Portfolio 2: From Lake Walden to the Mississippi River

With half a semester of a college American Literature class under my belt, I've learned many new things about interpreting and writing about literature, as well as the usefulness in using blogs as part of a learning process. Listed below are reading discussed in ED266: American Literature from 1800-1915 from September 30, 2009 - October 21, 2009.

COVERAGE: Listed are all assigned readings with my corresponding blogs to each literary work.

Walden- Thoreau
            Chapters 2 and 4
            Chapters 13 and 18

Poetry Selections- Edgar Allan Poe
            The Raven
            Epigram for Wall Street and The Haunted Palace

Poetry Selections- Emily Dickinson
            XVII: I never saw a moor
            VIII: I have not told my garden yet

How to Read Literature Like a Professor- Foster
            Chapters 13-15
            Chapters 18-20
            Interlude - Chapter 22

Aiken- Uncle Tom's Cabin

Clemens- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
            Chapters 1-10
            Chapters 11-35

Smith- Introduction to the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

DEPTH: The following blog entries are ones I thought had much detail and analysis or consisted of thoughts that were worthy of discussion with my course mates.  

Smith- Introduction to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Poe- The Raven
Poe- Poetry Selections
Aiken- Uncle Tom's Cabin

INTERACTION: The links listed below consist of some of my course mate's blog entries that I commented before our weekly class meeting.

Katie Lantz- "The Heart of a Child" (Aiken- Uncle Tom's Cabin)
Sarah Durham- "A Day Just for Me" (Thoreau-  Walden)
Jessica Aspitch- "It Shall Be Lifted Nevermore!" (Poe- The Raven)
Heather Mourick- "It's your density...I mean Destiny" (Poe- The Raven)

DISCUSSION: The following links are my blog entries, as well as one of my course mates, that led to a discussion (both large and small!) either on the blog or during class.

Foster- Chapters 18-20
Aiken- Uncle Tom's Cabin
Smith- Introduction to Huckleberry Finn
Dickinson- Poetry Selections
Jessica Pierce- "Shiftless: An Analysis" (Aiken- Uncle Tom's Cabin)

TIMELINESS: Almost all of my blogs, give or take a few, were posted before the specified date and time. These three entries, however, were some of the first entries posted on the course site.

Smith- Introduction to Huckleberry Finn
Chapters 2 and 4
Chapters 11-35

XENOBLOGGING:

Foster- Interlude - Chapter 22 : On this particular blog entry, I posted a link to another one of my blog entries because I felt the two of them related to each other. The second blog helped answer my questions asked in the first entry.

Clemens- Chapters 11-35 : When reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I often come across words that I do not know, but these two struck me because I thought I knew a lot about different produce items and what they looked like! But I had to go look up these two.

Jeremy Barrick- "The Silence of the Woods" (Thoreau Chapters 2 and 4) Jeremy posted a long, insightful blog about Thoreau's Walden, and I was the first and only one to comment. I thought it was a nice entry and would have hoped more people commented!

WILDCARD: The two links below are two blog entries that have nothing to do with the assigned readings in class, but rather comment on my frustration and/or success with certain topics of the class.

Reading with Dialects : The following blog details my frustrations when reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
An Update/Reflection of the Class : This is an update blog for a blog that I had previously written about  my struggles with the class