JOURNAL #1

If I were describing the humanities to someone outside of the area of study, I would highlight the fact that it encompasses a diverse range of academic disciplines. The common denominator is that the humanities focus on critiquing and reflecting on the human experience, and everything to do with culture, literature, philosophy, arts etc. There are multiple views and ideologies as to how people define the humanities. For example, some say that humanities are concerned with what the human species has created. It’s definitely much more than that, as we study ideas, thoughts, and perspectives, which is why During mentioned they also “cannot be defined by a single purpose.” When thinking about how the humanities field is different from the sciences, we can definitely argue that they overlap in some ways, as During had mentioned on page 2. The biggest similarities between humanities and any science field draw from the ideas studied in the social sciences specifically. A few pages later, During speaks again on the sciences versus humanities. “The humanities, unlike the sciences, routinely produce knowledge that is not testable and rule bound” (During 6). Digging into this a little bit, the humanities deals with the complexity of human experiences, emotions, and cultural contexts (etc). Unlike the physical sciences, which tend to focus on observable and more simple phenomena, the study of humans involves a wide range of variables that don’t follow a set of strict rules or predictability. In many classes I have taken, we offer our own perspectives to open ended questions that often have multiple answers. No “rules.” 

My understanding of Durings “project” is centered around how people “define” the humanities, and the history behind it. During brings in multiple perspectives on what the humanities are, what they are not, and what they have been. He uses examples such as comparing and contrasting the humanities with natural and social sciences which help our understanding of trying to define them. The most intriguing quote from During that stood out to me came from the last page (actually the last sentence) of the article. “That may help us recognize that thinking about what the humanities actually are rather than about what we would like or imagine them to be, thinking about their word’s extension and limits, is to step solidly toward whatever future (and it won’t be none!) awaits them” (During 14). I believe that this quote really wraps up everything that During talks about, as well as sort of coming to a conclusion on how one defines humanities. He touches on earlier in the piece about how the humanities are “limiting yet open ended,” which is something he brings up again in this quote which signals its importance. 

JOURNAL #2

One of our course goals is precisely to create bridges from your academic study to your professional work. Write a brief description of the kind of work you enjoy doing and/or think you’re well equipped to do. In general, you want to think about the nature of the work, its specific responsibilities, the environment you’d work in, who you’d work with, and your qualifications and temperament/disposition.

I would like to pursue a career using my communications and media arts degree, under the wide umbrella of the marketing field. I really enjoy doing any work that involves writing, and I would also like to be able to use my creative/artistic side in my future career field. I could see myself working for a marketing firm where I write blog posts, create case studies and presentations, and maybe even do some branding such as for the company website. I could also see myself taking on tasks that fall under the role of a social media marketer, as this has always interested me. As I’d mentioned, I really enjoy being able to use my creativity, rather than having to stick to a rigid plan, where I don’t get to make any decisions. Some of the responsibilities I believe come with this work is to be organized, motivated, and work well with a team. Throughout my academic career as well as my athletic career, I have had to work collaboratively in many different situations. Being able to work in a team, where we can bounce ideas off each other, and come up with new and innovative social campaigns (etc), is something that I enjoy and am good at. Working individually and independently I tend to get burnt out, so I would definitely like to have social interaction in my job where I get to work in a team. 

  • What kind of job is this, or what is the main purpose of this job? 
    • For the sake of this journal, I am going to say that I would mostly want to pursue a job as a social media marketer for a company. The main purpose of this job is to engage and connect with your audience, build your brand, and drive website traffic/generate sales. 
  • What kind of tasks would you perform? 
    • In this job, I would like to focus on running the company’s social media accounts, branding the company using visual elements that I may create, communicating with the audience through the social media platforms, running and analyzing the success of digital campaigns, and finally possibly writing blog posts. All of these responsibilities have interested me for years, and I have taken classes here at UNE that have furthered my knowledge and expanded my interest further in these tasks.
  • Which of your skills, training, or experiences would this job call on? What did your analysis of past projects reveal (or remind you) about your skills?
    • This job would require me to call on a wide variety of my skills, but the easy answer would be my communication skills. This is a must-have skill for this job, as you are constantly required to be engaging with your customers and representing an organization. Throughout my past few years, I haven’t had anything physical to look back on for this specific skill, but I have grown as a communicator as I am required to improve in each class I take both professionally and interpersonally. 
    • The next few skills I would call on would be my creativity, my time management skills, and my writing ability.
      • I have been a creative person my whole academic life. I am currently in graphic design, and I can already see myself improving my skills even more. I can look back at powerpoint presentations I’ve created throughout college and how each one becomes more and more creative and visually appealing. 
      • My writing skills definitely have improved as I have looked back at some of my work from freshman year, but I have always been comfortable with my writing ability. 
    • Lastly, growing up in this generation, I have lots of experience with social media and how to market to these newer, more digitized generations. This is an advantage that I have over some of the generations above me. 
  • How might you explain how your undergraduate study (including your humanities degree) has prepared you for it?
    •  My humanities degree has prepared me for a career in this field, because it has taught me how to define my skills, and take them to the next step. It has challenged me and pushed me out of my comfort zone. I feel that I have an advantage over regular business majors that tend to go into the same type of job, because of what I have learned studying the humanities. The communication and creative thinking skills I’ve obtained will help me tremendously in any job I decide to take on.

Journal #3


For Journal #3: Return to the in-class work we did in week 2 and expand as needed or as would be interesting. An additional project to come to terms with perhaps? Look back over your past humanities courses (see that list from week 1-2) and assignments and identify at least one each of the following: 

Write a post that describes what you did then and what you notice about that work now. You’ll draw from this initial “inventory” (to anticipate a term from Newstok) when you select a revision project.

  • most memorable work(s) you encountered
    • Feature piece – Journalism 
    • Both Blog Projects from CMM110, and Journalism 
  • a sample of your work you’re most proud of 
    • Blog Proj – CMM110
      • For the course of the semester, following a company and seeing how they communicate and interact with their audience through their social media platforms
      • Video presentation at the end
  • A sample of your work you wish you could do over (or know you would do differently)
    • Goal Setting project (paper) from LIL120 
    • Also the Blog Proj project (CMM 110 – stated above) 

Looking back through the inventory of my previous work throughout my past three years here, I can see areas in work that I have improved upon, and areas that have stayed consistent compared to my work now. Not only have I improved on my writing skills over time, but as well as my presentation and public speaking skills. In CMM110 from my freshman year, I had to do a solo speech, as well as a speaking video for my Blog Proj (semester long project). I know that if I were to re-do either of these, I would be able to project my findings much better and more clearly. I would remix these and try to present them in a different way than the original.

Journal #4

2QCQ’s

Q: “The title of the work, Mourning Picture, is the key to its subject: it was painted shortly after the death of the artist’s eight-year old daughter, Effie. Rich’s poem assumes the voice of the dead girl who dominates the foreground (Moramarco 31)

Q: “They have carried the mahogany chair and the cane rocker out under the lilac bush, and my father and mother darkly sit there, in black clothes. Our clapboard house stands fast on its hill, my doll lies in her wicker pram gazing at western Massachusetts. This was our world” (Rich) 

C: Reading the expert from Moramarcos “Speculations,” it’s clear that there is a strong relationship between poetry (and writing in general) and art (paintings etc). To make sense of a painting, we often put words to it, and the same thing vice versa. When we are reading a poem or any form of written work, we tend to create visuals in our heads of what we interpret from the writing. This is what Adreinne Rich does in her poem which she drew inspiration from analyzing Elmers “Mourning Picture.” She puts into words what she sees in the painting, imitating it, like Moramarco says. Rich writes her poem through the eyes of Effie, who has died, and this is how she turns art into words, giving it more of a meaning.  In the poem by Rich, when you read the sentence “this was our world,” you have a sense now of who “our” is. Since Rich gave this little girl a voice, the painting seems to come to life.

Qu: When writers and poets try to intimate how they see certain works of art, are they ever inaccurate? Meaning, do they ever create a story/poem to a work of art that is completely different from what the artist was actually trying to portray? Has there ever been conversations between artists and poets? 

Journal #5

For Journal #5: Prepare to discuss, peer-review style, the strengths and opportunities for development they present. Use your entry to represent the project, highlight strengths,and recommend at least one significant improvement. Also address: what does looking at these give you to consider about your own project?

*I hope I am approaching this journal in the correct way, where we are “peer reviewing” the sample project proposals*

First I wanted to start out by touching on some of the differences between the two different examples for writing a project proposal. Sample #1 seems to be much more detailed, and asking for much more in regards to sample #2. It seems as if sample one is really looking for a detailed outline – including all topics to be covered, how you plan to approach it, possible responses to the project, and all sources to be used (8-10). This sample proposal requires a lot of prior research and in-depth thinking. The second proposal seems more baseline to me, as the main focus is on choosing a topic, explaining the approach to be taken, and how it will provide a “cap” to their major coursework. They also are looking for a “short” bibliography. This second option is much less “in-depth” than the first. 

#1: INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES IN THE HUMANITIES – Can a Just God Allow Suffering?

  • This student used guidelines #1 to draft their project proposal. I like the opening paragraph. They give us an understanding that this is a wide topic, but regard that the material is still manageable. The topic is very broad which concerns me a bit, and I wonder if they will have issues narrowing down the abundance of material. I understand in the next paragraph that they are choosing one argument to focus on and defend, and I like the background information they provided for context here. They explain that they will approach this project like a traditional philosophy paper and how that looks. I love how she also will be taking possible protests into consideration, because there are many arguments and sides to this philosophical question. Although, I don’t like their use of “discrediting” their relevance or severity, as I think each argument has good points they must take into consideration. I applaud in the last paragraph how they believe this project will be the “ultimate test of their knowledge.” It shows that it is worthy of capstone work. Great bibliography.
    • They really hit all of the marks here in this proposal, and it gives me a clear and very in-depth understanding of where they are hoping to take this. 

#2: Research Proposal & Bibliography: Analyzing the Use of Animals in Popular Victorian Literature

  • I really enjoyed the opening few sentences of this proposal. I like how the question they will be answering is based on three novels that they quickly highlighted. There is commentary already in the second paragraph but I agree that the range of topics needs to be trimmed down, instead of having four topics, they should really only be focusing on one. After reading through the whole proposal, I think this student really needs to narrow their ideas. Talking through their sources, they bring in a lot of information that seems to cloud their original topic in my opinion. I like the end where they emphasize that they will be connecting these three novels together. Lots of sources which is great! 

#3: LIL 420 – SENIOR THESIS PROPOSAL University of New England

  • Looking at this proposal, they are following the format of guidelines #2, which is clear. It gives an understanding of why they are choosing what they are (topic), how they will approach it, and the ways in which it “caps” off their learning as a capstone project. I like the topic this student chose, and how they suggest they will use their learning from multiple disciplines in the humanities to answer the question. Also, their explanation on how this capstone provides a “cap” to their studies is well thought out and ties in multiple areas of their learning which is great. A suggestion I have is this student should list out specific sources they are planning to use, rather than just being broad about it, to make sure they have truly done their prior research for their topic. Overall, they have a good base, but it’s very vague and needs to be developed much further. It just seems generic, and not specific at all, which doesn’t make me confident in this project. It feels that they are just giving the bare minimum just to turn in the assignment.

Reading these proposals also made me realize how much more prior research I feel that I need to do, although the projects are very different which makes me even more confused on how I translate these to my own project. Although we aren’t writing proposals like these for this class, a lot of the information should be included in the revision plans we are writing.

Journal #6

For Journal #6: What assessments of the Humanities generally or about your particular major/minor area of study do you see being made in current media?Find an article to summarize, comment on, and share with the class.

After searching through a few magazines and newspapers, and reading multiple articles, I ultimately decided to share and comment on this article from the NYT because I felt it was a positive take on the humanities opposed to all the negative surrounding the topic. 

Why the Humanities Are Indeed Worth Teaching: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/30/opinion/humanities-worth-teaching.html?searchResultPosition=2

This article is a response piece to another article titled – “I teach the humanities, and I still don’t know what their value is.”

The writer of this article has been an English teacher for about 30 years and defends the claims made in the first article, and describes the true value of the humanities. Studying the humanities – reading and judging complex texts makes us better learners and critical thinkers overall. 

Then we hear some opinions from various students/professors. One of the biggest discussions in this debate is the question of money. With the price of college, is studying the humanities worth the money? I have always been annoyed with this, because the skills that you get from studying the humanities, I believe, can make you extremely successful. Whatever field you go into, you are able to use these skills that give you a leg up compared to people who did not study the humanities.

“When I went to university, I saw my humanities courses as a foundation. It turns out they were a staircase. I could find and change careers, thrive in my choice and lead in a crisis” – Gail Kern Paster.

John G Cattone – A psychologist who relies on the lessons everyday from his humanities courses. He is able to communicate and choose the right words when talking to his patients very effectively, which was learned studying the humanities (communication skills). 

I think that whatever students may choose to study, having a base in the humanities will make one more successful. This is why the humanities need to stay, and should continue to be taught more in high schools, because the skills learned are lifelong. I want to go back to the first article where the professor talked about not knowing the value of the humanities even though she teaches it. I don’t see how you can be a good professor, especially in the humanities, if you do not understand this. To me, the value is obvious. I feel that during my education I have grown so much as a learner, but even more as a human being, and that is the true value.