My questions about the midterm portfolio are:
- How long should the two reflective essays be?
- How should we “quote ourselves”? Or should be add a quote from our writing and say how we would change it?
This picture was taken right next to the new monument that had been built by Richmond residents. In the middle of the image there is a small blue plaque that reads “Sacred Forest.” I thought this was a beautiful way to honor those whose lives had been lost at the jail. Obviously the trees are very young so they were planted recently, but I thought it was a beautiful symbol of bringing life back into a place where such dark things occurred. Trees that still stand were probably there when all of the prisoners were buried, so I found it symbolic that new trees and new memories would be made in this space, and people can honor those who lost their lives.
One question I have about our Midterm Portfolio essay is how much summary we should have. For prompt two, should we recount a summary of the whole story we are discussing, or should we just talk about certain points that are the most important to our essay?
This picture is of a mural that was painted near the burial site we visited. It was located close to the street, along the wall where the signs displaying the numbers you could call to hear about Gabriel were located. The mural seems to be sending an inspiring message about rising up from hate and oppression, but the thing that stood out to me wasn’t the message of the mural, but the message sent by the fact that it was defaced. The disregard and irreverence with which this mural was treated is really sad to me. And this same treatment is repeated throughout the site, with trash and litter scattered everywhere and telephone poles and lights standing right in the middle of the burial grounds. There seems to be a general lack of care given to the site. I know that there are ongoing efforts to restore and preserve the burial ground, but they seem to have an uphill battle ahead of them. I can only hope that in the future there are more resources given to those who want to protect and preserve such an important historical site, and those resources allow this important part of Richmond’s history the respect and reverence it deserves.
Today we went on our class field trip to Lumpkin’s slave jail and slave burial grounds.
After leaving campus we wrote a note card discussing what we were expecting to see on this trip, which functioned as our prep note. As we arrived, we noticed that the burial grounds were location of the burial grounds and slave jail was odd, that it was right next to multiple parking lots, a highway and it overall just seemed like an odd location.
Professor Dolson told us to take a picture of at least one thing that we wanted to spend more time on or think about more in the future. We split up in two groups of 6, and one went towards the burial grounds while the other observed and read information about Lumpkin’s jail.
We went under an underpass to get to the burial grounds, and we read a sign saying that general Gabriel had been executed in this location. The burial ground was beautiful, but it was disappointing to see that there had been electric poles on the burial grounds, and then Prof said that at one point this area had been a parking lot and had development on it. That was not changed until 2004.
I called and listened to all the numbers, and if you still want to go back and do the same the number is 804-277-8116 and then type in 201#, 202#, 203#, 204#. They discussed the life of general Gabriel, and how he led a protest against slavery and was later executed, as well as 25 other people who were involved. There was also general advice on how to live your life, listen to your ancestors, not give up, etc.
Prof said that one of the trees we saw today was also a tree that a mass amount of hangings were done, but we were unsure which tree. While looking at Lumpkin’s slave jail, I was impressed that the jail was converted into a school so quickly after the civil war.
By the parking lot we were in, there was a white house owned by an African-American women, and Kaylee made the comment of how disappointing it was to see how it was just placed in the middle of a parking lot, barely being held up by weak pieces of wood, and how it seemed like it was not cared for in any way.
As we left, professor Dolson gave us our note cards back and then we wrote how about what we had seen. The bus also would not turn on.
I was struck by the state of disrepair of the memorial site that Free Egunfemi Bandura created. I know they just had a Gabriel celebration on Oct.10, and I wonder if they met near these signs? Seems like they would have done something to restore it. Still, I love what Free did in recalling and drawing messages of hope from the story of Brother General Gabriel.
One thing that stood out to me while working on the annotated bibliography assignment was the importance of picking an interesting topic. I chose the topic of the burial ground for African-Americans, which was absolutely fascinating to me from the beginning! In my research for my sources, I found that it felt less like an assignment and more like a personal passion project. (Although, writing the annotated bibliography did feel like an assignment – albeit a pretty cool one.) I think we might be visiting the burial ground in our field trip tomorrow, which would be so cool to see in person. In my research, I found out that the burial ground had been destroyed and developed into a parking lot, and there were some notes on attempts to reclaim the land, but they didn’t mention if the efforts were successful (or fully realized – my peer-reviewed sources were both published within the last three years).
This class with Nick Dease, the film and humanities librarian, was very helpful. He went through a plethora of resources that are available to us which I otherwise would never have known about. He first went through the processes of interlibrary loan, holding for pick up, and the online chat with a librarian. He also explained the UR One Search and showed us the best ways to search the database and find what we need. He described to us the variety of resources available, such as books, magazines, journals, and films. He also touched on the importance of learning the unique language of your topic to better be able to research and find resources about it.
He then went on to describe evaluating the sources we find based on their relevance, reliability, and legitimacy. He emphasized going through each source and tracing back different claims and quotes. After this, he talked about the different formats of citing a source such as APA, MLA, and Chicago, and went through the different benefits and drawbacks of each as well as different use cases. He also talked about the importance of giving credit where it’s due to avoid plagiarism, even if it is accidental. Not only does giving credit avoid plagiarism, but it also contributes to scholarly conversation.
He then finished up with some additional methods to narrow down search engine results such as placing quotes around text or explicitly stating “Not” to avoid certain results.
P.S. Sorry for the late response, I didn’t realize I was the responder for this class until I was looking ahead at the weekly schedule
When first starting the annotated bibliography assignment I was unsure of what I wanted to focus on from RIH. When beginning my search I found it hard to pinpoint a primary source that I could really dive into. My first few choices were hard to locate on line and the library didn’t have copies of some of the books I would need, so I had to do even more digging. But when I finally found what I wanted to work on it was a lot easier to start building my bibliography. After class on Thursday I went through my resources trying to find secondary sources that would match with my primary one. This also took a little long because some of the sources were not available online, or I could not find information about the author(s). Thankfully, I did finally find two academic peer-reviewed sources that aligned with my research question and I was able to pull the whole assignment together. Overall, there were some rough patches while trying to find a topic and primary source and making sure there were enough secondary sources, but once things started to flow it was much easier to pull ideas together.
Overall, I really enjoyed my research process, even though it was short, it was really rewarding going through all the steps of annotated week biography and learning about all the different ways and styles that exist. Something definitely useful in academia. I realize that if the research that someone has done is effective, and if we spend more time researching putting the pieces together, and writing or evaluating the sources and coming to a conclusion, is much easier and faster, and that’s when I realize the importance of researching deeply effectively and with quality. Even though my question was generally from abroad and three sources were limited still, I was able to answer them to a big extent my question. Seems the sources that I used were both informative and insightful and really niche to the topic that I was researching. That is the extent to which segregation of white and black races has led to segregation in the education field up to today.