Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Tweethis and Annotated Bib (Merchant)


Tweethis:
While racism and religious prejudice are clearly foregrounded in the play The Merchant of Venice, their presence serves as a medium in which to explore a deeper question—whether one’s nature can change, and what has the power to change it.

After trying to support my previous thesis to a couple of people I talked to, I found that I was actually more interested in and had more evidence for an argument about one’s ability to change or not as a theme in The Merchant of Venice, as opposed to my previous, related topic on nature versus nurture. This way I can incorporate both my ideas on racism and on conversion.

1. Social Graph: I sent a text to my little sister and both my parents with a thesis statement. They obviously weren’t able to give me super expert or educated advice, but they did give me opinions on how interesting the thesis sounded so I did get some feedback on the intrigue of the topic. When I talked to my roommate she said the topic was interesting enough to her that she wanted to read the play, so that was at least encouraging.
2. New Media: I found some blog posts that interested me:
http://theshakespeareblog.com/2011/07/the-news-of-the-world-and-shakespeare%E2%80%99s-venice-notw/ (this one was just plain interesting, although I’m not sure it relates much to my topic)
3. Social Networks: I have already posted my thesis on facebook and gotten helpful feedback. It helps that I’ve befriended some previous English classmates, but there are all sorts of perspectives to get out there, so it’s up for anyone to see right now. I haven’t created an account on linkedin yet, because I haven’t figured out exactly what that entails, but I plan to, since it looks like an extremely relevant resource.
4. Traditional Scholarly Sources: I have read almost all these articles, and the rest are bookmarked to be read in the future. They have really helped me to find evidence that I hadn’t considered, and to explore what’s already going on in the conversation I hope to enter:

No comments:

Post a Comment