English 738T, Spring 2015
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Discussion of the PG project

Posted by Manon Soulet on Wednesday, March 4th, 2015 at 3:50 pm

I was sick last week too so I hope I am not completely missing the point in this post!

Maybe we could have a section that would serve as a map of the project, a sort of itinerary or outline that would organize the digital project. It could work as a form of introduction, a tool to to guide the reader/user and orientate his approach of the project.

Significantly, SJ’s PG represents a digital explosion of parts, pages, images, text… and I could not think of any way to push her project further. But maybe this “map” section could be a way to suture PG back together, and, as such, pirate or “hack” her work.

– But this may be what the ‘Graveyard’ section is supposed to do with the Media Archeology? I am a little confused about what it means.

Moreover, I think we should absolutely devote one of the sections to a literary analysis of the text PG, along with one of its form (not to seem too retrograde). This is why I think the pedagogical/critical reading section part suggested in Neil’s email is a great idea. Unfortunately I was not here to attend the presentation either but judging from the questions and points the presenters sent us last week, it seemed really good and raised crucial points. So jumping from their presentation might be a very creative and productive way to build this section. I think it would be essential to incorporate a part like this in order to provide further explanations and help the user’s reading/experience. It seems like it maybe a nice way to combine both digital work and literary/close-reading work that English students are familiar with and enjoy doing. It may be a way to illustrate or represent our own position in this class, our duality, and our in-between-ness. It could be interesting to use the annotating tool we (Team 1831) experienced with during our reading of Frankenstein.

About the narrative part, do you mean that we should rewrite/complete Shelley Jackson’s and/or Mary Shelley’s story? Because I think it is a wonderful idea and I would like to support Maura-Kate’s suggestion on that topic (about pirating PG and allowing readers/users to contribute to the narrative). It may be a way for our class to appropriate the myth of Frankenstein and advance it, to make our own contribution? Perhaps imagining Mary Shelley’s reaction’s to PG? Or envisioning Mary Shelley herself as the PG?

Finally, I think Colin’s idea about adopting a post-gender position as well is really interesting. And maybe we could also bring in Herculine Barbin into the discussion of the male/female/other/monster categories (or former categories)? (it is the story of a French hermaphrodite during the 19th century).

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