The final installment of these representative studies works means that I am onto the final third of this monstrosity. This far into the project has led to the interlibrary loan due dates shaping the reading order which, at first, looked like it would throw a couple odd books out from the main theme of the post. Fortunately they all talk about the same thing in some form or another so they aren’t as disjointed as it looked on first arrangement.
Continue reading THE ROAD TO COMPS PART 13: REPRESENTATIVE STUDIES OF AMERICAN CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN THE 19TH CENTURY PART 3
The Road To Comps Part 12: Representative Studies of American Culture and Society in the 19th Century Part 2
This section will be a three parter, so here is the middle child. I have been reading about the antebellum period for over 2 months straight now, only to have the present completely reassemble itself over the same template.
Continue reading The Road To Comps Part 12: Representative Studies of American Culture and Society in the 19th Century Part 2
Saturday Morning Cartoons: A tribute to the long 80s.
Today is another of those scenic turnout days from comps work. Instead of painting (I did that last week, and will post it after the next section break) I spent the day organizing and figuring out my bazillion bytes of animation data that I have spread across several hard drives.
This post will be filled with cartoon intros and very little thinking substance. While organizing and checking for new DVD releases I was checking the dates of some of my favorite series and noticed that they all happened about the same time. This isn’t a complete or exhaustive or even objective list. These are the series I remember watching, playing, and remembering from the three channels that we had on television.
Continue reading Saturday Morning Cartoons: A tribute to the long 80s.
The Road To Comps Part 11: Representative Studies of American Culture and Society in the 19th Century Part 1
As this starts the downhill side of the list it is only appropriate for things to get weird. Since many of these literary, print, American culture books are from interlibrary loans, the reading order is currently being structured by when the books are due back to their respected libraries. The other somewhat bizarre occurrence is that the books are starting to all say the same thing. I would like to think this is due to some achievement of enlightenment on my part and not simply due to the fact that the only people publishing on this topic are the ones on this list. That being said it is getting harder to figure out how these books fit together in the sense that many of them use the same early secondary source and then interpret it slightly differently. I want to keep up the series here until I am finished with the readings and then I can go back and study through here and my notes, but I can see the usefulness starting to drop off at this point. Maybe it is just a lull, maybe not. Either way, I am keeping on keeping on.
The Road to Comps Part 10: Literary and Print Culture Part 2
Welcome back to the “teach yourself literary criticism in 12 easy steps” portion of this endeavor. This will actually (likely) be s shorter than average post as almost half of the readings subdivided here were companions or intros to Poe or Twain. The differences in which are interesting themselves and something I will come back to at the end.
The Road to Comps Part 9: Literary and Print Culture Part 1
This literary and print culture is one of the longer subsections and for means of brevity, sanity, and any semblance of understanding I have cut it close to half (8/7) in order to try and make sense of it.
The Road to Comps Part 8: American Studies Background
This is an area of study I had no idea existed, wanted to pursue, and was then told there would be no jobs all in about 3 months time. Of course, the job field isn’t exactly a tyranny of choice these days for anything else either.
The Road to Comps Part 7: Scenic Turnout 1
I have finally finished the first section of the comps list. This marks the end of the first “question” in theory if not practice. Most of my work crosses the subdivision created to make the list make more sense. Before I start to work on the rest (I am almost finished with the background section on the American Studies portion at the moment) I wanted to share some of the things I have learned about this type of work and how I manage to stay sane throughout the attempts to synthesize everything in print.
Continue reading The Road to Comps Part 7: Scenic Turnout 1The Road to Comps Part 6: Different Approaches to the History of Natural History in the United States
The final section of the first portion of comps prep has the longest title, and the longest entry. These books are mainly a cross section of methodologies used in framing historical accounts of Natural History in America. The best part about looking at these different approaches is that the content was generally useful as well. They also criss cross the same time periods, geographies and often the same people.
The Road to Comps Part 5: Exploration and the Field
One if by land, two if by sea! This section looks at fieldwork in guise of expeditionary forces from Captain Cook to American Army explorers in the American West. Exploration and fieldwork have been the two longest lasting interests since I started working with history professionally. To see how some of these books fit together was more useful than anything that they may have actually argued.
