10.11.16 Anna Valentine

       Anna Valentine- October 11, 2016

    Today we had two IBWATs, to apply a historical lens to identify literary and historical trends, and to evaluate how changes in writing affect changes in history, philosophy, and culture. Now although these two topics may seem pretty complicated at first, they can be pretty easily explained when broken down. So first things first, what even is a lens? Alike to glasses (or contacts), lens affect how something is viewed, making certain details vivid, and other details dull, making it easier to focus on certain literary elements and not others. For example, Montclair State University lists ethnicity/race/culture, gender, history, psychology, and social class all as different lens. In our class's case, we will be apply the historical lens, and use it to evaluate how a text affects history, philosophy, and culture. History, being recorded events in the past, has a unique reciprocal (given or done in return) relationship with text. The more we know about a text in a given time period, the more we know about the history that time period, and vice versa. This unique characteristic gives readers the ability to connect history and text all the time! In class we used the two texts, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" published by Jonathon Edwards in 1741 and "Common Sense" published by Thomas Paine in 1775, to examine their differences, acknowledging their historical time periods. The next time we meet in class, these differences will be discussed and further examined.

    The last conversation of Tuesday's class was the question: When did American history start? Students threw out years like 1492 (Colombus), 1602, 1776, and beyond, but did not meet consensus. The point being, that the start of American history is debatable! There is no official start time of American history, and perhaps there never will be, not to mention that even history books have differing opinions. One text on American history may argue it started with Columbus, while another may argue it started with the colonization of America. So as we start our class in American literature this year, we don't have a specific start point, but a broad history we must take into account.

    -Anna Valentine
MSU Literary Lens Explained: https://www.montclair.edu/media/montclairedu/chss/departments/english/enwr106/WS_Lenses_for_Reading_Literature_106_(Maloy).pdf