I’m currently sitting with Rosanna and talking to her about all that we need to finish by next week.

I looked back through our Coggle to see exactly what pages I was assigned to complete myself:

• “About the Author” subpages
• “About the Researchers” Mini Bios (CHECK!)
• “About the Research” page (I think I just have a little more to add to that…)
• “Literary Critique” (We’re actually going to change that one to “About the Book” so it sounds less academic.)
• “About Buncombe” (So I’ll be going back to look at the demographics we found for Buncombe County and add what we found on The State of Black Asheville.)
• I need to make sure that all of the images I wanted to put on the website get on the appropriate pages. I think I’ll feel better about picking where to place each photo once all the writing is complete.
• And I’ll be making sure that all of our timelines are up on the website.

Before I looked that over, I was feeling kind of overwhelmed about the upcoming weekend, but now everything feels much more feasible to get done since I listed it out.

Originally, I was feeling the most overwhelmed with the “About the Author” subpages. I think that since I’ve learned so much about Toni Morrison, I want to put down everything, but that felt intimidating. Rosanna helped me think about ways to find a focus and keep things more succinct. I guess the literary academic in me just wants to make those pages more detailed than what they need to be in reality.

Rosanna is still contacting Lisa Baldwin to set up an interview with her so we can get that up on the website before it’s due. Whether or not that happens is out of our hands for the most part. But it sounds like Rosanna is remaining persistent with it all.

Rosanna is also going to work on getting an updated headshot of herself to put on the “About the Researchers” page.

We also discussed putting the interview transcriptions onto actual pages instead of Google Doc files, per Dr. Dierking’s suggestion.

As for finding time to get everything done over the weekend…that’s going to be a bit of a challenge. The daycare will be closed on Friday, which was when I was originally thinking I’d get a lot of this finished. That’s my fault for not double-checking to ensure all of my calendars matched up, but I’m going to adapt to all of this. I figured the best use of my time right now would be to make sure that this blog post gets done before Monday since I’ll be traveling that day. However, I will be arriving at my destination considerably early if everything works out as planned, so I can work on the website a bit more then if need be. During the weekend, I can work on the website a little here and a little there during my daughter’s nap time. And I’ve gotten into the routine of reading my literature assignments under the covers while my daughter sleeps at night (we co-sleep), so getting my work done for other classes shouldn’t be a problem.

We’ll get everything done. I don’t have too many worries. It’s a matter of taking advantage of all of the time that I do have available to me and balancing that with proper self-care.

 

As I dive further into research into the banning of Song of Solomon in St. Mary’s county, my understanding of censorship begins to shift and expand. I find my mind racing through all these different ideas of what is censorship, how censorship impacts everyone in different ways, and just how far people would be willing to go to censor different opinions.

In my studies from High school to college, I have always believed that censorship was a political tool used to silence  and oppress those who do not align with the majority party. As time has progressed, I have begun to notice that it is more than a political tool to silence others. Censorship is taking away other voices. Censorship is eliminating different opinions.

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Censorship impacts everyone differently, no matter your stance on censorship, its mere existence sparks debate and dissent among those involved. The censorship of Toni Morrison in St. Mary’s country impacts everyone: students, teachers, parents, administrators, members of the community, special interest groups, minority groups, and the author.

Students are possibly impacted the most by books being banned, in this particular case, the book by Toni Morrison was to be used in conjunction with a lesson plan about self identity and self trials. It was supposed to be used with the Adventure of HuckleBerry Fin, to see through the different gaze of the characters. As well as see the differences of the main character.

Teachers are forced to change what they are trying to teach to their class, shifting the focuses or even dropping lesson plans on the topic. I have yet to interview the teacher in St. Mary’s County about what they were forced to do after the ban. Even little alterations to the lesson or just to completely replace it with another book.

Parents are put into a position of having to decide if the book is appropriate for their students. As in a former interview with Professor Bates, students are well aware of curse words, foul language, and sexual topics; but parents still have control over what their children read. In the case of Song of Solomon, the complaint is believed to have come from a parent highlighting the foul language, sexually explicit content, and the theme of suicide. All of these things can be concerning to a parent, but if there is a setting for these discussions to be had, would it be school?

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We have seen throughout history that books have been the target of those in power. The picture I found from Germany in 1933 is the example that comes to my mind when someone says banned books. But books can be banned and censored in more than just eliminating the book, editors telling the author how to phrase sentences, readers coming out against a book, and so on. Censorship of the Song of Solomon came in the form of removing the book from the curriculum, meanwhile it was still available at the library and book stores. In the interview with Professor Bates, he informed me that the book sold out in bookstores after the newspaper articles. Just goes to show you, people will only want to read it more.

I’m happy to report Alex Sanchez got back to me today with his interview responses! It was really cool to get to communicate with the author of the book we’re studying and get his input in our project. When I study literature in other classes, most of the authors we read are dead—and have been for a while, so there is never even the possibility of getting to interact with them. I was excited to read his responses and see what he could add to our project.

I thought it was weird that he did not respond to the few questions I posed that directly referenced the Webster case we’re investigating. However, after class today, I think it’s probably because he consulted a lawyer or agent who advised him to use caution when answering questions. It’s also possible he’s not supposed to talk about cases like that for one reason or another. Either way, even though I wanted to get his take on the specific case, we have a pretty good background on the case, so his responses could’ve been more interesting then informative, possibly. I think because it’s later in the course and we’ve done so much research on the case, the need for him to provide details about the Webster case is less now than it would’ve been in February. I think the answers he did give will be a big benefit to the website.

I really like Sanchez’s idea of controversial books being dealt with by the individual family and not school wide. It would make sense to follow the practice of parents objecting to their specific child reading something, but not having say over other children. As Sanchez asserts, “But in a free society, no single individual has the right to prevent others from reading books they wish to read.” This is very important because if some parents from the Webster school wanted their children to read Rainbow Boys or similar books as part of their summer reading, then they should be able to easily, without having to contend with other parents’ decisions for their own families. I think this is a policy more schools should adopt, even though it’s not a complete solution to censorship issues. Parents shouldn’t be able to get their children out of reading certain books just because they are not comfortable with the content. Some books, especially ones we read in school, are meant to provoke feelings and teach new and different perspectives.

Sanchez’s responses also highlight how society has changed since Rainbow Boys was first published in 2001. This case—since it was over a decade ago—and his responses demonstrate how more LGBT representation can be found in popular culture and how, on some level, society is more accepting of these themes. He makes a very important point, however, when he emphasizes that even though things have improved, we still have a lot of work to do. I agree that the way to continue progressing and advancing is to represent more marginalized and minority voices in literature.

This past week offered a lot of great development for our project. Most notably, Olivia Durant from the Webster Public Library responded to my inquiry on her memory of the case, and she was able to find the name of the man who challenged Rainbow Boys: Reverend Morse! Unfortunately we don’t have a first name or a church affiliation, but it is nice to put a name to our challenger and have a lead on how we could eventually contact him. Though time is dwindling, I’m hoping to look through an old yellow pages for “Morse,” or even make quick calls to the handful of churches in Webster asking if a Reverend Morse ever was affiliated with their church. In other opposition perspective news, Liz tracked down a D&C opinion page on the challenge of Rainbow Boys and featured two responses that supported Webster’s decision to remove the book. These voices against the general trend of our project (librarians, teachers, students, the author, Liz and I) all in favor of displaying the book, demonstrate the polarizing nature of exposing children to a world different than the one their parents grew up in. And even the tone in which the responses handle LGBT issues, noting that “perversion has reached the schoolhouse,” reflects how much has changed since this challenge in 2006, as it’s hard to imagine a major newspaper giving that perspective a platform in 2018. Between Reverend Morse, these submissions to the D&C, and comments from the former Webster administration, Liz and I should hopefully be able to grasp the perspective of the Rainbow Boys opposition.

Additionally, Liz and I finally put some content on the site! For the most part, uploading content is a painless process. As is often true, getting things set up in terms of site theme and content framework proved to be the most challenging part, and our considerable amount of interviews and analysis already recorded make filling in the details a reasonable task. I have a good amount of analysis to go along with the Trish Warren interview, but because our conversation was nearly 20 minutes and the rest of our interviews are shorter Q&As over email, we can expect that page to be longer than most. I’m wondering if some of the liberties I took in analysis are acceptable there; how much of our own voice can show? Additionally, we’ve nearly completed our bio page and “About Rainbow Boys” page. I ran into some issues with the text editor and my ability to add media to our pages and Leah offered me some suggestions (different browser, clearing data cache) which temporarily worked. But by the time the issue came back, the all-powerful Liz had discovered what I hope to be a permanent solution which is typing in the web address into your search bar to ensure the connection is labeled “secure.” When the browser thinks the connection is “secure,” the site works more quickly and opens up more features. Looking forward, I’m hoping to hear back from Olivia on how her perspective on the incident has changed since 2006, as she implied that it did. We’re also hoping to find and contact Reverend Morse and continue to fill in the details we already know.  

Hesitation and Backlash.

 

Hesitation and Backlash are the guardian dogs protecting institutions from accountability. Its difficult to get around the fear of dealing with the weight on an institution that does not support you looking into their closet and finding all their skeletons. In class today, our peers who are covering Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye said they felt the school system was uneasy with their research into its past. They are dealing with wounds that are fresher than we are with our case. Buncombe North Carolina has been in the news for previous cases like the Kite Runner. I found myself asking where their resentment comes from though. If they are confident they have made the right decision for their students, they should proudly share their beliefs and be open to conversations about their beliefs. I believe that the tension comes from shame. Deep down they understand that they made a move that represented their interests instead of the interests of the people they represent.

Rather than expecting acclaim for their good decisions they make them in secret and try to fly under the radar. They hide in the shadows hoping not to get caught be their parents, “Civil rights” and “The peoples court of the internet”.  I wanted to tell my peers to be easy. They will be protected by their schools and libel cases are easy to handle in the United States. Unlike England, in the United States the burden of proof falls to the accuser. They would have to prove that what you have said is untrue and opinions are hard to qualify into truth. The language should be analyzed to keep it within safe parameters though. If one source says one thing and another contradicts it, put them both up and only say that these sources say something. Its not up to us to be the judge of these sources and decide who is telling the truth.

We are dealing with similar tensions but with a school system that refuses to vocalize anything. We decided to confront the School Board and attempt to view documents ourselves today, but they were closed for the whole week. It was an awkward encounter because someone let us into the building and we had no idea where to go. We walked to the Superintendents office and were met with a startled employee who instructed us that we were not supposed to be in the building. The building is closed to the public and the person who would be able to help us had already left at 3pm. We have been told that no complaint against the book exist in the records but with all the controversy and coverage of it I find it hard to believe. Hopefully they will be more willing to share with us next week.

CENSORSHIP CARTOON, 1925. – ‘The Bookworm.’ Cartoon, American, c1925.. Fine Art. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016.As refreshing as the trip to the Ozarks was, I am glad to be back to class. I reread Cris Crutcher’s blog post, “How They Do It,” it detailing how a single parent and their usage of vitriolic language and media to remove Cris’ book, Whale Talk, removed from the curriculum of a school that their child did not even attend. The audacity to do so, it is one thing to not let your child attend public school, due to not wanting them to a be exposed to certain elements that perforate the American educations system. Though I would argue that in doing so this is only a debilitation to the offspring, not any kind of boon. However, it is a whole another concept to have a book removed from a curriculum from a school that your child was not enrolled in.  Again, the audacity is mind-boggling. Unfortunately, book censorship is not just censoring the text, book censorship is also the censorship of ideas. A by-product of my upbringing in what would be considered a super-conservative household, even by bible-belt standards, this is absolutely appalling, and although some ideas and books should be censored, such as the teachings of violent groups or their works. Ideas and text should not be censored due to it makes the parents uncomfortable, at the idea of their offspring reading Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, or the Harry Potter series. Books such as these or even the countless classics that have been banned are not benefiting the child of the horrors of the book, it is only stripping them of life lessons, the ability to develop a new passion, or even being able to feel emotional or spiritual relief, that they may not have been able to experience otherwise. While I do not know if this happens to everyone, but for me, books were my safe place, where if I had a terrible day, I could be transported to Hogwarts, Middle-Earth, or Narnia, and escape my woes, if only for a short time. Book and Idea censorship is not only slowly stripping away our right to free speech. Now yes, there is an exception if there is propaganda hate speech or the purpose of the book is to cause incitement, but if a book is banned from a school curriculum because two male penguins are hatching an egg. What benefit is there? These bannings are not stepping stones to building a better society, healing our toxic culture, or better preparing our youth; instead, these bannings are but small steps in a direction of the resurgent of fascism, and state-controlled media. No longer would America, be home of the free and the brave, but instead America would be home of the controlled and confirmed.

 

 

With the opportunity to look back on previously assigned readings, I selected a piece which made sense at the time I was reading it, however makes a different impact after certain research experiences. When discussing why archivists choose to not include certain information in their files, the reason can be explained with something such as … Continue reading Readings #2 : Why Don’t Archivists Digitize Everything

Rosanna and I did not get to interview everyone who we initially wanted to for our research, but I think we still got a lot out of conversations that we were able to schedule with people.

Looking back through the interview transcripts as I performed my edits this past week, I pulled out some quotes that made me think differently about issues of censorship.

The first quote in particular is from Rosanna’s interview with Gene Hyde, where he talks about how an institution’s community standards can hold sway on how censorship is carried out (or not):

“Well, when you say censor stuff, it’s one thing to have it in a formal educational setting and it’s another thing to have it in the privacy of your home and what you choose to do there. There’s the idea of community standards, too, I am not a public school teacher, but I have, however been on the board of trustees of a public library system, so I’ve dealt with it from the public library situation. I think that parents have to make their own decisions about stuff, but I also think that part of what the public education system is going to do is it is, by definition probably going to challenge some of your assumptions, and challenge things. I’m not going to say specifically that this should be banned or that should be banned but I will say, that as a librarian, I agree with the American Library Association’s code of ethics which says that all information should be free, or freely available, actually, I will read you a excerpt from the ALA code of ethics, it says, “As librarians we significantly influence or control the selection, organization, preservation and dissemination of information in a political system grounded in a informed citizenry we’re members of a profession explicitly committed to intellectual freedom and freedom of access to information. We have a special obligation to ensure the free flow of information and ideas to present and future generations.” So, I’m a librarian. This is where I come from. So I personally think that the curricular decisions of an instructor in a school system should reflect that as much as they possibly can within their community standards.” – Gene Hyde 

In other words, how a library approaches censorship is going to differ from how a school system will approach censorship since their community values in terms of access to certain materials will have certain distinctions in terms of the communities that they serve. From what I gather, libraries typically serve the general public, so if you were censor information within a library, you would be censoring just about the entire community’s ability to access materials (which is clearly against the ALA’s standards). As we learned from the interview we had with Ken from Pack Memorial Library, censorship can still happen, but it will not manifest in the form of a ban, per say. Instead, certain materials may be moved to a certain section of the library to make it more visible to a certain type of reader or age group. On the other hand, school systems serve students and their parents. And since parents should ideally work with the school system to mold their children, then that’s going to make how schools as institutions approach censorship. And, typically, children in secondary school systems are minors, so that holds sway as well.

Another takeaway that I got from the interviews we conducted was the direction we began to take our research in terms of looking at Buncombe County’s general demography. In this respect, I look to Amanda Glenn-Bradley’s interview in particular:

“I think after reading it [The Bluest Eye] as a student, and – goodness gracious – it’s been like twenty years since I read this book for the first time – but one of the things I think it brought up was a diversity of experiences. I grew up outside of Asheville, but I went to a . . . let’s just say not very diverse school . . . where people lived in the dark, for a lack of a better term. We weren’t a diverse community at all. And it brought different perspectives in. And I think that one of the most important things you can get when you’re reading as a young person. You need as many different experiences presented to you as possible. You need as many points of view presented to you so you can think outside your somewhat limited world view.” – Amanda Glenn-Bradley

Amanda’s reflections made me start thinking about how Asheville is still lacking in diversity to this day. And I think that having that context will be very important as we put together our project site. As I said in previous blog posts, I found a website that gives the run-down on the state of the black community in Asheville. It brings light to how texts such as The Bluest Eye has the potential to provide a cultural learning experience for Buncombe County students.

I was also surprised by Dr. James’s personal commentary on censorship of The Bluest Eye.

“I actually think that The Bluest Eye is more appropriate than Beloved, which is the one that’s taught most often, to seniors. And when I first heard that they were teaching Beloved in high school, I had qualms about it because there’s a lot of stuff in Beloved that is both violent and difficult. And I don’t believe that the book should be censored, but I do believe that if folks are not well prepared . . . if it’s just a book that they give the kids, then we do a fact quiz about it, I don’t think that’s a good way to handle it. The issue I think we’re facing, that universities are facing now about trigger warnings is that so many kids have been traumatized in so many ways, and to re experience that trauma . .  to re-experience that in a book that was assigned to you in class . . . so you didn’t really have a choice about reading it . . . your grade depends on it . . . I think that that can be problematic.” – Dr. Deborah James

I don’t think I quite expected a Toni Morrison scholar to have any qualms about high school students being exposed to it in the classroom, but after hearing her explanation, I thought more critically on certain aspects of what may be considered “age appropriate” or not and, most importantly, why.

While we did not get the specific artifacts that we were hoping to put onto the project site and while we did not get as much information about the challenge as we would have liked,  I think that this research experience has helped me to personally think about censorship within certain institutions, communities, and age groups more deeply.

 

 

The image above is from the UMW Digital Archives Centennial Image Collection and taken in 1980 of a dance class.

This week I am catching up on my reading reflection posts and going to go over the article “Why don’t archives digitize everything?” from the beginning of the semester. Last fall, I took an Archives and Society class where I learned about how and where archives are stored, how they are cataloged, and what types of things are archived and preserved. We spent most of the last half that semester talking about digital archives and how they function, which I really enjoyed. My class put together digital collections and exhibitions. We used the Timeline JS tool to create our exhibition, so most of what I learned when creating that was applied in the timeline made for our To Save a Mockingbird Project. When this article came up I was super interested in it and how archives could apply to our project we were creating in this course.

One of the first things the article talks about is how digitizing records is time and money consuming. Our digital archivist showed my class the equipment we have here at Mary Washington she uses to digitize records, and it is huge, expensive, and time consuming to use. I even got to make a couple digital images from a scrapbook that we were looking at. And digitizing is more than just taking pictures or scanning in copies of a paper or record. It is also creating the metadata (which was a lot harder than I thought it would be to create) and making sure it is accessible. Oftentimes there isn’t enough manpower and money to pay for the equipment need to digitize. We have a small, but awesome digital collection at UMW, but we only have one person that solely works with the digital records.

Another piece of this article that I remember going over in that class a lot, was how to manage a digital archive. It takes a ton of hard drive space because they are saved as high resolution images (or TIFF files) so people who are looking at the files can zoom in and look at the document in great detail. Also formats for digital materials is constantly changing so being able to anticipate those changes and keep up is something you, as an archivist, have to keep in mind. Take music for example; it has evolved from records to tapes to CDs and now mostly to streaming services. These types of changes are awesome and great, but it is hard to justify digitizing something when there might be a better format to do it down the road. Especially when it cost so much time and money.

This article was really nice to read for a second time later on in the semester, because it reviewed a lot of information I have learned about archives. I really enjoyed the class that I took last semester and was really excited to apply those skills to this course when it first began. I have always wanted to be a librarian, but with the combination of both classes, it makes me want to eventually work on the digital side of things.

This is the site my class created and you can go through the collections and exhibitions. Mine is all about Dance clubs at UMW. I chose this topic because of my direct involvement with the Performing Arts Company here. This is the timeline that I created by using the digital archives we already had and from pages from scrapbooks that I had digitized. The article about digital archives and learning what we could use them for in our site project has been super helpful and interesting.

Never would I ever have imagined that it would take me so long to edit interview transcriptions. Rosanna did an incredible job of transcribing interviews from the audio files I sent her. And she did it more quickly than I ever would have been able to do myself. However, one of the interview transcriptions I edited took forever. I found myself having to read some sentences out loud to make sense of them. I had to really take my time to experiment with the syntax for that one so I could make sure it all read well and made sense. I’m not sure if I did the best job with it, but the important thing is that it’s done and that I did the best I could.

Also, we had some snow come in last Wednesday while Rosanna and I were meeting. I got an urgent email from my daughter’s daycare saying I needed to pick her up early, so we had to cut our meeting time short. It was a sort of a bummer, but we worked around it. I just did the best that I could with the time that I had. I used every minute I had left to work through transcriptions. Once Friday came around, I went straight to the Media Design Lab in Ramsey Library to work away on the last bit of transcriptions. The Media Design Lab looked different from what I expected it to be. As soon as I went in, I felt right at home. The staff greeted me immediately and told me not to hesitate to ask for help whenever I have any difficulties with building our website. So I’ll definitely be going in there more often. I think it would be a great place for me and Rosanna to start meeting regularly. It’s quiet, it’s comfortable, and we have access to technological assistance whenever we need it.

Meanwhile, while I was getting the interview transcription edits finished, Rosanna worked super hard to figure out how to change the aesthetics of our website. For a minute there, I thought we were going to have to pick a new theme. Neither of us wanted to do that since (1) we love it and (2) we weren’t sure how changing the theme this far into the game would impact the site’s navigation that had already been set up. Thankfully, Rosanna was able to work things out with Leah over email. I think our website looks beautiful now.

I used the bit of time I had over the weekend to add some of the images that I found onto our website where I thought they would be appropriate. Rosanna added a lot of content herself. I think we should have almost all of our content put up on there by next week so that we’ll be ready for peer review. Come Wednesday and Friday, we’ll be meeting together to collaborate some more.

I did have some confusion yesterday when I went through our website pages. I went on our “About The Researchers” page to see what Rosanna had added in. None of what I had entered in before (the short bio…the photo…nothing) was in there. But Rosanna’s information was in there. I wondered if something had gone wrong on my end. Then I looked through all the pages and realized that we had two “About The Researchers” pages. I’m not sure how that happened, but I’m glad I caught it. I just deleted one of the pages and made sure both of us had what we wanted on there.

That reminds me. I’m going to have to ask Rosanna if she has any head shots she wants put on that page. I thought about bringing one of my blazers to a meeting and taking a quick photo of her wearing it really quick. I can do some basic photo edits (though I’m certainly not a professional photographer).

To be honest, I didn’t get as much done at this point as I originally planned, but, nonetheless, I think I’m pretty comfortable with where we’re at in the moment. I don’t feel super anxious about getting the website together at all. I think we’re on the right track and that as long as we continue to work a little bit here and a little bit there, we’ll have an awesome website put together.