LITR
4232: American Renaissance
University
of Houston-Clear Lake, spring 2003
Sample Student Research Project
(Special contribution from student taking course online)
Valerie Lawrence
LITR 4232
April 17, 2003
American Renaissance as Independent Study
Taking a course as an independent study was not as advantageous as I thought it would be. There are a lot of benefits to taking a course this way, but it certainly has it disadvantages as well. It takes a lot of discipline to take a course this way and not fall behind. It can also be frustrating at times because of the lack of dialogue with other students.
One advantage to the independent study is having the ability to do the course work on my own time. Since I would not have been able to re-arrange my schedule to incorporate time for class twice a week, it also allowed me to take a course that I wanted to take that is also in my major. I did not want to have to take a course that may have fit into my schedule, but that would not have piqued my interest or benefited me very much. Also, as a side note and selfish advantage, I live downtown and it would have cost me quite a bit in gas money to drive down twice a week with the inflated gas prices that we have right now. I also had some issues with my computer this semester, which can also make things difficult in an independent study.
Working on my own time had its advantages, but it also had its disadvantages. It was a lot easier to procrastinate when there is no set class time. In the beginning I tried to lay down some ground rules for myself and set specific times of the week to work on the independent study. While I worked on the study every week, I did not always adhere to the times I had laid out for myself. It was also a lot easier to let personal issues get in the way. For example, a co-worker of mine got married and went on her honeymoon for two weeks. I had to work a lot of overtime during these two weeks, so when I came home exhausted, the last thing I wanted to do was sit in front of a computer when that is all I had been doing all day. So it was a lot easier to tell myself that I would do the work the next day rather than just sit in front of the computer and get it done. If I had been in a physical class during this time, I would have made myself go to class. When you are in a class, you have to go whether you feel like it or not, unless you are sick. If you are not in a class, you can put off the work until you feel like doing it, or until you absolutely have to do it. It gives you more leeway as far as timing, but it also allows for more leeway in procrastination.
It was also difficult to get motivated to write sometimes. While I would keep up with the readings and class notes for the week, it was often difficult to choose a topic to write about. I wanted to relate the readings to the class objectives and have my own ideas incorporated too, but this was not always easy to do. For example, when I wanted to write about water themes in the works of Poe, it was easy to relate it to gothic themes, but it was difficult to find discussion material related to it. So in this way, it was sometimes difficult to incorporate my ideas, the class notes, and previous projects. I did not want to just regurgitate what had been said previously in projects, I wanted to expand upon the themes that were brought up in the projects, but sometimes I made this more difficult on myself than necessary. I could have chosen other topics that would have been easier to relate. It would have been a lot easier to expand on these subjects if I had been in a physical class, because then I could have brought these points up as part of a discussion. I would have had classmates with whom I could create a dialogue, which would help me see some of the relationships between things I noticed in certain writings and the themes of the class much more easily. I would not have had to come up with the relationships by myself and I would have had other people to bounce ideas off of.
Odd as it seems, this difficulty was also an advantage. It forced me to look a lot more closely at the writings than I would have if I were reading them for class. If I had been reading them for a physical class, I would have read them so that I would have a knowledge of the plot when it was discussed in class. However, I would have waited until I was actually in class to look for any themes or discussion worthy material. By not being in class, I could not sit around and wait for someone to start a dialogue about the story or poem for me to start recognizing important themes and symbols. I had to do a close reading the first time around and start my own dialogue with myself about the importance of certain passages within the writings.
Communication seems to be one of the most difficult aspects of taking this class as an independent study. I was not always good about sending e-mails to say how I was doing with the readings, how well I was keeping up, or even that I was still alive and in the class. Communication is not one of my finer points, but I should have made it more of a priority in this independent study. I knew where I was in the course and what I was doing, but I needed to let Dr. White know these things too and I have not always been good about letting him know how things were going. It was important for me to check in and keep in more contact with the professor than I did. I probably would have made things a lot easier on myself if I had, because I would often not send in writing projects for a while because I was not happy with where they were going. If I had voiced this and let him know what was going on, then he would have known what was going on and maybe could have helped me out with it.
Using the web site as my sole source of discussion could also be difficult at times, as I have mentioned previously. However, there were a lot of advantages to using this method for my discussion purposes. It allowed me to see a wide range of discussions that had happened in previous years. I got to see the differences between how one class chose to spend their discussion on a particular work and how another class chose to discuss a completely different aspect of the work. Looking at the different points of view helped me to get a dialogue going with myself on whichever writing I happened to be studying at the moment. Though it was difficult because the reading projects that are posted are a shortened version of the discussion that actually took place. I know this because I have been a recorder before and it is impossible to take down everything that is said. Usually the high points are taken down though so I feel as if I got the gist of most the discussions. It can also be difficult to discover the larger themes of the course when there is no physical discussion taking place. It was also sometimes difficult to decipher the notes when I was just looking at notes without having the advantage of the lecture behind them. If this course were ever made into an actual online course, I would definitely recommend having a discussion board to post to, because although the previous discussions are helpful, it is hard to not have classmates with whom I can discuss class topics. Also, while I could see where previous discussions had gone, I could not see where current ones were going and I could not take part in them.
I had to use different stimuli to aid me in gaining a larger understanding of the issues of the course. One of the stimuli that I used was recent movies. Many of them posed a lot of the same problems and issues that the class is concerned with. If I started thinking about literature after seeing a movie then I realized there were probably some comparisons that could be made and it helped me to do closer readings of the stories. It also helped that many of the people that I usually go see movies with are other literature majors, or have graduated with literature degrees, so this helped me in the discussion process. I could bounce ideas off of them since they had read a lot of the same things that was required reading for the course.
I also noticed a lot of issues that were important to the course that movies helped to clarify a little bit. They also helped me to expand on the issue I was trying to explain. It was advantageous to me that while some of the stories had movies that were based on them, many did not. It was even more interesting for me to see issues from the course material that were contained in movies that had absolutetly no ties to the story.
There is a shift somewhere in the middle of the course on the role of nature. In the beginning, the gothic is represented through nature and the characters in the stories are in a frightening place when they are in nature. In “Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, nature is scary for supernatural aspects and in Last of the Mohicans; nature is scary because you never know what is going to happen to the characters once they are out alone in nature. However, then the transcendentalists take over and nature is once again a happy place and not in the slightest bit scary. They take nature out of the gothic and make it sublime. Then there is another shift with Poe who takes nature and once again makes it gothic. It is different with Poe than it was with Irving and Cooper. In the stories by Irving and Cooper, nature was scary, but once inside and away from nature, it was no longer as scary. With Poe, it does not matter if you are out in nature or not, both the indoors and outdoors are frightening in his works.
This concept of nature is apparent in the different movie renditions of these stories. Even though plots have been changed around quite a bit, it was interesting to see the filmmaker’s depictions of nature in the movies. I had purchased the DVD for “Sleepy Hollow” shortly before the class started and as I watched it, I noticed how much attention Tim Burton had paid to the creepy nature of the town of “Sleepy Hollow”. Although liberties had been taken with the plot, the setting was exactly as I imagined the town of “Sleepy Hollow” to look like. In the movie versions of both “Sleepy Hollow” and “Last of the Mohicans”, the filmmakers kept the depiction of a gothic nature. The sun never really shines in either of these movies, it is always cloudy, or foggy, or raining outside. There were scenes in nature in both movies that gave me the same creepy feeling when I watched them as I had when I was reading the scenes. The audience is never quite sure what is going to happen when the characters are out in nature, there is never a general feeling that everything will be okay and that nothing will happen to them or jump out at them. However, in the Vincent Price movies based on Edgar Allen Poe stories, such as “Fall of the House of Usher” and “Pit and the Pendulum”, everything in the movie is creepy and gothic. It has the same feel as the stories whether the characters are outside or inside. So, while the filmmakers chose to change certain plot elements concerning characters and story line, they kept some of the most important mood elements of the story.
Movies were also a source when I was considering the theme of modernism, and relative issues of gender in the readings. After reading the writings of Sarah Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, I went and saw the movie, “The Hours”. It showed me that the views that these two women presented during their time are still ongoing issues in today’s society. In the movie, Julianne Moore’s character is stifled by, “the cradle and the kitchen hearth”. She really feels as though she has two options, leaving by suicide, or just leaving. Her story line takes place in the 1950’s; almost 100 years after these women were bringing these issues to light. The movie was made almost 150 years after they began writing. It shows that women are still facing these issues. The character of Julianne Moore suffers severe consequences for leaving her family. Her husband and children die horribly, and she is left all alone. Meryl Streep’s character also has to pay a price for not following the rules of hearth and cradle. She loses her best friend and is inches away from a nervous breakdown at all times. Nicole Kidman’s character is also not inclined to hearth and cradle. She is a walking nervous breakdown and eventually gives in to her suicidal tendencies. None of these women follow the traditional roles of women, so they cannot live free and die happy. They all have to suffer the consequences for not being happy as wives and mothers. This was a common theme in movies of the 1930’s and 1940’s. “Mildred Pierce” is a notable example of this. It is still disconcerting that very little has changed in this time in women’s roles. After watching the Academy Awards this year, I realized that very few of the women nominated had been playing strong female characters. They were all either tragic characters or vixens. The only very strong, somewhat self-sufficient female character I have seen in a movie lately was Cameron Diaz in “Gangs of New York” and her character was pretty much bereft of morals as well as being a social outcast. It is true, but also very sad that the views of Sarah Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are still somewhat revolutionary today. They are still very much part of a modernistic view in society.
There are many other movies that can be used in the context of the course. The moral dilemmas faced by characters in Billy Budd, “Young Goodman Brown”, and many of the other readings can be compared to several recent movies. The characters in the movies “Chicago”, “Gangs of New York”, and “Road to Perdition” are all caught in moral dilemmas. The movie characters also face the problem that their literary counterparts face. They are neither good nor evil. For example, in Billy Budd, Claggert conspires against Billy Budd and acts out of his jealousy of Billy’s popularity, but he is not evil. He was trying to get Billy in trouble, but he could not have predicted the turn of events that would later take place. This could be compared to Henry Thomas’s character in “Gangs if New York”. He puts Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in danger because he is jealous of him. He later regrets his actions, but it is too late. If he could have predicted the turn of events that would have occurred, he probably would have kept his mouth shut. He did not act out of an evil nature, rather through a very human nature.
Although the web pages and the previous projects helped me out with a lot of the course content, I think it is pretty apparent that movies helped me out a lot too. They really enabled me to look much harder at the context of the stories, even if the movie was unrelated to the story. I am a very visual learner and I think this is where the movies helped me out the most. They helped to make the meaning of the stories more clear. I found myself going home and re-reading many of the writings for the class after seeing a movie.
Movies also helped to make the course somewhat less lonely. Taking the course without a having a class to discuss material with was much more difficult then I thought it would be. When I would go see a movie and then discuss it in relation to the literature I was reading, it was a lot easier for me to dissect the literature. It helped just being able to talk to people about the aspects of the different movies and involving the literature.
I feel as though I have learned a lot this semester, but I also feel as though I have worked a lot harder than I would have if I were enrolled in a lecture session. I’m enrolled in another Internet course this semester, but it is pretty much a course where imagination is not necessary, unlike a literature course where you have to use your imagination quite a bit.
If I ever had the choice again between taking this class as a lecture or as an independent study, I would most likely take it as a lecture. While it was interesting to get the different points of view that the website offered, it was not as interesting as actually hearing different points of view and being able to debate them. It is also no supplement to getting an actual lecture.