BONUS JOURNAL
What did you make of a “close looking”? How does it compare to a close reading?
What surprised you about the materials you engaged with?
What felt “ancient” about some of these archival materials?
What felt contemporary?
75-100 word for each question. Posted before our next class.
7 thoughts on “BONUS JOURNAL”
What did you make of a “close looking”? How does it compare to a close reading?
I thought the “close looking” activity we did during our class was very interesting. At this point, we have heard at least some of the history of UNE, but actually being able to interact and touch the history was very fascinating. Close looks and close readings are very similar in some ways. For example, instead of just either looking or reading something on the surface, you would try to find the meaning of what you’re looking at or reading.
What surprised you about the materials you engaged with?
A lot of the materials surprised me, but a couple things really stood out to me. First, while looking at a handbook from 1981, it said that there was a beer pub on campus. I simply can’t wrap my head around alcohol being so accepted on a college campus. Another thing that surprised me was when looking at the school directory, most of the students came from towns close to Biddeford. Looking at where people are coming from now, it is completely different.
What felt “ancient” about some of these archival materials?
The overall feel and look of the material definitely felt ancient. The handbooks that I observed first, were a yellowish color. I would think at some point the handbooks were white. Whenever I touched any of the archival material, I felt like I could have broken anything at any given moment. Maybe this was just my brain playing a trick on me because the material was somewhat important. But, the material was very old so the feel did feel very ancient.
What felt contemporary?
Although a lot of these materials were very old, they didn’t all seem ancient. For example, when I looked at the yearbooks, I didn’t get a sense that they were ancient. I think this is because a yearbook is very simple. It’s a book with pictures of the students and some activities that were done during the school year, so not much can change. Of course, the pictures looked old, but the overall feel I got from it was not ancient at all. If you replaced the old looking photos with maybe colored photos, you might not even be able to tell that they are that old.
What did you make of “close looking”? How does it compare to a close reading?
I think all the items that we looked at during Thursday’s class were super interesting to actually be able to observe. Instead of just reading on UNE’s history online, we got to touch, observe, and even smell archives from St. Francis as well. Although they are similar, close looking means reading into the material for more than just the words it provides, digging deeper into the history of UNE by observing everything.
What surprised you about the materials you engaged with?
The first pamphlet I had was harder to understand in a way, I was not too sure what it was. The name was “M.O.U.T.H.”, it was written by a college student in 1999 and the few parts I looked at were about having safe sex. The details he used made me a bit uncomfortable, so I quickly investigated the next thing which was a yearbook from 1970’s I believe. The black and white pictures, some explicit pictures that I know would not be allowed nowadays was interesting to look at because I just cannot imagine it being okay for multiple pictures of students making out in the yearbook LOL.
What felt “ancient” about some of these archival materials?
Some materials you could definitely tell they were older; some went all the way back to the late 1700’s and early 1800s. One of those I heard a student talk about was notes from classes written in cursive which is amazing to me that they have lasted this long. Another item was one of the hats from St. Francis, it was probably either for fashion or an athletic team but the one she had was pretty torn up which was cool to see. The evolution of ball cap hats has definitely changed a lot and has come a long way.
What felt contemporary?
Honestly, the “M.O.U.T.H” pamphlet. Saying that because it was from 1999, which is a little over 2 decades old but the student that wrote it used certain terms and slang still used to this day. Another thing, it was promoting using condoms and talking about hookups, which is still something we need to keep in mind today, too. Another student had these two mugs which were really cool also, they did not seem old at all.
What did you make of a “close looking”? How does it compare to a close reading?
I think that while similar concepts, “close looking” differs from close reading greatly. With close reading, you have to visualize what the author is writing, to further your understanding of the text. However, when “close looking” you already have that physically object, and so rather than interpreting someone else’s description of an item, you make your own. Personally, I enjoyed the “close looking” as I feel like it gave me a better understanding of what these items were, and their purpose/meaning.
What surprised you about the materials you engaged with?
With the yearbooks, it was surprising how much both the school, and the students changed from the 60’s to the 80’s, and then the 80’s to now. I think I’ve always known that college as a whole used to look much different than it does today, yet I’ve never actually visualized what that might look like. Some things looked fairly familiar, like the school buildings, while others seemed much more foreign, like our sports teams.
What felt “ancient” about some of these archival materials?
A big thing I noticed with all of the items was the difference in quality from what we’re given today. The yearbooks had really solid construction, and felt much like much higher quality than what we have today. Another thing I noticed was the sports team uniforms, which all seemed very different from what our current uniforms look like.
What felt contemporary?
Some of the captions on the photo’s seemed very similar to things people say today. It was odd to see that even over 60 years ago, people had similar types of humor, and made similar jokes to the ones people make today. Another thing that felt contemporary were the advertisements at the end of the yearbooks. Dunkin Donuts, Nike, and a few other sponsors seemed very familiar, even with the yearbooks being 40-60 years old.
Close looking is definitely very interesting as you are able to feel the objects and interact with them. I enjoy close looking a lot more than close reading. For me personally I like having an object in front of me rather than imagining through reading something. With both close looking and reading, one is supposed to pay attention to the small details and how it was created. However, close reading isn’t as hands on and requires more thought than sight.
I was surprised that the materials were as old as they were. Everything was in pretty good conditions and the artifacts were about a hundred years old. It is amazing that the college was able to preserve them so well so that we were able to look at them. I was also surprised to a lot of old pictures. It was interesting to see what life was like back then and all the clothes that the people wore.
The journal that I looked at most definitely felt ancient. If was from the early 1900’s and was all in cursive because that is how people used to write. The pictures that I looked at also felt very ancient because they were black light photos I would assume. They had a blue hue to them and were all in black in white. One could tell just because of the quality that they were old. The grainy image and black and white photos gave it away right then and there.
The varsity letter from St Francis felt a bit contemporary. In high school today we still have varsity letters, so it didn’t feel as those were that old. I personally even have one, so it felt modern age to me. The essence of the yearbooks felt contemporary just because we have them today however the pictures and inside of the yearbook definitely did not have a modern feel as they were black and white.
This was my first ever time working with artifacts and practicing close looking so it was very interesting to me. Close looking with the mugs was fairly straight forward, I noticed some few differences here and there but didn’t find anything too crazy in comparison to modern day mugs. When I looked at a yearbook from Westbrook College I practiced close looking a lot more. I checked the table of contents to see what I was interested in and ultimately took note of all the different sports teams they had back then and tried to compare their dorm life to ours today.
One thing that surprised me is why they included mugs in our array of artifacts. I wondered what real significant value, if any, did the mugs hold to be included in our close looking. Sparked from a thought of Professor Miller, perhaps drinking was a very big part of the campus life. I found this especially interesting because I wouldn’t consider drinking too big a part of the campus culture now. I’m curious what changed.
To me, the Westbrook College yearbook I looked at felt pretty ancient. To start, it was in black and white, which is very rare and something hardly, if ever seen anymore. The pages felt weak and delicate, like they could rip with the slightest bit of pressure. Also, not only were the sports teams different, like badminton, bowling, and tennis, but their uniforms were so straightforward and simple they could’ve never been from the modern day.
To me, one of the mugs felt very contemporary. One of the mugs I looked at was made out of metal, with a gold colored emblem attached to the front and a see-through glass bottom, which is very different from modern day mugs. The other, the contemporary one, was ceramic made with an emblem painted on and no distinct or different shape to the mug. Without being told, I definitely would’ve thought this mug came from somewhat modern times.
What did you make of a “close looking”?
For my archive material I got a folder full of documents. At first glance, it just looked like a bunch of old discolored paper with weathered ink on them and messy cursive writing. As I looked closer, the papers were not actually as old as I previously thought. The documents were from the 1970s and consisted of newspaper clippings, handwritten documents, notepaper that served as a letter from a parent to a teacher, and yes, lots of discolored papers.
How does it compare to a close reading?
After reading the documents, I found that they were actually about political issues in the 1970s. The documents consisted of student union demands, newspaper clippings about student unrest at colleges, and police reports. I realized after looking some things up, that the 70s were a time of protest during the Vietnam War, and the students at UNE were among those protestors. There was a letter condemning students going on strike, but there were also clippings from students explaining their reasons/demands. The students were calling for peace, trying to get more rights and were trying to hold their administration accountable.
What surprised you about the materials you engaged with?
The document that surprised me the most was the police report about a bomb threat at UNE in the 1970s. I have never experienced any kind of a bomb threat at school so this was very interesting to read about. The school received a call from an anonymous caller who sounded intoxicated, threatening about a bomb they placed in Decary Hall. I don’t think they ever apprehended the caller, but the school was evacuated and the police department investigated and never found a bomb.
What felt “ancient” about some of these archival materials?
The material that felt most ancient were the newspaper clippings. I think this was because they were made of the least quality paper and took the most beatings over the years. Most of the newspaper clippings were all yellow and ripped in places. Most of them were either from the town newspapers or from the school newspaper. I think they felt the most ancient because reading about old issues from a current point of view is very nostalgic, especially when reading about them from the students’ point of view.
What felt contemporary?
After reading the documents in the folder, I was able to look at the UNE yearbook from 1970. It was really cool to be able to see what the students actually looked like who were conducting these protests and demands. The yearbook felt the most contemporary, or current, because the photos were very good quality and the book was in great condition. I also personally relate to yearbooks because I was able to get one every single year of high school. Not to mention that the students in the book were all my age, so that made me able to relate to it even more.
1.I think the close looking we did in class was very interesting getting to look at old history of the school and getting to see the difference from then to now, A close reading is similar to a close looking because you’re reading something and analyzing the reading trying to figure out what’s going on
2.Something that surprised me from the materials was seeing the school before it was Une and what it looked like, there was probably only like 4 buildings for classes and no sports fields, something else was getting to see all the yearbook pictures and seeing that the kids who went here over 100 years ago were living the same lives we are now.
3.Something that felt ancient to me was some of the way the material felt in the books you could tell it was authentic old paper and some of the pictures looked like one of one pictures, also some of the drawings in the books I looked at were hand drawn into the book.
4.There was some news paper from 2007 which wasn’t that long ago at all although there was still some differences like the older cop car, there was also a yearbook that showed things that are still around here today that have been here since the late and middle 1900’s, things like fast food places, pizza places and more.