Progress on Silenced, censorship of Song of Solomon in St. Mary’s county, is in the final stages. Working through the motions of what my partner and I have already accomplished gives me a lot of pride in the website. We have come a long way from the begging of the semester not even knowing what WordPress is or how to use it; to not having created an entire website with different pages, interviews, and newspapers. The amount of time, energy, and willpower that we had at the begging of the semester will help get us through the end of the semester.
Progress on the website is going at a slow pace. Trying to balance my additional classes, studying for exams, and editing papers all within a two week period is extremely stressful. Last week I received suggestions of how to edit my website to be more user friendly, the peer to peer suggestions were a great start on how to edit the website for people who have not been in the class. The website acts as a source for primary sources, the newspapers from the different publishers like the Enterprise, Washington Post, and the school paper all help to give a primary source insight into the case at the time it was going on. My partner and I were fortunate enough to get a lot of newspapers and interviews for the project. I would say that we were one of the most fortunate groups in the class, we have so many newspaper articles that covered the case, we had a back and fourth dialogue between those who were for the book and then those who were against the book, the interviews with: David Flood, Robin Bates, and Amy Ford all help to put our case and general censorship into perspective, giving both a modern interpretation of the events that occurred and a reflection on the event when it was happening.
The thing about the website that I am most proud of is the interview with David Flood. It was sheer luck to find the teacher at the center of the controversy, without meeting with Professor Robin Bates (or even finding the article written by Robin Bates) there would have been no way possible for us to find David. Meeting him was such an experience, he was so knowledgeable about the case, having lived through it, and just the way he spoke about the case made me feel like I was going through it all with him. Currently putting the last edits of the transcript up, making sure that the software for his interview and the others turned out alright. So with that, I have one blog post left. For anyone out there reading along and following what I am saying I want to thank you for joining me through this semester. Make sure you checkout the website posted above!