| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Bibliography by Brianna Paulson

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years ago

Bibliography by Brianna Paulson

 

By Brianna Paulson, The Emigrants Project

 

1. Burg, Jerome. Google Lit Trips. 2008. 9 Feb. 2008 <http://www.googlelittrips.com>. 

 

    Jerome Burg and his associate Matthew Hart created a website called Google Lit Trips that, in essence, allows its users to experiment in teaching literature in a non-traditional way. Their method of teaching involves taking literature that involves some kind of literary travel, and creating a three-dimensional version of its journeys. Burg’s motivation for creating the site stemmed from his belief that students are often unable to grasp the important ideas of complex novels that involve travel. For example, he points to John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath, a work that to some may be difficult to comprehend themes of landscape, distance, etc. However, Burg notes that by using his interactive mapping program “you can see the flatness of the land, watch a video of a dust storm, see photos or art of the time period, and more.” Google Lit Trips is designed for students of all ages as well as teachers to experiment with, and is a simply-designed, user-friendly website. Google Lit Trips requires the program Google Earth, which according to its website uses the “power of Google Search with satellite imagery, maps, terrain and 3D buildings to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips.” The combination of Burg and Hart’s mapping program with the technology of Google Earth opens the doors to alternative literary interpretations of many of our greatest novels. Berg states that most importantly, these Google map projects can “draw the students into really studying literature in a way that the authors would have wanted.”

 


2. Hart, Matthew. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. April 2008. 10 Feb. 2008.    

       <http://web.mac.com/jburg/GoogleLit/Blood_Meridian_Photos.html>.

 

    The novel Blood Meridian, by author Cormac McCarthy, is a dense text that follows the narrative of a young teenager, known as “the kid”, who as a runaway experiences much violence, conflict, and drama. McCarthy’s story involves not only a travel narrative, but is loaded with historical references-- at times causing a difficult understanding for its readers. Matthew Hart, associate of Google Lit Trips creator Jerome Berg, produced a mapping project of Blood Meridian as an example of how one can transform a somewhat complex text into a more easily comprehended mapping project. Hart’s simulation of mapping literary travel begins with individual screen shots taken from Google Earth, with which Google Lit Trips allows its users to add multiple applications, to help the viewer in understanding the image of the map. For example, the second screen shot, or webpage to the project, is a Google image of the state Tennessee. The page allows the audience to visually see an important place in Blood Meridian, but also features a red line which symbolizes where “the kid” traveled in this area. Hart makes his mapping project more complex, nevertheless, when one can click on the satellite image of Tennessee, and a text box appears with a graphic of a particular building that was significant in the town “the kid” lived in, as well as dialog that describes the importance of the building in context of the novel’s plot. This sequence of mapped pages continues, creating a unique geographical interpretation of McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, while illustrating the importance of travel narrative in this novel.

 


 

3. Gregory, Christopher. “The ‘Sixth Emigrant’: Traveling Places in the Works of W.G.  

         Sebald.” Contemporary Literature 46.3 (2005): 422-449.

 

    Gregory’s article explores the concept of place and travel in W.G. Sebald’s works, describing them as their own entity. For example he agrees with critic Adam Z. who states that in Sebald’s The Emigrants, along with other Sebald works, place is “never simply itself… but is, rather, its own emigrant.” Gregory suggests that like Sebald, who is a restless narrator, the places in his works do not remain “in place,” and instead “they tend to roam, to wander.” His article continues with examining several of Sebald’s travel narratives which he claims “provocatively portray place as fluid, unanchored, and interpolated with the disparate geographies traversed by the narrator and his biographical subjects.” The next part of his piece examines the relationship between place and movement and suggests that it is a very powerful tactic for Sebald to use, and in comparison to many other authors, Sebald may be considered as one of the most radical travel narrative writers that exists. Gregory additionally divulges what he sees as another crucial underlying theme to many of Sebald’s works which is the concept of time related to place and movement. He sates, “Each place in Sebald's works thus opens onto a ghostly version of its past existence, allowing a kind of traffic between the present and the past, the living and the dead,” expressing the idea that these three pieces-- place, movement, and time-- are often linked together as a technique employed in his Sebald’s travel narratives. Gregory concludes his piece by arguing that, “The burgeoning genres of travel writing and life writing have mounted numerous challenges to the previously unquestioned status of place as a static geophysical category,” and that thanks to Sebald literary critics are now, more than ever, exploring this topic of inquiry.

 


4. Theisen, Bianca. “Prose of the World: W.G. Sebald’s Literary Travels.” The Germanic

         Review 79.3 (2004): 163-180.

 

    This article, written by journalist Bianca Theisen, describes both the presence of travel in W.G. Sebald’s works as well as the methods he takes in incorporating this travel as a repeated prevalent theme. Theisen states that, “Sebald's narratives and novels apprehend travel in its diverse historical facets and cultural motives: the pilgrimage, the educational journey, the Grand Tour, resort travel, adventure travel, exploration, colonial travel, emigration, and contemporary tourism.” As she gives examples for each kind of travel, it is clear that Sebald does not refrain from testing the waters so to speak in the different ways travel can be represented in his works. She notes that he is able to do this in a number of ways. Without being overly obvious, she claims that instances such as “precise dates, well-known destinations, often traveled sights, and autobiographical data usually set the stage for what seem to be authentic travel reports.” Theisen’s critical essay gradually transforms from merely describing the ways in which Sebald employs his literary travels, to proposing the topic of validity in travel narrative. She questions whether Sebald’s readers should immediately trust information presented to them in his texts. Theisen quotes writer Barbara Korte who suggests Sebald’s texts are “a hybrid, fusing fact and fiction, visual documentation and literary imagination, as well as mixing different media and heterogeneous genres.” This article presents much insight into the significance of why Sebald includes travel narrative in the majority of his many works, as well as the stylistic details that he uses to do so. Theisen, along with several other literary critics, additionally propose that Sebald and other travel narratives should be carefully read and not assumed to be necessarily true.

 


5. TechSmith Corporation. Screencast.com Camtasia Studio. 1995. 12 Feb. 2008

      <http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/screencast.asp>.

 

    The website created by TechSmith Corporation called Screencast.com by Camtasia Studio is one that offers a plethora of software tools to aid in the creation of screencasts. The website states that screencasting is by definition “recording your desktop computer action with narration and sharing it as a video on your blog. It can sometimes also be called a vodcast, videocast, video podcast, or vcast, and the term ‘Screencast’ is attributed to Jon Udell”. One might want produce a screencast for various reasons, including that it allows an audience to understand ideas when words might not be enough to fully communicate the information. For example a person viewing a screencast is able to not only read text but is able to hear narration as well as view images as an alternate method of conveying the same idea. Jon Udell’s screencast guidelines for generating an efficient screencast include “showing not telling, making it real to your viewers, and keeping it interactive,” three rules he claims also lead to an enjoyable screencast.  According to TechSmith Corporation’s website, screencasting is becoming increasingly popular in the world of computer software and technology, and is especially becoming trendy in online blogs-- a website that is primarily textual that features entries that are not usually presented in chronological order. Screencast.com by Camtasia is an informational and easy-to-follow website. It incorporates several how-to exercises to create screencasts, current newsletters about its product, interactive how-to demonstrations, as well as links to many external websites to assist in grasping the screencast concept, all of which add to its knowledgeable and instructive website.

 


Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.