This morning the earth group had their long awaited meeting with Eric and Zhihong and it went amazingly. We have left behind our original plan of focusing mainly on agriculture and medicine and have moved in a new and wonderful direction. As of right now our plan involves taking a detailed look at the many travelers who along the silk road visited the Mongol court. We will be cross examining and comparing the multiple accounts and primary documents we have from the travelers, as well as looking at how the Mongols presented themselves in their own records.
I feel much more confident about our groups plan right now and am feeling much more involved and excited about working on the project instead of fearful and anxious. I’m personally very excited to get to work on any aspect of this project because the topic as a whole interests me and the primary resources are especially exciting to read. I think this new start is really what our group needed to get going on the project and really start to delve in on our research and get involved in our project in a more intentional and driven way.
The stories of travelers is a topic that has always been interesting me, and as a child I was fascinated by historical journeys across the world and the way the travelers would describe the new world that they were seeing. Our new project topic allows us to look at these kinds of documents and do the important work of dissecting who’s writing them, what kind of lens they’re viewing the world through and comparing them to one another to try to paint the most accurate and telling image of the time. I’m especially interested in getting to see how Marco Polo’s travels compare to some of those for whom the travel was a political mission or driven by religion.
Another big step that I am excited to take is to make sure we look at the travelers visiting the mongol court who not only came from white European nations but also those who came from Persia, Arabia, Russia and hopefully even smaller civilizations so that we can get the full view that were looking for in this project. I am incredibly grateful for our team being so flexible about this topic and for our wonderful professors for helping guide is in our decision making process and supporting us sin finding a topic we were excited about.