What is something important you learned today? What is a question you have about what we covered today?

1/23/18: The truth behind autobiographies. As in, how “honest” does an author has to be for it to be an autobiography versus fiction? Are there pieces we consider autobiographies that are completely fake? Joelle is also a simulation creator and god.

St Augustine’s early life and philosophies were very interesting. I’ve also never thought about the concept of who we were before life.

2/1/18: In our modern era, science has replaced god in a lot of fashions. I really enjoyed talking about how St. Augustine attempted to explain certain concepts through the means he had available, that we now have some capacity to explain via science. The idea that we pass certain fears and memories down in our genes is very real, and he knew there was some element of parental influence in generations that was on going.

I also thought the idea of the memory theater was interesting. The idea that I can remember things from my childhood (certain smells of various homes or pieces of furniture). We can recall certain things and know they occurred, but still being conscious that the brain compartment drawer is “empty”. I know I can recall things happening or my parents telling me things happened but I can’t remember the specific or what was “in the drawer”. It’s quite saddening to think this is a universal of the human experience is to hold strong memories and experiences, yet be incapable to accessing them to the fullest.

2/6/18: Today I learned about the experiences of another through pictures. It’s amazing how much you can see via the emotions people have when describing something so close to them. The visual of pictures really helps build the atmosphere so much more than words could.

I am excited for next week as I will try to get more pictures of the various pets and locations I’ve been. Maybe some pictures of when I was older.

2/8/18: Today learning about the history of how human trials and the interview process was very interesting. I’d heard of a decent number of the cases such as the Syphilis in the black men. Of course, the Holocaust and giving people diseases is much more intense than what we will be doing with a bunch of coal miners (or at least we hope), however, the rules and concepts still exist.

I really liked the small interview scenarios and starting to think about questions/ optimal locations to do the interviews. Also, seeing Joelle’s dog pictures was fun. Very excited to see how this whole project builds on top of itself.

2/13/18: Today we talked briefly about writings of Friedman and Mason. It was interesting to hear more about the autobiography interpretation of the church and woman hood.

I really enjoyed thinking about why the church is so important in the history of autobiographies. Those were the individuals that could write and were the reflective people of their day. The origin, in the middle ages, were such a depressed, religious and dependent time on god.

I’ve also never thought about how women were required to write about themselves and think about themselves through others. I never realized how in a traditional sense, woman are unchanged. While the modern era of women does not require living and being totally dependent on men, women are still highly reflexive of those around them. An autobiography of a woman cannot be a protagonist, but a piece of the larger story puzzle.

2/15/18: Today we talked about more details on the autobiographie project in Shamokin. We had the 2 auditors come in and hear about the potential project. Then we discussed our proposed questions.

In class though, we talked about my readings on Eakin. We talked a lot about the concept of “self” and different pronouns associated with the different forms of autobiographies. Then Caroline talked about the Moravian Lives website and a handful of individual transcripts.

2/20/18: I really enjoyed talking about the slave narratives today. I’ve never really thought about how slaves wrote their stories for the Western audience. Olaudah set up the entire premise of his autobiography by describing his upbringing and the cultural and physical characteristics Guinea. Even in the modern era, Africa is still “blobbed” as a big mass culture, so Olaudah attempted to make his reader understand the individuality of his people. I wish we spoke more of the later chapters of the book as I read the first chapter.

This continued when we watched the Ted talk video when the woman talked about how even in the modern era, people still expected the woman to have a universal knowledge of Africa.

2/22/18: Today we talked about the last 2 chapters of Equiano. I really liked how we got into the autobiography aspect of the book as last class we primarily discussed the setting. Equiano witnessed a lot during his life and made a deliberate effort to play into the white audience such as overheating in the West Indies heat, creating emotional connections with family and the “magic” of ships.

This was similar to Andrew’s piece. He wrote into the white expectations as well yet broke these expectations such as the cannibal house. Yet, it was very unusual that he did not describe the negative side to slavery. I had never heard of the slave rebellion of NY prior to this piece. I did not know there were any large riots until the 19th century.

2/27/18: Today we discussed Obama’s autobiography and the question of race in his childhood. I thought it was very interesting the way he described his realization of race as his mother and father were difference races from different parts of the world. Obama had to struggle very much growing up in Hawaii as being in a world of diversity and being the only black male. Obama early on was humble as he struggled with race and worldliness.

I thought it was funny when we read the counter piece on his autobiography as it made Obama out as a drama queen who artificially made up his problems for the sake of a narrative. Very excited to read more.

3/1/18: I really enjoyed Obama’s autobiography. He has a really fascinating way of writing that is captivating. The struggles of community and finding where you belong is something very personal to me. (Haha… subconscious writing patterns… you catch me). Obama lived a very interesting life before he was even president. His background, broken family and cultural experience was amazing.

Also, the planning for the project was exciting.

3/27/18: Today I really enjoyed speaking about the correlations between the interviews and the autobiography. There was such a big parallel between the idea of women speaking their lives through their husbands. In my interview there were a lot of examples of what Joelle spoke of that these women view themselves in the coal region as not being valued in their experience of their life stories. When I interviewed, I was like the foreign, inappropriate Western generalizing African women as I did not correct Leona to tell me her life story. I allowed the bias interviewing process, simplified her life through the eyes of her sons and husband as they described to me another person’s life.

3/29/18: I enjoyed today hearing the last 2 presentations on Nisa. The idea of empathy for a situation that you have no experience with is a very human. Or the translation of different word choices and interpretation of a people.

4/3/18: I really enjoyed talking about the 2 holocaust papers today in class. I’ve never really thought about how bizarre the term “enjoy the holocaust” was before today. Additionally, before coming in, the exact definition of the muselmann paper confused me quite a bit, but I was delighted to go in depth about it today.

4/10/18: I liked the 2 articles we discussed today as Still  Alive was  a much harder novel to read; much more details and diverse amount of stories from different points in her life. Kruger did not focus as much on a reflection of the camp, but more on her parental relationships and the comparisons betweens the 2 article and sympathy of the camps.