Progress Reports – Max Corbin Course Blog

Defense of Contract

This is my final blog post on this website. While I did not manage to post every week as intended, I did as much as I could. This post is a defense of the USAO Contract regarding our project site for The Catcher in the Rye – Catching Their Ire.

Tools Used

WordPress was obviously used and was helpful in our project. Robert and I both have experience working with the site prior to this class, he specifically with the Pique theme, and I feel it worked well. There were occasional difficulties with my understanding of the drop-down menu as when I added a page a certain function would allow or disallow the page to jump straight to the top bar, causing a bit of frustration. This is part of why our pages were published so late was to avoid this background issue. Pages would sit in the back as we finished them in order to allow for a bulk of finished pages to appear on the site in their proper places.

Storymap.js was used to show where Catcher was banned between the ’60s and ’80s. This map displays how far flung the challenges were and gives hints as to other cases. Because they would require as much or more digging than our personally chosen case, we decided not to focus on fleshing out the other challenges and leaving it up to individuals who visit the site to choose which challenge they are personally interested in and look into it.

Coggle was used in the background to organize our ideas initially. As we delved further into the project, it was tossed to the side. We mainly kept each other accountable through discussions over messages or emails.

Gimp 2 was our primary source of picture editing when it comes to the newspaper articles. Articles were copied, sometimes more than one to a page for simplicity, and needed cleaned and labeled once scanned into the computer. This experience allowed me to get a better feel for Gimp, which I hope to use on a personal basis.

Online Databases gave us a good chance to find information. Unfortunately, a majority of the information found may not have been used.

OneNote2016/Evernote were somehow difficult for me to use and due to continual email errors which were experienced, we ditched the programs.

Division of Labor

The legislative and historical context became one and the same, aside from synopsis and biography. As such, the legislative section may not be as fleshed out as previously hoped for, however there is context provided as to the racial tension of the 1960’s. While this is not necessarily tied in to the Tulsa case, it is important to note any kind of political tension can cause tempers to flare. The synopsis page, while short, is exactly what we said it would be. A brief introduction for those who have not read the book.

The StoryMap, as discussed above, was to discuss the bannings of a 20 year span. The commonality found was profanity and obscenity, we are hoping that as this site is more targeted toward high school or college level and above audiences they will be able to deduce the thread between bannings.

All transcriptions were done by hand and uploaded to SoundCloud for a clean appearance. While typos occurred, that is to be expected and cannot always be fully avoided. These interviews did not have much to say about our case in particular, though they do highlight the contexts of Catcher in the Rye and Oklahoma as a state.

Milestones

I don’t recall if I really made any of the milestones aside from having a completed rough site and now having a final site. This semester was a wild ride from start to finish with many large projects that kept battling each other for my undivided attention. I put the most time out of all of them into this class and I hope it shows in this final site.

Progress Report

This week we are critiquing each others sites and working on correcting ours. I was assigned to critique To Save a Mockingbird .
Unfortunately, this post is going to be briefer than my last due to the pressure of finals here at USAO and the crunch of attempting to correct the website before I return home where I will have no access to wifi and working on my phone will be incredibly difficult.

Progress Report #3 : Possible New Connections

Some people are willing to come forward at the first mention or are easy to find within a few searches. For example, it didn’t take much to realize asking to speak with the board members or superintendent may be one way to gain information from Tulsa Schools. People who may not immediately come to mind are extended family.

One of my great-aunts, now the oldest of my grandmother’s siblings, lived in Tulsa for a large portion of her life. I did not recall this information and was reminded on my visit home this previous weekend during which I got sick. My great-aunt Karen lived in Tulsa with her now-late husband. During this time, she was a hairstylist. When I traveled to Tulsa, I did a short Facebook Live during a break to keep myself awake and interacting with familiar people. A week or so later, Karen visited my grandmother and asked if I had gone to speak with one lady in particular. I am still working on getting the details, but it appears as if Karen was a hairstylist for a woman who may have been at Edison Prep School in 1960 when The Catcher in the Rye was challenged. I have yet to be able to tell Robert about this possible break-though as I have been attempting to rest and he is traveling.

Baby Shower Gift. Bobbie, c. 2000. Painting.

In other news, we are taking feedback to heart. While this will be the only post to any website I will be able to make this week due to a lack of internet access at home, I will still be using physical copies of information to create the information to be posted on the site. Robert and I hope to have a large quantity of our content prepared and on the site by next Monday. Details are important to each of us, and this may be supported by the picture included in this post. I have had this painting around my entire life and only a few days ago realized it said “Tulsa World” on the red mailbox because at the time Mz. Bobbie lived in Tulsa.

This week may be a bit of downtime due to illness and stress, however there will still be work put in to maintain our schedule.

Progress Report #2 : Furthering Research

Thus far, Robert and I have chosen our book, chosen our local case and begun to connect nation-wide instances of challenges and bans. Our book is absolutely The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and we are looking into the instance of a Tulsa teacher leaving the district in 1960.

Robert has emailed a school is Issquah, Washington, regarding their challenge in 1978. While we have not yet heard from them, this information will be used in a StoryMap to connect cases. As of the writing of this post, Robert has just heard back from the Oklahoma Historical Society and his email is being forwarded. I will soon be emailing another member of the Tulsa Public School District Administration to find information regarding the Tulsa case.

On Friday, February 23rd, I traveled from Chickasha to Tulsa in order to visit the Tulsa City-County Library. While there, I discovered multiple newspaper clippings in the vertical files for ourselves and others to use. These ranged from directly discussing the Tulsa teacher leaving and reasons for the book challenge, to how the challenge was used in what we are calling the “Smutmobile Case” a year later. There was also an article regarding Muskogee banning To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

Files Pulled from the Vertical Files. Max Corbin, 23 Feb 2018. Image.

The Smutmobile Case lead to legislation in 1961 regarding the distribution of pornographic material. While similar laws have been on the books since at least 1958 from what I could find, this was a major instance of civilian protest which influenced the outcome. Our Tulsa case was mentioned in the news articles regarding the hearing as evidence censorship was necessary to protect the children from the evils of the world.

After making copies of the articles I found, I realized how much time I had left before the end of the school day and decided to visit Edison Prep to try to find more information. When I arrived, the office personnel seemed enthusiastic to help, although they knew what I sought could not be found at the school. I was given directions to the location of the School Board and went across town to visit there. At Tulsa Schools Board of Education, I met with the Board Clerk for a few minutes. She showed me “The Vault” where minutes are kept and gave me contact information for another person who was not presently in and could better help me. She was incredibly interested in the case of censorship and enthusiastic to provide as much support as possible. She also gave me a small idea of how challenges are progressed in the Tulsa Public School system.

Overall, I had a fantastic and fruitful day trip to Tulsa. The library is simply beautiful and the people were more than happy to interact and help. There was little, if any, red tape I had to step through to talk face-to-face with someone even on a moment’s notice. My next step is to email the person whom I was directed to and see what information she has after recovering from the flu. I will also be compiling information for the StoryMap.

Progress Report #1 : Choosing a Book

Book censorship seems to be more common than I originally thought, though it has been difficult to gauge as the cases for Oklahoma seem to be fewer than I would have anticipated. Reasons for censorship are wildly different from one another. I had not imagined before this that a book could be successfully challenged for profanity or inclusion of the LGBT community. As someone involved in the LGBT community, I find the erasure of information available to students to be disturbing at the least. While the youngest students may not necessarily need access to the information provided in books such as I am Jazz, older students who are trying to flourish with their identities may be hindered without the information ready.

Robert and I have decided to investigate further into instances of The Lord of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien being banned. We chose this book as we are both enthusiasts of high fantasy adventures and did not anticipate these books being challenged for the reasons we discovered. Tolkien was a Catholic and the series has been challenged for being anti-religious despite the various analogies present in the work. This caused us to take a dive into the work to discover where these books are removed and if it is only from curriculum or if libraries are having them removed from shelves.

I personally seem to be having issues finding specific individual cases of bans, finding instead lists of commonalities or the ever-popular Banned Book Week read projects. I did find one string of challenges in researching books for us to choose from involving Edmond Public Schools and Kite Runner. From 2014 to 2017 there have been challenges about the book being used in a sophomore level class. While I adore this book, I do have to agree that the graphic content could be a little much for sophomores to stomach, especially with the various parental circumstances surrounding students. A few selections from the book could cause mental upset if not properly discussed and parents may not be willing to discuss the contents of this book with their children.

Thankfully, WordPress is relatively familiar to me. The limitations placed for the purposes of this course threw me off initially. I could not edit and place an image for my blog and when Robert found he could not either I decided to leave the program be. I am glad to see the tasks such as categorization are still available as I enjoy organization of my technological assets.

Finally, I worked with StoryMap JS this weekend. It was a little strange as I had not used it before, however the demo during class proved to be the most beneficial information I received. I now feel more comfortable with this tool. I attempted to highlight on my favorite books through some important points in my life.

I feel confident going into this week and hope to schedule an appointment with the librarian for early on to gain insight to our college’s literary and research variety.