Post-Midterm: Possibilities for Future Study

I wasn't quite sure what to blog about today, but after reading Mele and Kelsey's posts, I thought it would be good to sum up my experience with the midterm and the paper. First of all, I agree with Mele in that writing this paper presented a challenge for me. I think it challenged me to write and to think in a non-conventional-conventional way, which does not sound like it makes sense, but stick with me. It was meant to be an academic paper, yet there is very little research and academia written on these kinds of topics. I saw very few studies that linked digital culture to Moby Dick or to any literary work. I felt a little bit like I was blazing a new trail. That being said, I wanted to format it as a normal English major response, with a claim and support. I think that this paper should have been more analytical (as Dr. Wickman pointed out to me) and should have included less claim making and more exploration of the nuances of the topic.

I would like to delve deeper into the issues I presented in my paper. I thought that studying for the midterm and reviewing all the topics we have covered in class was a great way to start making connections and thinking about what I want to focus on for my future studying. My paper topic was crowdsourcing and networking and how Captain Ahab failed to do both of those things appropriately, which ultimately led to his demise. I am very interested in the power of the collective that is manifested through drawing on groups to complete a task. Dr. Burton brought up a good idea. I am also interested in fan culture, so why not pair the two? The most obvious place where I see fans collaborating creatively is in fan fiction. Fans can write their own stories using worlds, characters, and situations from actual series. They then request feedback, and the spiral of social proofing begins. This would be an interested phenomenon to consider studying.