English 213     Diaries and Diaries   Fall 2002    DRAFT: to be finalized

NOTE:  Because this is your major project for the course, you need to expect to devote a minimum of 15-20 hours to its planning and completion.

DUE ON OCTOBER 17:  Brief in-progress report on your final project:  when you submit your portfolio on October 17, please include a one-page typed, double-spaced in-progress report that defines the nature of your project, outlines the source materials (e.g., diaries, letters, memoirs) that will serve as the basis for your project, lists several questions you wish to explore, and explains the final form (e.g., paper, web site, photo/essay) that your project will take.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF Final Project:

Select a diary (or a form of autobiography that uses the journal/diary format as its basis) as the basis for your analysis. The diary might be published or unpublished; it might be one of your grand aunt's or your own from years past, Joan of Arc's or Uncle Dick's. We suggest that the diarist or the diary - language and content - intrigues you enough to spend sufficient time with him or her, to discover the value of the text and the extended confidence to read and analyze, to compare and contrast to other diaries you've read, in or out of class, to journals you've kept. Please analyze the diary by using techniques you've learned in class and in Tristine Rainer's THE NEW DIARY. 

Include these aspects in your analysis: 1) Define the diarist's purpose and format and audience; 2) Analyze the diction and syntax, the changes and circumstance, the audience, the risks the writer takes. 3) Describe the diary modes used by the diarist: Subjective or objective, cathartic, descriptive, intuitive, reflective; 4) Compare and contrast the devices use by the diarist with those you've already seen or used: Lists, portraits, maps, guided imagery, altered points of view, epistles, dialogue; 5) Evaluate ways in which the writing is affected by historical, personal, or institutional circumstances. 6) Draw your own conclusions about the purposes that the diary functions for its writer and for you as its reader.

October 17, 2002: Your project proposal is due in your portfolio.

1) Your statement of which text, a diary or diaries, published or not, paper-bound or on-line, you have selected for your class project. Choose one that compels the same sort of comparison and analysis of diaries and diarists we do in class. 2) Write a detailed 1-2 page project proposal, including annotations of the texts and outside sources you choose to use. 3) Include a brief description of roadblocks you anticipate and a hypothesis or explicitly stated question/s you wish to ask and answer in your research and analysis.


December 12, 2002: Your completed project is to be submitted in your final portfolio for the course.

Complete your reading, your research, and your written analysis. Outside material, historical, demographic, and cultural should be considered if essential to a thorough reading of the writer's life. Explicate, when necessary, as Suzanne has done in her endnotes to Sarah's diary.  Use what you know, what you discover or attempt to learn from your own journaling, from what you systematically reveal or hide, to compare, contrast, supplement, and support the generalizations and original assertions that you make. 

THE FINAL STEP:  Compose a reflective/analytical essay or create a project (e.g., web site, photo-essay) equal to 8 - 10 pages of 12 font, Times-New Roman, black on white, double-spaced typed material you will present to the class (hard copies of some sort are essential to include in your final course portfolio). 

Recommended online background reading before you begin your project:

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v023/23.3huff.html   Cynthia Huff's article, "Reading as Re-vision: Approaches to Reading Manuscript Diaries," in Biography 23.3 (2000) 505-523.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/legacy/v018/18.2bunkers.html   Suzanne Bunkers' review of To Read My Heart: The Journal of Rachel Van Dyke, 1810-1811, published in Legacy 18.2 (2001) 240-242. 

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/biography/v024/24.4kilcup.html  Karen Kilcup's review of Diaries of Girls and Women: a Midwestern American Sampler in Biography 24.4 (2001) 959-963.

http://krypton.mankato.msus.edu/~susanna/encoding1.htm   Suzanne Bunkers' comments on encoding strategies used in diaries.

http://krypton.mankato.msus.edu/~susanna/diaries_of_girls_and_women.htm  Suzanne Bunkers' Introduction from Diaries of Girls and Women: a Midwestern American Sampler

http://www.library.upenn.edu/etext/collections/diaries/index.html     UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LIBRARY / Schoenberg Center for electronic text & image manuscript diaries by five women.

http://www.usgennet.org/usa/topic/letters/djm/    More diaries and journals available in electronic text online

"The Emily Project"     http://www.marblehead.net/emily/  

"What to do with a diary you have found" http://www.dohistory.org/on_your_own/toolkit/foundDiary.html 

Martha Ballard's Diary Online:  http://www.dohistory.org/diary/    

Background on Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's work with Martha Ballard's manuscript diary:  http://www.myhistory.org/feature/archive/March2001/nehasmidwife.html