

  and integrate the wrong images?

 me: couldn't you do that anywhere just as much as the internet?

 ashley.lewis.2432: With your paper, you talk about how folklore affects people, which you show nicely through the historical references (such as the treatment of Jewish people) and through the modern references such as the rat story

10:28 AM me: @ashley, right.

  the "power" of folklore

  @arielle - or do you mean like people pretending to be someone else entirely and that being easier to do on the internet, i guess we could present that as a pro/con argument as well

10:29 AM Arielle: yes

 ashley.lewis.2432: Yes, and with Ellie's paper, the power of symbols upon Hamlet and his decisions.

 me: @ashley, and then hamlet and her dad and brother's words upon ophelia?

10:30 AM ashley.lewis.2432: Yes

 me: yeah, that is another way to string the arguments together.

10:31 AM Arielle: so maybe we should take it from this angle-in times past folklore was shared through speech-media has given us a different avenue to display folklore. we should be studying (paying attention) to these stories as they will help us to integrate the images, defining a healthier sense of self, that are important to wholeness just as the verbal stories of old did for its people

10:32 AM me: what about ophelia though?

 Arielle: thats where "defining a healthier sense of self"

  comes into play

  was what I was thinking

 me: ok i can see that

 Arielle: but we could take it a step further

 me: so that we don't drown in a loss of identity ;)

 Arielle: haha

 ashley.lewis.2432: That would work. haha

 Arielle: exactly

 me: how could we take it a step further?

10:33 AM you were saying

 Arielle: well, you just did!

 me: ah. lol

  I think we have two solid lines of logic then. We need to wrap up since Ellie has to go. So anything else you want to add?

 Arielle: sorry

 me: oh no!

  not at all!

 ashley.lewis.2432: no problem :)

 me: i think weve done GREAT work here!

 ashley.lewis.2432: agreed :)

 Arielle: cool. thanks ladies

 me: Do you two mind if I post this conversation?

10:34 AM Arielle: nope

 me: To show our process

 ashley.lewis.2432: That would be great.

 me: sweet. post it at yoru blogs too if you want!

  :)

 Arielle: I will most likely make a post linking to yours

  ;-)

 me: ok! :)

 Arielle: cool

 ashley.lewis.2432: As will I

 Arielle: ok see ya guys!

 me: Have a great weekend you two!

 Arielle has left

 ashley.lewis.2432: Bye! :)

 me: bye

 ashley.lewis.2432@gmail.com has left

Technology Fail

Ashley, Ellie, and I tried to do a Google hangout to discuss ideas for linking our papers together tonight, but it just didn't work. Hangout was acting super strange. We gave it a good shot though.

So we've decided to read each other's papers tonight and look for ways to connect our ideas together and discuss that in the morning during classtime via a group chat. I wont' be able to make a screencast of it because I have to use my husband's computer and he'll have it at work, but we'll report our ideas on our blogs.

sigh. oh technology.

Paper directions

After a long chat with Dr. Burton, my professor, I think I've got a good direction and audience for my paper. I'm going to try to aim for graduate students of folklore with the intent of persuading the future folklore community that folklore on the Internet needs to be taken more seriously and studied more widely.

The best format that is most likely to reach my intended is, ironically, not a digital one. So I'm aiming to create a longer paper and a twenty minute presentation and to find some folklore conferences where I can submit an abstract. I have a ton of research to do to better my paper, much of it social, in the next four weeks. But maybe my paper can really have an impact.

The Shakespeare context angle works great to support my argument and I can throw the audience a bone here and there with a supportive quote from the primary text.

Overall, I'm pretty stoked for what comes next. My game plan is to contact two professors of folklore, one here, one at the U, and read the book Dr. Eliason recommended (at least the intro and skim the rest). Then check our whatever resources they direct me to and really solidify my paper. Then create an abstract and start submitting to conferences. Then create a presentation and find another way to test the waters and validate my ideas through social proof. Then speak at a conference or two and see what happens from there. The final steps may take place after the course is finished but that's ok with me because I'm passionate about the subject!

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Also, I want to do a google hangout with whoever from our class wants to see if we can connect our ideas. I'm going to email ashley and Ellie do far but if anyone else wants to hang out sometime this week send me your gmail address. I'm going to make a screen capture of it so we can reflect back on the ideas.

Love's Labor's Lost

I'm loving this play. I just finished act three. I think my favorite character would have to be Boyet, the lord attending to the princess. I'm assuming he is of the same class as the ladies because of how he interacts with them at the end of Act 2 Scene 1. This scene is so great... All the guys hanging back to ask about the girls and Boyet's sparring of wit with Longaville.

I love how he clearly sees what's going on and all the girls are in denial:

Princess: "Come, to our pavilion. Boyet is disposed" (line 263).

Maria: Thou art a lovemonger (going to have to use that word sometime in the near future) and speakest skillfully. (line 268).

Katherine: He is Cupid's grandfather and learns news of him (line 269).

Boyet (to ladies): what then, do you see?

Maria (in response): ay, our way to be gone (lines 276).

Repurposing Beginnings

I've decided to focus on the folklore aspect more in my paper. As I mentioned before, I think it would be interesting to see how correct I am in my assumption that folklorists are resistant to breaking from tradition. So I stopped by my folklore professor's office for a chat.

We talked about whether he considers things like memes, themed photographs, and some Pintrest stuff folklore as well as stories people tell on their blogs and such. He said the line is fuzzy. It's not that he is resistant to changing the definition of folklore; just that he doesn't really think about it much. He said most people in his field are gathering folklore via the traditional means (face-to-face) and the same goes for the majority of his students. He hypothesized that this might be because folklore archives and other collection methods just haven't updated to store these kinds of things: in the William A Wilson folklore archive here at BYU, you have to have a physical copy of your project. These things just aren't stored online. So, he said, for example, you couldn't use an animation or a Youtube video. They're not stored online or digitally.

He's not sure how others in his field feel about the "issue" and so to his knowledge it's not really divided into two camps of opinions, more just that some might choose to explore this avenue, but most don't.

He did give me a list of people that I should talk to and one book to check out:

The book is called Folklore and the Internet and contains essays written by a number of folklorists. It is edited by Trevor Blank.

Jaquie Thursby here at BYU could tell me more about the use of folklore in literature/Shakespeare.

Greg Kelly is a contact of his at Guelph University in Canada who studies folklore online.

And I'm most excited to talk to Lynne McNneal is up at Utah State. She is all over the eFolklore idea.

Reformatting Research

Ok, I've done some research and I can't find evidence of someone ever doing something like this before. It's like the tweethis idea, but on video and all strung together by links to peer's videos embedded in your own video. At least, that's how I conceived it... It'll make more sense when you see it... I hope.

This first video is the reformatting of my paper. At the end (and I know there are more creative ways to do this that I haven't figured out yet), there is a link to the next video in the "research series". This would be a peer's video. For this I have pretended that I am Ashley and led into her topic from my own, just so you can get the idea. 

(One note I would add when/ if you do your own video linked to a peer's video is pause in the end position for a good 10-15 seconds and leave that link up the whole time so people really understand that they're supposed to click on it. That's one of the mistakes I feel I made with mine.)

Here's the video where I pretend I am Ashley. I've just done a snippet here, so you can see how you might lead into your own topic from a peer's topic. I have not done a complete video reformatting Ashley's ideas. 

Let me know what you think of this idea! I'm thinking we'd do them with better cameras and not with a kitchen and baby noises in the background. ;) We'd them look a tad more professional and of course we would have our ideas memorized, instead of reading them, like I have here. It'd take some practice, but I think it could end up being really neat!

Oh and just so you know I am a good mom and don't just ignore my son and do homework all day, here's a video of us "playing." LOL.

If Only Ophelia had had a Social Network

Throughout this post, I've included images of Ophelia I've found on Flickr that were creative-commons licensed. I've linked back to the artists page in the captions underneath. 

  photo courtesy of  Woflgangfoto

Gosh, I've gotten distracted looking at artwork (and movie clips) of Ophelia for at least an hour! Ashley's blog gave me a spring board and I dived right in. These portraits of Ophelia are absolutely mesmerizing! And how disturbing is that!? What is it about a suicidal girl that has so captured the imagination of artists for centuries that they cannot stop recreating her?

  photo courtesy of  andypowe11

I think Ashley's paper is very significant in this respect and boy does she ever have an audience to draw upon! Ashley does great character analysis of Ophelia, a character who's personality is not her own but is made up of the intents and wishes of others. Ashley quotes an article in her paper that sums it up rather well: “Indeed with her identity constructed always in reference to another, Ophelia is, in essence, nothing, an empty cipher patiently waiting to be infused with whatever meaning the particular mathematician should require.  Lacking personal ego boundaries of her own, Ophelia seems compelled to absorb whatever psychic identity is thrust upon her (Dane 410-411).”

  photo courtesy of  Ло

But Ashley, I don't think you need to draw stretched allusions to identity theft on the Internet to find an authentic audience for your ideas. You have one! Our culture is obviously obsessed with the idea of dead females (or I might argue the loss of the feminine). Just take a look at some popular movies that have captured the public imagination in the last few years: Inception (dead wife), The Dark Knight (dead fiance), Harry Potter (dead mom)... In just the last year, Hugo (dead parents), The Descendants (seriously injured wife), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (missing woman), Breaking Dawn (girl who essentially dies/ gives up life? by becoming a vampire - ok maybe that's a stretch), etc.  People are really obsessed with this idea of the missing or dead feminine. "Frailty, woman is thy name!" - yes, but only because we keep killing her off!

  photo courtesy of  Kevin H

It might be interesting for you to look into this idea more - is the loss of Ophelia's identity significant for the other characters in the play. Music and flowers are feminine-infused objects and so the fact that Ophelia uses them once there is no hold or pressure on her is interesting. Also, in folklore and mythology, the ocean and water is associated with the womb and so the mother or the feminine. So Ophelia dying in water is like returning to the feminine because the world was too masculine and violent for her to remain there.

  photo courtesy of  mydearDelilah

I think Ashley is absolutely correct that this paper is incomplete without artwork and movie clips to back it up. There are hundreds of paintings, photographs, etc that have been created around Ophelia and they say so much more than you can in a ten page paper! Ashley, I think you could have the most impact on potential audiences by creating your own artwork perhaps and writing short blurbs about it.

photo courtesy of Temari 09

Wouldn't it be wonderful to show Ophelia's loss of identity through artistically set up photographs that suggest Ophelia's loss of identy by either not having her whole self in the frame or just having items that suggest her floating on water or something? How eerie would that be?! Or show how she is just a cipher into which others pour their own identities by a photo of Ophelia looking into a mirror and seeing the men in her life or a basin with a woman painted on it with men inside.  I've been just obsessed with checking your blog just to see the photos of Ophelia that you post. They are positively chilling. I think you could really make an impact by creating your own artwork and linking back to what you've written. You can find audiences on flickr and other photo sharing sites. There are social networks for artists like SANe and artists2artists.

Paper Reflections

Here's the link to what I would call my final paper, but I know I'll be editing, changing focus, and taking it in new directions before April comes around.

My writing process: 

With this paper, in contrast to so many others I've written in college, I wrote slowly. A lot of the information I gathered while writing blog posts ended up in my final paper (some of it word-for-word from my blog). I wrote in hour or two hour chunks, because that's all that was afforded to me with little Bracken needing my attention. I ended up really enjoying writing this way. I was not to worn out from sitting down and writing an entire day and a half and staying up all night the day the paper is due, which is how I usually write. I feel like I really benefited from being able to roll my topic around in my head for so long and articulate my thesis to so many people during social proof. My thesis changed over and over, and I foresee it changing again.

Some things Dr. Burton commented on while reading my paper:

I didn't really ground my paper in a good, solid close reading of the text. My focus was on contextual evidence, and my paper may have benefited from a good character or thematic analysis. But as it is, I believe my argument really does center around context, so I may not go back and add this in.

This has a lot to do with my intended audience for the paper, which was another thing Dr. Burton asked about. He said my paper seemed divided in its function and purpose: was this a Shakespeare paper with a little application to modern times or an argument focusing on its audience as academics with a little history to back it up. I'm thinking, ironically I know since we're in a Shakespeare course, that it is actually more of the latter.