In the past two days the Earth Group has had two incredibly successful meetings and I can’t wait to keep moving forward with the projects. Not only have the projects been big in terms of the kind of information that different members were able to share about their projects but also because of the ideas we came up with together. Our first team meeting we had two big planning breakthroughs that I think will be really exciting for our final project. One of them was more logistical and involved us sketching out some ideas for what we wanted our story map to look like and how our pieces would all look together as one. After working on that for a while we had a very successful conversation with Tierney about different resources we could work with which has really taken us down an exciting path.
One facet of our webpage which I’m excited for is that as a group we discussed doing something similar to additional information pages. The idea behind them was that we have a lot of incredibly important and useful information that doesn’t quite fit into our story map but that we know people would want to learn more about. The idea we’ve been tossing around about that issue now is to implement a sort of side bar or tabs in order to organize these ideas. While that idea is really exciting and I hope it works out we had an even more exciting breakthrough in our team meeting tonight.
We got music to play on our page
It may not sound exciting, but Brian through a painstaking process of forum post reading and youtube watching was able to embed music into our blog page that begins playing as soon as the page is opened. Likening himself to a hacker or an android he managed to save the day. So far we can only use youtube videos but the fact that our page has a unique and awesome element to it already really has me excited for our final outcome. On a more logistical note we had a great meeting in terms of planning and I think that the ideas we came up with are going to really help us. Not only did we plan concrete meeting times for the rest of the assignment but we also put in place some really helpful deadlines and drafts to help encourage us all and keep us focused throughout the next few weeks of working on the project.
Additionally I’ve been getting better at finding images that may be useful to me like this one of Kublai Khan.
~*Controversy*~
I wanted to share some interesting things I uncovered about the perceptions of beauty and body images on the Silk Road. I ran across many current events that are very relevant to my topic but I digress in my attempt to include those subjects. Here’s why. I’ve come to realize there is a tremendous amount of tension between the Chinese government and Uighur societies on the topic of beauty and body images. Apparently, the Chinese government has pushed forth their notions of beauty through a series of beautification campaigns. They call it ‘Project Beauty’. The idea behind the campaign is to promote unveiling the faces of Muslim women, especially in the Uighur society. In some provinces it is a civil offense to wear a veil. See, Uighur’s trace their ancestry back to the Turkish dynasty on Tarim Basin. It wasn’t until after the death of Genghis Khan in the late 16th century that Uighur populations converted to Islam, thus the majority of Uighur women in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China are Muslim. Although not mandatory, wearing a hijab (veil) is customary in the Islamic faith. This project directly targets Uighur Muslim women. On the other hand, the Chinese government defends its motives for Project Beauty as an aim to put a stop to forced veiling. The government also contends that in the wake of so many Islamic extremist uprisings, veils (or covering the face in general) may become synonymous with terrorism. So, once again I am setting parameters for what I will and will not discuss in my narrative about beauty and body images in the Uighur society. Don’t get me wrong, typically I would be very vocal about where I stand with this issue but, I’ve decided that it’s best to approach this in a different way. The ramifications of my outspokenness could possibly result in more tension as our Silk Road website will be available worldwide. At the same time, it’s interesting to make of note this debate as it adds context to the images that I am uncovering for research. Now my analysis will be centered around how these differences in opinion perpetuate a hegemony of what it means to be beautiful. Today, as more Han Chinese relocate to urbanized areas in Uighur communities, the overall idea of beauty is imminent all over the place. Fashion shows, beauty pageants, talent competitions along with anti-veil signs and anti-veil security checkpoints, all reveal this much noted controversy. This is a big deal however; in this circumstance I’ll remain silent on this discussion. Peace folks.
Plunking Along… On Prezi
Last weekend, as timekeeper, I roughly outlined a schedule for the Tongue team and then as a team we went through it to make it our official timeline for the rest of the project. While organizing and scheduling usually takes away some anxiety and stress this seemed to take my vague anxieties for the project and solidify them into very real and scary due dates and approaching deadlines. We are too close to finishing this…
What I love about my team is our ambition and our passion; however, the requirements for this project have downscaled and we are still moving ahead on our fairly elaborate goals. I think we have a chance of pulling them off, because we have been working pretty hard from the beginning with research and planning, but it’s still extremely daunting. I can’t tell if I think we are being slightly unrealistic or if I am just really stressed about the amount of work it will require. Hopefully I am overthinking it and it will be more doable that I am expecting.
We have definitely gotten all our ideas in order, though, and have concrete goals and ideas. One of the questions we have been having is how we will be a part of the storymap since our project is different from the standard idea. Our team is writing the narrative of a meal in Kashgar and had hoped early on to have an image on the class’ map set in Kashgar of our scene (a table with each component of the meal). We have been trying to come up with ways to do this with the technology we have been given, but have found it extremely restricting instead of inspiring, which is the whole point of the class’ focus on digitalization. Our most recent idea has been to link a Prezi presentation of an image of our meal and each of our separate research on each component. I gave it a quick try during our last team meeting with a randomly chosen image from google images of a table with multiple dishes on it and it is very similar to what we had hoped for! We think this might be our best option, despite the fact that Prezi is a pretty horrible system to work with – it is extremely frustrating and arduous in regards to the technology/site’s abilities and parameters.
I kept working on that example Prezi of what our project might look like for the sake of demonstrating our group’s end goal as well as tinkering around on Prezi to get familiarized with it. Here it is: http://prezi.com/hsvs-xr8snsw/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share
Side note:
I contacted a photographer, Ramdas Iyer, who has a whole page on his site dedicated to magnificent open markets along the Silk Road, including Kashgar (http://ramdasiyer.travellerspoint.com/40/). He said we would be able to use all and any of his images free of charge because they will be used for educational purposes. Here is one photo I think is incredible… because I love bagels!
The Process: 6
With less than a month left of work, our group has turned up the heat. Not only is this in relation to researching and creating our Kashgar food map, but also we’re planning to make a Tandyr (Tandoor) oven.
This is no small feat. However, we believe we have the tenacity to take this on, and definitely the stomach to eat whatever comes out of it. Our current plan of action involves the following steps:
- Getting permission to create the oven
- Creating the oven
- Cooking the food
- this will most likely be a traditional Kashgar naan bread and kebabs if we get adventurous.
- Fellow tongue teammate and chef Zach is spearheading this effort. And it’s safe to say that we have full confidence in his culinary expertise
- Eating the food.
Depending on how this works, we will include a meal as part of our presentation of the final project. Incorporating it as part of the digital map in itself will be more challenging. However, we’ve thrown around the idea of creating a short video explaining the building experience.
After meeting as a group on Thursday, we revised our timeline and set out clear goals for completing parts of our project. As we have solidified our project and responsibilities, we are feeling that storymaps may be deterring out creativity. After speaking with Tierney—Who provided some solid advice—Our group might be looking at alternative documentation methods, provided they can coexist with the work of the other teams.
One of these forms is using the digital tool Prezi. Fifty percent of our group, including myself, has a not-so-positive view of the program because of past interactions with it. Despite this, we’ve come to find that our Kashgar food customs might look killer if presented on the canvas-like layout that Prezi offers. We have yet to confirm whether or not we are able to use this program. More news next week.
On the completed side of things, I was able to finish a historical timeline on the diffusion of Cumin around the world. The Timeline JS program was especially useful to highlight years and provide a short narrative surrounding each location featured. The timeline crosses 5 continents and over 4000 years, following Cumin and its uses in all sorts of civilizations. I found a wealth of information surrounding the spice as I mentioned in a post before, but what was really interesting was how each culture used the plant in its own special ways.
Quote from group member Zach,
“I just want to cook food!”
Still Moving Forward
The Sky Team met this past week and we set down definite dates that the group will need to have certain things finished by in order to get the project done on time. Among other things, we set dates for having drafts completed, for setting outlines for the Story Maps, and for inputting information into the website and Story Map. However, I worry that the team is really behind overall. The research is not completely done yet, and we are still unsure how to construct a narrative. I believe that the team should have been more proactive about the project, and the team should have been meeting more often and talking much more often than what has been going on up until this point. We have until November 15 to get everything done by, which is rapidly approaching. My hope is that having set deadlines for each part of the project will get the group to turn it into high gear. At this point, the project will take dedicated time pretty much every day in order to have a finished project that is ready to be seen by the public eye. In order to be proactive and make sure we make the official deadline, we set a deadline for the whole project our on November 11. This will hopefully make sure we really have everything done and give us some elbowroom if something goes wrong and we need those extra three days to fix up the project.
Other Worries:
The biggest roadblock right now seems to be the language barrier. It is hard researching the fashion and beauty ideals of a culture that uses a language (or languages) that you do not understand. The team is using all of the resources that we have available, such as Google translations (which can be problematic) and one of our professors who is Chinese and can help us translate some of our artifacts.
Lastly, something that sort of bothers me as the deadline for the project approaches is that the team has not reached out to me for help. I know that they are having some difficulties, but if they do not come and talk to me, there is only so much that I can do in regards to leading them and nudging them along to get stuff done. I am doing the best I can when we meet as a team, but ultimately I cannot force them to do their research, or meet up more, or communicate more.
Ninth Grade History Gone Academic Adventure
In ninth grade, I had a teacher named Ms. Herrington for a history class called “Eastern Civilizations.” At this point in my life, I was the furthest thing from a history buff or even a history fan, and I struggled to see studying history as interesting. In Ms. Herrington’s class, we studied the Silk Road and the Mongol Empire and that was the first thing in my high school history career that truly piqued my interest—why, I can’t really be sure. I still remember a packet that we had that told stories of Genghis Khan stuffed villagers into carpet bags and running them over with horses (once again, why this fascinated me so much, I’m really not sure). I am definitely looking forward to sending Ms. Herrington a letter at the end of the course when the website is posted and telling her about how I went on to college to serve as the teaching assistant for a large digital humanities project on the Silk Road, an interest that she originally cultivated in my education. Not only that, but I will be traveling 3500 miles along the Silk Road over 3 weeks in January. It’s crazy for me to think that one chapter that I particularly liked in my high school history book is now something that I get to go see and do. I never imagined that my academic career would bring me here, but I am so excited at the opportunity.
In class this week, while discussing the Mongol Empire, we talked about how Chinghis Khan holds the reputation of being incredibly violent, which, while true, conflicts with the reality that many towns peacefully surrendered to Chinghis Khan because they had heard about the Mongols by word of mouth. It stuns me that Chinghis Khan may not have actually intended to be a conqueror, but instead kept conquering for fear of retaliation from places he had already defeated. I find it fascinating perhaps the most successful conqueror in history may have done it by chance or convenience, rather than by intense engineering. While this video is aimed at a younger audience than our class, I think it gives a good basic representation of this struggle around Chinghis Khan’s reputation.
Fashionably late to the party: bring the beat in.
This is my first blog post. Had I actually kept up with them like I was supposed to (I’m sorry) I could have given you (and me) a more fluid and clearer image of my process these past…well, this whole semester. Once I missed the first one, the big one, I kind of slipped and didn’t know how or where to pick back up. I continued my work with my fellow Hearts, but the website became this foggy intangible element that I was scared to approach. In fact, the whole researching/attacking a theme and direction process was foggy. Were any of these notes and findings actually applicable? Am I branching too far away from our decided central theme? Do I even have a firm grasp on what that theme is? Nothing felt solid or accomplished, in our group and in my own understanding of our individual and collective voice/role. Without that solid evidence and feeling, I had no idea what I could possibly write. Obviously, it would’ve helped had I just reached out immediately, but I didn’t. And here we are. So while I’d like to dump all those notes, feels, conflicts, and mini breakthroughs onto this entry now, I’ll allow this post to be a platform of moving forward: addressing the present as it is, and the hopes and goals to come.
Today was actually perfect for regaining my momentum with this project. Gavin Douglas (the professor of Ethnomusicology at UNCG who presented in class) reignited my confidence and excitement as he basically walked us through exactly what my group and I have been trying to attack. Our original idea having been following an instrument’s development and use across time and land, Gavin provided the foundation of a concrete history and narrative to easily follow. I was almost pissed sitting there thinking: yup, yup that’s what we’ve been looking for. No, don’t show the class the horse-head fiddle! That’s OUR thing. I’m pretty sure Emma and Emily, (who were sitting next to me, and definitely maybe sharing my thoughts), and I were ready to invite Gavin then and there into our group. Maybe interviewing him could actually be a helpful tool for us. We’ve already decided to use today and the contemporary use of musical performance as our vantage point of time to work backwards from. What if we used here, in Greensboro as the locale we’re traveling back from? Gavin even mentioned that the banjos we use in North Carolina are directly linked to movement from West Africa. Our narrative could be not only easier and more accessible for people stateside to comprehend, but it would be that much more intimate and personal to our own journey academically and physically. Musical tradition has moved and shifted a lot, and music also moves us. That’s something we should and can embody in the story and map we weave.
Setting up meetings
My team met today for our weekly meeting, where we discuss where we are in our research. Today we focused on planning when to meet for the deadlines.
One of the main problems we seem to be facing as a group is still coherency of narrative and how the story map is going to be analyzed. The plan to confront these problems is to have all our information up on the google doc by next Tuesday, along with a paragraph describing the narrative we see within our own individual topics, and some ideas for the points we find important to put on the maps. Then, we will all meet in person the next day to discuss the narrative.
I have some hope that the narrative will come together organically and naturally. Our topics of beauty standards, gender expression, and fashion are all interlinked, so a similar narrative for all three may emerge. I know we are already noticing many continuities within our topics, and I think that these similarities can be shaped into a greater, overarching narrative. We also have to figure out how the geography intersects, and how to arrange the points on the map in a cohesive manner. Maybe similarities will arise once we see the research from everyone’s individual topic. Then comes the issue of in what order to arrange the points on the map. Maybe we’ll be lucky and a clear pattern will emerge!
I have been facing some small issues concerning my own individual project. I have yet to find any Uygher fashion designers, or find any evidence about whether traditional clothing is the norm for day to day life. The artifact I have included shows a wedding celebration, and I’m wondering if they normally wear clothes like the ones pictured outside of special occasions. Other pictures I have seen of Uyghers at market places or other everyday areas seem to show a similar style of clothing. I also have to find some more scholarly sources: most sources I have found just through Google searches, and are often just descriptions of the clothing normally worn, or focus more on the ways the current social situation affects attire.
Despite all of this, I have still learned a lot of interesting information! It’s very interesting to me the way fashion can be used to tell information about a person: for example, unmarried Uygher girls often wear their hair in many braids, while girls who are married only wear two braids. Another interest I have is seeing how their fashion relates to their Muslim faith.
So, even though we have faced some issues with this project, and still have some problems to resolve, I am still confident we will be able to create an interesting and cohesive final project!
[The] Heart Will Go On
Hello old friend!
Fall break came and went, far more quickly than I think any of us intended! The day I got back on campus I holed myself up my room, picked up the books I’d left in piles on my desk, and proceeded to get really excited about our project!
We met with Eric the day before break began, and he suggested that we funnel our new direction into an even more specific area: the internationalization of silk road performative traditions and their relationship with authenticity. More colloquially, we are describing what is happening now by relating it to what it once was. This change is going to make our final map product look a whole lot cooler because the topic has the potential to span more geographical regions than our original idea did. For instance, Jilly has shown some interest in dance. Performances of traditional Mongolian dance are actually occurring across the globe now, and we could very feasibly plot a point for our project in New York City. This sense of a geographical journey will lend really well to the narrative that Eric and Zhihong are looking for.
This honestly doesn’t change my research too drastically, but it does give everything a clearer shape for me. My most recent research has involved the age of current Shamans in the regions of Mongolia. I have found that the majority of current Shamans in the Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia are over the age of seventy–they took up Shamanizing in their youth, thus narrowly escaping the attempts to eradicate Shamanism during the cultural revolution.
Our most recent readings for class also filled in some gaps I’ve had in my brain about Shamanic practices and their intersections with musical traditions: I learned about the way that the shamanic drum is actually traditionally played in a dissonant manner. This style of drumming is rhythmically asymmetric in an attempt to imitate the sounds of the natural world, such as whistling winds or the thumping of horses’ hooves, which I think is extraordinarily beautiful.
I think that we are going to be having a lot of really fascinating conversations about what this “authenticity” in our new topic really means; I know that in my research I have already run into a lot of seemingly silly new-agey approaches to Shamanism that seem appropriative to me. I am very interested in concepts of performativity and what necessarily makes one spiritual practice more authentic than another, so I am excited to connect my research to these new more philosophical ideas.
SYMBIOSIS
Coming back, I think we all feel a pressure to have some sort of solid work to present. As the Silk Worm, I do not feel that stress but I am waiting anxiously to see where we are headed. I trust that the members of my group will come through. From the beginning, I think my group members and I imagined this project to be much more elaborate than it is. When we (the Silk Worms, Eric, Zhihong, and Tierney) broke it down the other week, we were all able to breathe a little more easily. It is always best to make things as least complicated as possible.
That said, while awaiting for the research my team gathered, I was quite inspired by the content of this weeks readings. The readings focused around music along the Silk Road and the convergence of culture. What struck a chord with me was the clips of Abigail Washburn performing. Abigail Wahburn is a world renowned singer and banjo player who also has a background in Chinese. I became aware of her and her work after listening to an ON BEING episode. ON BEING with Krista Tippett is a wonderful podcast that explores what it means to be human in modern day. This particular episode starred Abigail Washburn and her husband, Bele Fleck. Although it was not specifically about Abigail’s travels and music performed in China, it focused in the bridging of past and present and different peoples through music. I found a really neat video that reflects this:
The video was contributed by Chris Heagle, who is the producer and technical director of “On Being.” The video captures the magic of what music brings to a moment. In the video, Abigail Washburn is sitting in a room in Urumqi among a Uygher feast sharing an impromptu jam session with her band and friends. What strikes me about this clip is the mingling of language and sound. She is singing an American classic–Wayfaring Stranger–yet is accompanied by traditional Chinese instruments. WHAT A SOUND!
My group and I have decided to focus on the present–what even is contemporary Chinese music? What we are discovering is that the “music of the Silk Road” may not take place on the Silk Road at all, but instead is performed in California and New York, etc. This brings up questions of authenticity in art. Does mixing sound, culture, and language somehow make an art form disingenuous? These are the questions that we are playing with.
On a side note, I have a new favorite word that I came across in the this weeks readings. It is SYMBIOSIS. I don’t know how it took me so long to learn of it because it is nothing but excellent.
SYMBIOSIS = a mutually beneficial relationship between different people or groups