Cara Forbes and Rosanna Garris.
Goal of Project:
The goal of this project is to create a website that chronicles and discusses the censorship of The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison since it was published. We will be focusing on the Fall 2017 case in Buncombe County, North Carolina, where Tim Cooley, the parent of a student from North Buncombe High School, challenged The Bluest Eye. Because of his Christian beliefs, Cooley thought that the book was inappropriate for classroom instruction. We will present demographic and historical information about Buncombe County that will help explain the outside factors that could have also potentially led up to the start of this challenge.
Our goal is to create content that is fair and considers all sides and points of view to the best of our ability by conducting and transcribing as many interviews from as many people who were involved in the case as possible. In addition, we will also be adding interviews we have with librarians and a Toni Morrison scholar from UNC Asheville to provide an outside perspective.
We aim to create a website that is easily navigable and has approachable and understandable language targeted towards students and learners of high school age and older. We will provide proper citations as well as places where readers can find more information on the topics discussed on our site.
We will also be sure to emphasize that this case did not result in a book ban. However, this is still a case where a parent attempted censorship.
We aim for this site to be educational in nature. We hope to present both sides as fairly as possible to provide readers with a complete picture of the case. We hope to connect the banning of The Bluest Eye to other challenges of books with sexually explicit content in the region and in the country. We want this website to be a valuable resource for educators and students who want to know more about the book challenge and learn more about policies surrounding book challenges in Buncombe County Schools.
Tools
WordPress
We will be using the word press theme Parabola to create our website. This theme was chosen because its font and style appear similar to a textbook and we believe it will be well suited to the educational nature of our site. It also allows for multiple menus which we will use to create multiple ways to navigate through the site.
Trello:
Trello will be used to organize tasks that need to be done in a way that is accessible to both partners. Because only Cara can add and update the progress on tasks, Rosanna will be responsible for reviewing and telling Cara if tasks are not included or up to date and Cara will be responsible for editing the tasks to be done on the website.
Coggle:
Coggle is a mind map program that will be used to show the different pages/ portions of the website for which each partner is responsible It also shows the layout of the website and two menus.. The Coggle is color coded so that Cara is blue, Rosanna is green and joint activities are yellow. Coggle will be used for organization as opposed to illustration. It will be used to organize the site and establish division of labor, but will not be on the website.
Timeline JS/ Timetoast:
One of these programs will be used to provide a visual timeline on the Toni Morrison page and for a case timeline.
Toni Morrison Timeline: minimal 7-10 events; purpose is to highlight key points in Morrisons life and act as a visual aid to the author mini bio.
The case timeline will be made per the specifications on the class web page.
Story Map JS:
Story Map JS will be used to show different cases of The Bluest Eye being banned across the country.
This should contain at least 15 events.
Division of Labor
Cara will be responsible for researching and writing the About the Author and About the Book pages and creating the timeline on that page.
Cara will be conducting the majority of the interviews (except Gene Hyde and Eric Grant) and Rosanna will be doing the transcriptions.
Rosanna will be responsible for researching the About Buncombe page and creating the story map of different challenges of The Bluest Eye since it was published.
Both partners will read each other’s pages and edit them to create a cohesive voice throughout the website.
A more specific division of pages can be found on our coggle.
Timeline
We will meet weekly, Monday and Wednesday from 2-315 for class and stay after class as needed to discuss issues and progress. Once class begins to only meet once a week we will continue to use this time to work collaboratively on or website.
March 5: Site is laid out and theme picked, all pages created and different navigations set up and connected on the site. In text hyperlinks will be added as each page is written.
March 6: Cara interviews the Principal of North Buncombe High School.
March 7: Cara is rescheduling to interview Dr. Deborah James of UNC Asheville’s Literature Department to get more background information on Toni Morrison.
March 8: Cara has a scheduled phone call with Nancy Ruppert, Head of the Education Department at UNC Asheville, to discuss concerns about obtaining documentation from Buncombe County Schools that pertain to this case (the written complaint is the big item).
March 12: Reach out to Tim Coley (complaining parent) via Facebook if a more legitimate mode of contact can not be found.
March 19: Timelines for the About the Author, About Buncombe and The Bluest Eye Case pages due. Transcriptions of Interviews complete.
March 26: Each partner should have all pages outlined and have written and organized 50% of them. Because some pages require more All interviews should be completed and transcribed at this time.
April 2: All pages written and finished so that Cara and Rosanna can edit for voice, grammar, content and accessibility.
April 9: Site due for peer editing.
April 16: Peer review of other websites due.
April 23: Each partner makes edits on each others pages from suggestions from the peer review.
April 25: each partner reviews her pages to make sure they agree with the edits made.
April 27: Revised Website due.
April 30: Website presentation.