Grad Research: A Map of Classic Arcades
Check out this fantastic and useful map of classic arcades in the United States, created by Ph.D. candidate Carly Kocurek, which was recently featured on Kotaku.Here's what Carly has to say about her ongoing cartographic project:
I created the map as a resource for researchers interested in classic games, and, of course, for gamers interested in tracking some of these places down. My intention is to continue updating it as best I can, so that it remains current.
Check out Carly's original blog post about the map here.
Grad Research: AMS Dissertations Infographic, 2010-2011
The American Studies Association recently published the titles of American Studies dissertations from all reporting schools in 2010-2011. What better way to feature them than with a Wordle? For those unfamiliar with Wordle, the web application creates word clouds out of any text, visualizations that give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the original. With these visual data, we can (maybe) glean a little bit of information about which topics are currently in vogue to study in American Studies. Enjoy!
Grad Research: War Documentaries and [Un]realism
Last April, in preparation for a summer job doing research for a film, I watched several documentary films that I had neglected seeing for too long (I blame my perpetually-growing Netflix queue).Two of the many films that grabbed me among the several I watched were remarkably similar in content, at least at first glance: Restrepo and Armadillo are two recent documentaries that follow troops in Afghanistan as they negotiate hostile territory. The former highlights American soldiers; the latter, British and Danish.
Similar subject matter aside, though, the two films present war in starkly different ways. Here, I write about how they treat formal realism, authenticity, and communicating an experience that, ultimately, cannot be communicated:
'Armadillo,' though, does not traffic in the same kind of emotional candor or proximity as 'Restrepo.' We see no interviews with any soldiers; the soldiers do not break the fourth wall to engage in a candid dialogue with the filmmakers (and, by proxy, the audience). Though we catch glimpses of their lives beyond the adrenaline fog of the battlefield – in Denmark, with their families – we never see them surmount the pressures of those surroundings. Whatever emotions they express are completely mediated by place and the expectations that those places confer upon soldiers, and the places that we are invited to weigh heavily. They choke expression.We’re distanced from the narrative aesthetically, too. Where 'Restrepo' was gritty and raw in its representation of life in the Korengal Valley, 'Armadillo' offers a slicker vision. The camera shots are steadier, no dirt obscures the lenses, noises and speech sound as if they were retouched and enhanced in post-production (and perhaps they were). It looks, sounds, and feels like a scripted movie.This isn’t to suggest that 'Restrepo' is more realistic or authentic, and thus better, than 'Armadillo.' The two accomplish different goals, both valuable and germane in considering the modern experience of war and its fallout...
Read the full post exploring Restrepo and Armadillo, including clips from both films, here.
Grad Research: Deep in the Wonder Book of Knowledge
Check out this great post from our very own Rebecca Onion on her summer research at Princeton. Here's a taste:
I just wound up three weeks doing research at the Cotsen Children’s Library at Princeton, looking at a trove of books about science and industry from the 1920s and 1930s. (Thank you, Friends of the Princeton University Library, for your support.) I thought I might post a version of the brown-bag talk I gave to the Friends of the Library, which gave a more comprehensive overview of the books I saw, but I am, once again, thwarted by copyright (the talk includes a ton of images, some of which are a decade too young to be in the public domain).So I thought I might instead show off my favorite find, which happens to have been published in 1921: Henry Chase Hill’s wild encyclopedia The Wonder Book of Knowledge, ambitiously subtitled “The Marvels of Modern Industry and Invention, the Interesting Stories of Common Things, the Mysterious Processes of Nature Simply Explained,” and boasting 700 illustrations.
Read the full post at Rebecca's excellent blog, Songbirds and Satellites, here.