Watch out, world! Story of my paper

Okay, so it took forever for me to get my paper going.

     I came up with a couple different ideas for theses and got great feedback from all of you (thank you!) and from my facebookgroupies along with some really solid advice from Dr. Burton. I found all these possible sources, of which I only ended up using a couple, but that’s okay.

     Thanks to some more guidance from Dr. Burton right at the end I changed my whole approach, (from “comparing R&J to MND andproving that MND was better” to “since we have to teach Shakespeare in spite of these risks, we’d better do it right, so here is WHAT to teach and HOW to do it” which was frustrating, but guess what! It made my topic much more accessible.

     Of course I was procrastinating a lot and praying a lot, which is not advisable but worked out for me: the night I was supposed to be writing this paper but getting nowhere I finally gave up at like 12:00 am and decided to just read a couple of articles for my ENG 378 class and then go to bed. Well guess what, those articles were about Shakespeare! And the next day my ENG 378 teacher shared a Scholastic Scope kids lit magazine that had a MND script in it – I was so surprised and very grateful. Those articles and that magazine fit perfectly into my essay. I also had one good response from a question I posted to a teacher Google community that contributed to my thesis. Equipped with these great tools, I stayed up til 3:30 am and finished that dang paper in the nick of time! Now maybe it will be accepted to the venues I have submitted it to (the Rough Magic guys emailed me back and are looking over my full text!) and go on to change the world! 

THE END: The Story of My Paper

I started the research unit very enthusiastic about this digital/social approach to writing. I had heard reports from some students from last semester's class of their topics and research and was really excited to try my own. I already knew I wanted to do something with Shakespeare and games because I had been digging into the idea of games scholarship of any and all kinds the semester before. Games have always been a huge part of my life, even if I haven't always acknowledged it (no one you know owned a wider array of trading card games as I did--I promise), and I wanted all that time I spent playing games to amount to something interesting and intellectual. Ironically, however, I've played many, many more board and card games in my life than video games--my parents never allowed any video game console into my house until the winter I left for college, so the move to video games was a strange one for me. I figured, though, that in a way gave me an advantage because I could look at games more objectively and intellectually. I could more legitimately answer the question "Can video games be art?" because I hadn't already answered it for myself. I started looking around and found some interesting resources on Shakespeare possibly being a game designer were he alive today, and that helped narrow things down to just four possible paper topics.

The paper I ended up writing was, of course, really a mash-up of all four ideas. (Good thing I had ten pages.) I was pleasantly surprised to find out that other people were actually interested in this topic, and that there was plenty of material from Shakespeare's text itself to support such claims. As I kept looking, I found discussions actually happening about a topic I thought was extremely specific, which was very encouraging. The class really got involved in my paper, too, as I kept getting a lot of good responses on my posts, even when I was just musing. All of this really got me going, so by the time we had to do annotated bibliographies and find possible audiences, I already had tons of info--enough that I could easily pass some of it over to Britton in hopes that he could treat some stuff I didn't have time for but really interested me. By the time I did my first rough draft, my mind was racing all over the place because I had found so much information and so much interest.

That's when my paper took a difficult turn. I realized I was getting too much to say and too many angles on the topic that my paper just wouldn't be cohesive unless I cut. I went back to the primary text because I knew if I stuck close to The Tempest I could keep it tight. When I went back to do research again, I focused a lot more on specific arguments I had rather than general information on video games, art, and Shakespeare like I was doing before. The stuff I found in that round of research actually made up the bulk of my final paper because, thanks to the suggestions of others and some great feedback from author and game philosopher Chris Bateman (twice), I tightened up my paper significantly to be a discussion of the legitimacy of video games in our culture compared to the fight for legitimacy for English drama in Shakespeare's own day, which made for a good first full draft.

In discussions with Dr. Burton late in the game, I found out about the RMMLA conference and, luckily, they had a panel planned for this year's conference about games and new media that instantly became my number one choice for publishing. I got into contact with the panel chair and got enthusiastic responses from her because she was having a hard time getting the panel off the ground, so I was quickly accepted, though with the chance that I might not get to present because the panel might get canceled.

After getting accepted, though, I had to really make sure the paper turned out well, so after a final interview with Professor Burton I made some pretty big organizational changes and brought back a couple elements from my first draft and kicked out some from the full draft and finally submitted my finished paper. I'm still not sure what's going to happen, but I've been so inspired that I'm seriously considering starting a blog about the intersection of the humanities and video games, which I very well might do after this semester ends and I have some free time this summer. It's been a great ride--and it's not over yet.

My Paper: A Story

Okay, I'll admit it. What first blossomed as an idea about love quickly became a means of justifying a guilty pleasure of mine: The Bachelor. I was stuck in what I wanted to write about, feeling that most ideas surrounding Shakespearian plays had already been discussed. I already had traditional papers to write for other classes and I really didn't want to spit out another paper that I wasn't connected to. Professor Burton kept urging us to do just that: find a subject that we're really interested in that can relate to Shakespeare because if we develop a passion for our topic, we're more likely to write a better paper. 

A Tale about Winter and a Paper

  My paper began with a question: Beginnings of Social Process "Do you think tragedy or comedy is more true to life?"  I'd been musing on The Winter's Tale and thought the question I just asked would be intriguing enough to people (ward members, friends, family) who weren't familiar with it to get them involved in my paper. Social Discovery I'd done some Background Research through the subject guides, which involved the mixing of Stanley Wells' academic world and his charming twitter page, and I'd gone back to the text Refer to the Text, but was still confused about how I could combine my thoughts on tragedy v. comedy in a romance AND the supernatural elements of the play, which is what I'd talked to Dr. Burton about.  Both seemed interesting, but I couldn't see the connection, except that there are supernatural elements in romances.  I was directionless.  And I couldn't seem to find an answer to the question of Hermione's coming to life from being a statue. So in the spirit of more, smaller posts, I vented. Encouragement from Classmates in Comments

Once Upon a Research Paper

My research paper started with a small idea and a concept that I was struggling to grasp.  I initially was confused at Iago and his amoral nature as well as the way in which he so easily altered himself and adopted new selves to fulfill his revenge upon Othello.  As I was talking to Steve in class, I realized that I needed something hard as evidence to back this cloudy theory that my paper was standing on.  The true makings of my paper were discovered in the tweethis exercise which helped me pull my ideas together and narrow everything down to one succinct topic and purpose.  The major social proofing I did was in class, with my roommates, or with my High School English teacher and the ideas I fostered there really helped my paper get off the ground in terms of sustenance.  My purpose was truly realized in class talking with Amelia.  The way she discussed her topic, I was able to infer the passion she had for her paper, or at least a great sense of purpose for what she was discussing.  I knew that for my paper to truly be something special, I was going to have to find that same purpose.

Going back through the primary texts, I found that Iago was sensible in his change in "disguise" and even more than that, in reflection of Carl Jung's personality theory, Iago was a deep character, perhaps deeper than any of the other stock characters in the story.  He is a maze of complexity inside a the guise of a purposeless and malicious revenge seeker.  However poor my mini rough draft was, I was able to move past it for the most part after meeting with Dr. Burton and published my final draft just in time, both for the class and for the submissions that we all made.

Story of Nyssa's Paper

When we first started blogging about our final papers, I thought I might look at women in film adaptations of Shakespeare. I had had a lot of success with this line of thought in my midterm paper and on our class forums, so I thought I was good to go on my topic. But I was drawn back to King Lear, and specifically Gloucester, by the macabre portrayal of the blinding scene in the 2008 film adaptation of the play. I started doing tentative Internet searches about blindness in King Lear, and I came across the Kenneth Jernigan speech that I knew I had to respond to somehow. So I threw myself into the unfamiliar world of disability studies. I'm so glad I decided to follow that hunch I had about King Lear, the attraction I had to the torture scene. I could have gone what is a safe route for me and analyzed more about women in Shakespeare, but I'm thankful now that I expanded my scholarly repertoire.

Story time!
Photo Credit: Jody Art

As I started working on the research for this paper, I initially got very excited about the social aspect of the paper. I had found people I could talk to through Facebook, and I was determined to get to know as much about blindness as I could. Overall, the Facebook responses didn't pan out, but I did make a lot of progress by immersing myself in the writings of Georgina Kleege and in the primary text of King Lear. Ultimately, the quest of my paper was figuring out how I could put my close reading skills to good use. I toyed around with a couple of thesis ideas (see posts here and here), but Dr. Burton rightly corrected my course by saying that my claims were almost making themselves trivial. I had to figure out a way to make my research matter to the real world, and I was cloistering my close reading to a self-referential approach--one not useful to anyone but the most insulated of scholars.

After that, I still continued introspecting so that I could clarify my ideas (really to myself) about what I wanted my paper to accomplish. I filmed and posted a video in which I talked about my major claims, and I tried to choose a specific venue and audience for my paper when I clearly was not sure who I was writing to. As I started writing rough drafts (see posts here and here), David helped me sort out the flow of ideas in my paper and the significance they could have. I visited him in the BYU Writing Center to talk about style and communication issues I was having, and he's been encouraging about my paper throughout this process. My paper really started coming together when I did the focused annotated bibliography. At this point, I had all the tools I was going to use, even if the final form of the paper was still a bit nebulous.

Things really turned around, though, when I met with Dr. Burton to talk about my paper. Basically, he told me, I had gone in almost the opposite direction in my paper's insulation. Instead of staying cozy in the primary text, I had written so much about blindness and disability studies that I was kind of ignoring traditional readings of King Lear that have been circulated for centuries. This feedback led me to rework over half may paper (see posts here and here), and I was pleased with the result. Even though I did make other attempts to reach out directly to experts in the field, my paper was developed mostly by situating it correctly on the spectrum of radical and traditional readings, and this process was helped mostly through peer and professor feedback.

Despite this setback, I'm proud of the paper I wrote; proud enough that I submitted it to an actual academic journal in the field of literary disability studies. For me, this paper was something that needed to be molded and polished not just by my own thought but from feedback from the people around me, and I'm proud to say that I learned to write in the discourse of an entirely new field for me this semester.

The Story of Marsha's Paper

I wanted to choose a controversial text, because I think censorship and book bashing is often bogus, so The Merchant of Venice was a good choice. As I read it, I was fascinated by the idea of nature versus nurture (my original thoughts), and wanted to find some evidence that Shakespeare was making a point about it. However, I found myself extremely confused since I found evidence in every direction, and it was difficult to formulate an argument. Fortunately, someone made a comment on a Facebook post of mine that suggested some deeper implications about that argument (my post about her help), and I began to think about why that debate even matters. I began to realize that in this play it really came down to how you judge someone, and so I began to look into prejudice. Once again, I found there was no definitive conclusion in the play. I was really frustrated with this, until I realized that in all my research everyone was making it out like Shakespeare was promoting something one way or another, and it was making me irritated, because I really felt they were wrong. I realized, quickly, that that was my argument. I was planning on analyzing the whole play (outline of original ideas) but found I had too much to cover, and so I just went with Shylock for now.
As I mentioned, censorship irritates me often, so I wanted this paper to address that issue, and I am studying English Teaching, so applying this to censorship particularly in the classroom was an obvious choice. The end.

The Story of My Research Paper: Brinn

Well, when I first read Measure for Measure, I was a little confused by some of the rationalizations/conflicts between justice and mercy, and how quick some of the most pious characters were to excuse sexual liberality in others. Even Isabella, a main character who wants to become a nun, is seduced by a man to free her brother and decides to another woman (this man's former fiancee) out for herself in the nighttime rendezvous. This "bed trick" is suggested to her by a man who is supposedly a friar, and both of them seem to think it's perfectly morally fine. I was so confused by this that I decided I didn't like the play at all and wished I had chosen a different one. But as I began my research online and in the reference section of the library (great resource!), I discovered a couple of articles that explained some of the different Medieval and Renaissance marriage practices and perceptions that were very different from modern views on what constitutes a 'valid' legal marriage. I posted a couple of my ideas/questions for my "tweethis" on Facebook, and joined Goodreads so that I could post there too. I initially posted my tweethis on Goodreads, but didn't get much response, so later I went back and posted again, this time with a more general question about information on Measure for Measure and Elizabethan marriage customs. In response to this post, a man from the UK suggested a history book that luckily happened to be available in the BYU library, so I was able to turn there as a research guidepost as well. Also, my grandfather replied to my Facebook message with some helpful suggestions about historical movements to research, which led me to learn more about the influence of the Puritans in government during the Elizabethan era and really helped me make sense of the play and direct my paper. The feedback from classmates on the blog and in class during the writing process was very helpful as well.

In choosing an audience, I think I was most interested in communicating my research to anyone (probably mostly other students like me) who reads Measure for Measure and would like some contextual information to better understand and appreciate the play. Without understanding the context, Measure for Measure is easy to misinterpret from a modern perspective, so my goal with the paper was to provide clear information that would help guide another student through the process of contextualizing the play. I know that once the context became clear for me, I really began to enjoy the play!

Teaching Shakespeare Through the Graphic Novel... The Story

Looking back on my writing process, the absolute only thing that I knew from the beginning was that I wanted the paper to be applicable to teaching. I knew this would make me most motivated to write the paper, being something that I'm really passionate about (and knowing that teaching Shakespeare will no doubt be expected from me). I think I did a pretty good job of posting about the social networking experiences that really gave my paper some hold in the real world of teaching and studying Shakespeare (here, here, and here). Initially, my scope was really large (I wanted to cover teaching Shakespeare through many multiple genres), but comments from others, and an experience with reading my first graphic novel in my YA Lit class focused me in on a subject that I really didn't know much about... and that I now really care about. I spent a lot of time revising my paper before I turned it in (largely due to some great feedback that Dr. Burton gave me on my draft), and that's left me with mainly additions (rather than edits) to make in the final final paper. I'm still working on the publication part... something that I've talked to a few English teaching professors about. Kasey gave me the idea to send the final final paper to Sirpa Grierson (others in her ENGL 379 class have written about graphic novels, and she publishes a lot), so I'm planning to do that. I'm also considering trying to contact some of the adapters of Shakespeare's work into graphic novels, per Dr. Burton's suggestion-- I think that could get some pretty cool results.

Once upon a time there was a research paper. . . .

Well the story of my paper began with the first paper we wrote for this class.  I originally wrote about the bloody imagery of Henry’s speech (once more to the breach) but there was just so much territory I hadn’t explored in Taming of the Shrew and so I was drawn to all of the possible research prospects.  Original Ideas Once I had my topic, Revised Thesis I was excited to post on my social outlets however, I didn’t receive as much feedback as others did.  Social Networks Response I think it was because of the way I worded my post, just a bit too scholarly.  I think that I would have gotten a better response if I made a group out of it or just went broader to begin with.  I think if I had more time I would try a different post with a more neutral statement and from there start a message group with those who were actually interested in discussing my thesis.  After talking with Mallory over a rough draft (mini paper), I started gathering research.  It seemed like the facts were coming together of their own accord.  I had some friends review it. their response and video summary I ended up submitting my paper to Criterion because it was a magazine that would take my work and had similar requirements to the class.  This also means that I had the least amount of revisions to make in order to polish this paper into a suitable state for publication. 

The story of Ian's paper

This incredibly fun journey began with our discussions of Don John and how boring he is when compared to Iago and Edmund. I then began wondering what makes a villain like Iago and Edmund so interesting. After watching King Lear, it occurred to me that a great deal of a villain's draw comes from his soliloquies. After that  I began reading the soliloquies of Iago and examining their diction, meter, and theme. That is when I began to notice that Iago is incredibly similar to the Joker on many levels. I thought this idea would be interesting to other people outside of the highbrow Shakespeare crowd and began researching it. I shared the idea with my parents, English major siblings, my wife, and several friends who all have varying opinions regarding Shakespeare. The reception my ideas received was promising! I also noticed a buzz about this online. Movie reviews and blog posts devoted to villains popped up.