Women in Wikipedia, Woman's Commonwealth

Women & Wikipedia entries have been on my mind, for whatever reason, lately. Just last week I sent out these tweets:

I have a bunch of women I'd love to add, but I'd like some help figuring out how to make pages (with the people info boxes)! and just have company doing it...

Would anyone be interested?#twitterstorians

— Ameya Warde (@ameyawarde) December 4, 2018

And now I just came across this article in The Gaurdian: Female scholars are marginalised on Wikipedia because it's written by men.

I am thrilled to see that there's already an active tag for this on Twitter (#WCCWiki) though it is classics-specific and I'm no classicist. There is also this project on wiki called Women in Red which looks interesting, but I'm not used to Wiki projects formatting so I'm still scrolling through and trying to make sense of.

I am constantly searching for women who have no pages of their own (or are stubs), so this is a thing that I notice a lot and really bothers me. Most recently, it was learning about the "utopian" (broadly defined) community of the Woman's Commonwealth, a long-lasting (though single-generation), financially prosperous community of almost exclusively women. HOW does this not have it's own page?? Currently it's just a section within the Womyn's land page.

My mind is BOGGLED. The community lasted DECADES. Fruitlands (founded by Amos Bronson Alcott), by contrast, lasted less than one year, and look at the size of it's page:

I pictured working on Wiki pages after I wrote some publishable things, but I feel like the right thing to do is to actually start now.

And, since I'm overwhelmed with learning the coding parts of Wiki (I know it's not hard to figure out, but it does take time (I tried before) and I'd rather focus on the research/writing right now), I think I'm going to resurrect my research wiki and start working on pages for the Woman's Commonwealth and other women/women's groups there, until I get something worth publishing on the Wiki site, then I'll figure out how to do it.

Research update, week of Nov 12, 2o18

So, what am I working on these days?

Last week I finished extracting the people & communities (and a few other entires here and there) from the Utopia & Utopians: An Historical Dictionary (Trahair) and The A to Z of Utopianism (Morris & Kross) into my Heurist database. This took me about a month. It included:

• Making pages for the people 
• Making pages for the communities
• Making pages for the philosophies/religions, organizations, etc
• Making pages for the sources
• Creating & constantly tweaking the templates for each page, creating fields for the information I wanted to record, moving the info around the pages, making fields that connect to other pages and thus building relationships between them.
• Copy/pasting the blurbs form each of the (e)books into the correct pages
• Filling out the basic fields, including all the ones in relationships with other pages. 
• Often but not always copying the pertinent lines from the dictionary blurbs into the correct field sections (i.e. “Early life” or “marriage” or “community life,” etc)

I’m pleased with how many pages I have in there now (318 communities, 411 people, 118 philosophies/religions, etc) and I ran my first network connection graphing… thing… to see how all these were connected (as this was a major reason I chose this software for my research)— and was surprised at how many entires had no connections at all, so then I spent a day or few last week going back through and checking for/adding connections— plenty more work to do there, particularly in future research in general, but I assume some from the copy/pasted blurbs that I haven’t gone through properly yet, too. 

Monday I had a combined 5 hours of bus/train/lyft commenting to get to a doctor’s appointment, and I took the book Fruitlands: The Alcott Family and Their Search for Utopia. I was trying not to mark it up too much, but I was unsuccessful. The marking is excessive— just so many things to add to the Fruitlands, Amos Bronson Alcott & Charles Lane pages, but also to the pages of so many people he’s has been in connection with so far, and I’m barely into chapter 2! 

The internet is currently still down at my house and I’m actually very much looking forward to getting it back largely so I can add some of this new information to the pages for these folks, most of who I already had, but not all! This is an actual paper book, so let’s hope I am able to moderate myself so I don’t spend a year just retyping nearly the whole thing! It’s hard to know what I’ll want to know later at this stage of my research, though, as I’m still very much in the information-collection phase, with only vague ideas of what I want to write about in the future, so I'm basically saving everything that could maybe even possibly be useful in the future.

Speaking of, maybe I should write some of that out to help me start figuring out where I’ll want to go with all this first. 

So. Topics I’m interested in writing about at the moment:

• Women in Utopia. Individuals in particular. For how women’s-rights-centric so many of these Utopian communities were, it’s interesting just how heavily male the well known of this group skews. Certainly Marie Stevens Howland, who I started researching in particular earlier this year, before deciding to expand my research at this stage so I could have more context for her life. Charlotte Perkins Gilman as well, though she’s not really a part of this crowd— she lived in a communal home in NYC as a teenager and LOATHED it, but Its actually her work in the cooperative housekeeping movement that lead me into researching these utopian communities too. To a small extent I almost consider my utopian research as background to my future work on the cooperative housekeeping movement (of the past, and how we  should bring it back in the present/future). 
• I’ve come across quite a few women in my research so far that there seems to be nothing (or next to it) done on them, and I would really love to flesh out some of their lives as well. 1. I want to get more of these interesting women on wikipedia, with good pages! 2. I’d like to write papers about them, get their name out to the wider Utopian Studies/American history communities 3. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could turn them into a book? Maybe if I can find some coherent strings between a few of them I could make a group biography (which I love to read) or few. 

• Alcander Longley. I keep finding him mentioned all around, and he started 5 communities (all which failed rather quickly) in Missouri, but I haven’t found much work done on him specifically somehow. 
• Before he started his communities he seems to have lived in/visited a few. Seems like a good story there! The reader could experience the different communities through his eyes and see how they influenced him and then watch as he kept trying, and failing, to make his own successful communities. 
• A.J. Macdonald. I haven’t looked into this yet, but I’d be interested to see how much work has been done on him. As someone who travelled to most of the still-known communities and met all the big names, he could be a great subject for a book project…
• Josiah Warren & Modern Times. There has certainly been work done on him, but no modern work aimed at a general audience. I have some friends who consider themselves anarchists so I think it’d be interesting to share the story of the “first American anarchist” with them. 
• Josiah the person is very interesting. A quiet, introverted inventor, musician and publisher who lived at New Harmony and knew Robert Owen, only to turn Anarchist instead and make the nation’s first anarchist paper and a string of the first anarchist communities, utilizing his concepts of Equitable Commerce and the Time Store (which might be of interest to those who are involved with Time Banking these days, as well). Plus he’s connected with the always colorful Stephen Pearl Andrews.
• The Women’s Commonwealth- I was shocked to find this only when combing through the utopian dictionaries. An community of women who largely all left their husbands and raised their children communally seems like a pretty notable thing, so how had I not come across it before? I just did a quick google scholar search and there are certainly some writings about it, but they’re all pretty dated. Perhaps I can bring them back into the modern Utopia discussions! They weren’t, as far as I know now, trying to make a template for the rest of society to follow as is my current definition of utopian societies, but the gender dynamics might be important enough to override that and make it worth bringing back into the discussion. 
• Urban Utopian communities. Most were rural, and most failed because no one knew what they were doing (among other reasons, especially fire), but there were at least a few Urban experiments that didn’t rely on agriculture (like Unity House). What are the stories there? What worked/didn’t work? This could be of particular relevance to folks in modern co-housing communities. 

Now that I have the basis of my research database done (though plenty of work is needed to tidy up the pages!) I feel like I have a few options as what to do next. 

1. Go through and tidy up the pages A-Z. Make sure the right quotes from the abstracts are in the right text boxes, make sure all the connections are there— make it generally “presentable” (though I have no intention of sharing it with anyone else anytime soon, but I do intend on using these pages to create (or flesh out) the wiki pages for those that don’t have them (or robust pages) yet. Tidying up the pages would help with that a lot
1. After that I could actually start editing their Wiki pages. It’d be good writing practice for me, but I don’t currently know how to do all the wiki-specific coding, so that would take some time to learn, I imagine, and I’m not sure the easiest way to do that at the moment. 
2. Add the info from the Fruitlands book, and tidy up those pages as I go. 
1. I could then go back through and add the notes I took while reading books on Marie Stevens Howland (I still haven’t finished that one), Stephen Pearl Andrews, and Josiah Warren as well. But I’ll have to hunt those things down, as that was about 8 months and 3(!) houses ago (it’s been a rather hard year). 
2. OR I could then just double down on reading this book & extracting all the info and work on these related pages specifically, so as to stay on a specific topic for a while. I could then focus my readings on the People/Places/Things/Ideas related to that for a while. 
3. OR… I could finish doing the thing which I had somehow forgotten I am already in the middle of doing right now (weekends confuse me, apparently), which is to continue going through John Humphrey Noyes’s book (which is mostly work of A.J. MacDonald) and extracting the info of all the communities there into the database. 

Whoops, I can’t believe I forgot I was already doing that! SMH. Ah well. It probably won’t take but a few days, and then I’ll be at this point, anyway. 

So, what should my next steps be? (I’m writing it out in order to figure it out) Perhaps this:

1. Finish extracting the info from the Noyes book (History of American Socialisms)
2. Extract the info I’ve read in the Fruitlands book already, but perhaps leave it for now as a “I’m going somewhere and I need a book to read” book.
3. Read this paper I just downloaded on my phone & extract the info: “The Woman’s Commonwealth: A Study in the Coalescence of Social Forms”
4. Contact the writer of the 2008 Masters Thesis @ MSU, “The Communist and the Altruist: Alcander Longley’s Newspapers and Communities” and ask if I could have a copy. 

And then I can go from there!

Histories of the Unexpected: How to Be A Historian (Podcast)!

This has been a good week for me and how-to-do-history podcasts! Not only did I start listening to the Doing History: On Biography series on Ben Franklin's World, but I also found a new podcast all together, Histories of the Unexpected, with BBC History Presenter Dr. Sam Willis & Professor James Daybell. 

The podcast itself is an ADHD History Nerd's absolute dream, with episodes having the sense of a very well-informed free-association chat on themes such as "The Lean" or "Dust." And last year, they did a mini-series on How to Be a Historian, which is, obviously, exactly the kind of podcasts/resources I love coming across! 

EPISODE 41: HOW TO BE A HISTORIAN – EPISODE 1 (This episode goes into what each of the hosts do as historians)

EPISIDE 49: HOW TO BE A HISTORIAN – EPISODE 2  (How they became historians)

EPISODE 50: HOW TO BE A HISTORIAN – EPISODE 3 (How to get your kids into history)

EPISODE 54: HOW TO BE A HISTORIAN – EPISODE 4 (History for Children)

EPISODE 56: HOW TO BE A HISTORIAN – EPISODE 5 (How to choose a subject and start on research)

Episodes 1, 2, & 5 are great insight to the backgrounds, professional lives, and methods of working of two very different types of historians, and I found it to be an excellent listen!

Ben Franklin's World: Doing History: On Biography! (Podcast Series!)

It looks like it's been a few years since I've mentioned the excellent Doing History series on the Ben Franklin's World history podcast, but the host Liz Covart is currently doing season 3: On  Biography, and I am super excited!

It's exciting for me because what little information I can find online that is helpful to me as a self-trained historian is pretty much never about biography, which is probably what most of my work will be (biographies of people and also of communities). I have searched quite a bit online for specific How-To-Do-Biography information, advice, resources, etc, but have always come up empty handed. So I admit to doing so happy flailing when I looked at my History "channel" on my Stitcher (podcast) app and saw see that there was not only more Doing History episodes, but it was exactly what I most wanted to see! So, thank you Liz & the Omohundro Institute! 

Oh, oh, oh. And! Not only does this series exist, which is great, but also the first episode (Episode 209: Considering Biography) even features one of my all-time favorite biographers, the amazing Professor of History & Law at Harvard, Annette Gordon-Reed. She wrote The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family which I listened to while driving across country last year and it just blew me away. The depth of the research, and the way she was able to return to Sally Hemmings the personhood and agency that  has been denied to her in every other work I've read, and while still portraying Jefferson as a real human, without making excuses for him but also without turning him into a caricature villain (I certainly do consider all slave owners villains, but I find it very useful to learn about him in all his complexities and contradictions.)

The series isn't completed yet, but I'll come back and edit in the 4th episode next week. As of now the episodes are:

Episode 209: Considering Biography
Episode 210: Considering John Marshall, Part 1
Episode 211: Considering John Marshall, Part 2


I highly recommend checking them out! :)

Memoir of the Yellow Springs Community

I'm currently reading History of American Socialisms (1870), written by the leader of one of the utopian communities I research (John Humphrey Noyes, Oneida), and the book is built off of a lot of research that a man had done 10+ years prior, as he spent about a decade traveling American and visiting/making notes of various utopian communities. 

He hadn't recorded the name or date of the paper, but he had, in his notes, a newspaper article on the development of the short-lived Yellow Springs community, and Noyes included it in this book. I haven't been able to track down the paper/date either, but I thought this might be of some interest to some of my friends back home in the Dayton, Ohio area, since Yellow Springs is nearby and a super cute little hippy village everyone loves to visit, so I'm just sharing the text here. 

(Holy classism and elitism, batman! I feel like I need to put a content warning on this...)

The narrative here presented," says the unknown writer, " was prepared at the request of a minister who had looked in vain for any account of the Communities established by Robert Owen in this country. It is sim- ply what it pretends to be, reminiscences by one who, while a youth, resided with his parents as a member of the Community at Yellow Springs. For some years together since his manhood, he has been associated with several of the leading men of that experiment, and has through them been informed in relation to both its outer and inner history. The article may contain some errors, as of dates and other matters unimportant to a just view of the Community ; but the social picture will be correct. With the hope that it may convey a useful lesson, it is submitted to the reader. 

Robert Owen, the projector of the Communities at Yellow Springs, Ohio, and New Harmony, Indiana, was the owner of extensive manufactories at New Lanark, Scotland. He was a man of considerable learning, much observation, and full of the love of his fellow men ; though a disbeliever in Christianity. His skep- tical views concerning the Bible were fully announced in the celebrated debate at Cincinnati between himself and Dr. Alexander Campbell. But whatever may have been his faith, he proved his philanthropy by a long life of beneficent works. At his manufactories in Scotland he established a system based on community of labor, which was crowned with the happiest effects. But it should be remembered that Owen himself was the owner of the works, and controlled all things by a single mind. The system, therefore, was only a beneficent scheme of government by a manufacturer, for the good of himself and his operatives. 

Full of zeal for the improvement of society, Owen conceived that he had discovered the cause of most of its evils in the laws of meion et tuum ; and that a state of society where there is nothing mine or thine, would be a paradise begun. He brooded upon the idea of a Community of property, and connected it with schemes for the improvement of society, until he was ready to sacrifice his own property and devote his heart and his life to his fellow men upon this basis. Too discreet to inaugurate the new system among the poorer classes of his own country, whom he found perverted by prejudice and warped by the artificial forms of society there, he resolved to proceed to the United States, and among the comparatively unperverted people, liberal institutions and cheap lands of the West, to establish Communities, founded upon common property, social equality, and the equal value of every man's labor. 

About the year 1824 Owen arrived in Cincinnati. He brought with him a history of his labors at New Lanark ; with glowing and not unjust accounts of the beneficent effects of his efforts there. He exhibited plans for his proposed Communities here ; with model farms, gardens, vineyards, play-grounds, orchards, and all the internal and external appliances of the social paradise. At Cincinnati he soon found many congenial spirits, among the first of whom was Daniel Roe, minister of the " New Jerusalem Church," a society of the followers of Swedenborg. This society was composed of a very superior class of people. They were intelligent, liberal, generous, cultivated men and women — many of them wealthy and highly educated. They were apparently the best possible material to organize and sustain a Community, such as Owen proposed. Mr Roe and many of his congregation became fascinated with Owen and his Communism ; and together with others in the city and elsewhere, soon organized a Community and furnished the means for purchasing an appropriate site for its location. In the meantime Owen proceeded to Harmony, and, with others, purchased that place, with all its buildings, vineyards, and lands, from Rapp, who emigrated to Pennsylvania and established his people at Economy. It will only be added of Owen, that after having seen the New Harmonians fairly established, he returned to Scotland. 

After careful consultation and selection, it was decided by the Cincinnati Community to purchase a domain at Yellow Springs, about seventy-five miles north of the city, [now the site of Antioch College] as the most eligible place for their purpose. It was really one of the most delightful regions in the whole West, and well worthy the residence of a people who had resolved to make many sacrifices for what they honestly believed to be a great social and moral reformation.  

The Community, as finally organized consisted of seventy-five or one hundred families ; and included professional men, teachers, merchants, mechanics, farmers, and a few common laborers. Its economy was nearly as follows :  

The property was held in trust forever, in behalf of the members of the Community, by the original purchasers, and their chosen successors, to be designated from time to time by the voice of the Community. All additional property thereafter to be acquired, by labor, purchase, or otherwise, was to be added to the common stock, for the benefit of each and all. Schools were to be established, to teach all things useful (except religion). Opinion upon all subjects was free ; and the present good of the whole Community was the standard of morals. The Sabbath was a day of rest and recreation, to be improved by walks, rides, plays, and pleasing exercises ; and by public lectures. Dancing was instituted as a most valuable means of physical and social culture ; and the ten-pin alley and other sources of amusement were open to all.  

But although Christianity was wholly ignored in the system, there was no free-loveism or other looseness of morals allowed. In short, this Community began its career under the most favorable auspices ; and if any men and women in the world could have succeeded, these should have done so. How they did succeed, and how they did not, will now be shown.  

 For the first few weeks, all entered into the new system with a will. Service was the order of the day. Men who seldom or never before labored with their hands, devoted themselves to agriculture and the mechanic arts, with a zeal which was at least commendable, though not always according to knowledge. Ministers of the gospel guided the plough ; called the swine to their corn, instead of sinners to repentance ; and let patience have her perfect work over an unruly yoke of oxen. Merchants exchanged the yard-stick for the rake or pitch-fork. All appeared to labor cheerfully for the common weal. Among the women there was even more apparent self-sacrifice. Ladies who had seldom seen the inside of their own kitchens, went into that of the common eating-house (formerly a hotel), and made themselves useful among pots and kettles : and refined young ladies, who had all their lives been waited upon, took their turns in waiting upon others at the table. And several times a week all parties who chose mingled in the social dance, in the great dining-hall. 

But notwithstanding the apparent heartiness and cordiality of this auspicious opening, it was in the social atmosphere of the Community that the first cloud arose. Self-love was a spirit which would not be exorcised. It whispered to the lowly maidens, whose former position in society had cultivated the spirit of meekness — " You are as good as the formerly rich and fortunate ; insist upon your equality." It reminded the favorites of for- mer society of their lost superiority ; and in spite of all rules, tinctured their words and actions with the love of self Similar thoughts and feelings soon arose among the men ; and though not so soon exhibited, they were none the less deep and strong. It is unnecessary to descend to details : suffice it to say, that at the end of three months — three months ! — the leading minds in the Community were compelled to acknowledge to each other that the social life of the Community could not be bounded by a single circle. They therefore acquiesced, but reluctantly, in its division into many little circles. Still they hoped, and many of them no doubt believed, that though social equality was a failure, community of property was not. But whether the law of mine and thine is natural or incidental in human character, it soon began to develop its sway. The industrious, the skillful and the strong, saw the products of their labor enjoyed by the indolent, the unskilled, and the improvident ; and self-love rose against benevolence. A band of musicians insisted that their brassy harmony was as necessary to the common happiness as bread and meat ; and declined to enter the harvest field or the work-shop. A lecturer upon natural science insisted upon talking only, while others worked. Mechanics, whose day's labor brought two dollars into the common stock, in- sisted that they should, in justice, work only half as long as the agriculturist, whose day's work brought but one.  

For a while, of course, these jealousies were only felt ; but they soon began to be spoken also. It was useless to remind all parties that the common labor of all ministered to the prosperity of the Community. Individual happiness was the law of nature, and it could not be obliterated ; and before a single year had passed, this law had scattered the members of that society, which had come together so earnestly and under such favorable circumstances, back into the selfish world from which they came. 

The writer of this sketch has since heard the history of that eventful year reviewed with honesty and earnestness by the best men and most intelligent parties of that unfortunate social experiment. They admitted the favorable circumstances which surrounded its commencement ; the intelligence, devotion, and earnestness which were brought to the cause by its projectors ; and its final, total failure. And they rested ever after in the behef that man, though disposed to philanthropy, is essentially selfish ; and that a community of social equality and common property is impossible. 

Archive.org !!!! Treasure trove of old texts to borrow!

I know I've landed on archive.org's site before, on occasion google has lead me there for a text of an old book/document on there.. but for some reason it's never been a source I regularly check/use.

WHY, THOUGH?

Today for the first time I was lead there to a page that would let me borrow an old, niche-as-heck book that my local libraries don't have and that I was about to have to buy off of AbeBooks.com.

After a couple clicks, LOOK WHAT I FOUND!

These are all borrowable books!

Books I don't have to buy!

Many books I didn't even know existed!

I was so excited! So overwhelmed!

I decided to make some new collections on Wakelet.com to keep track of the stuff I want to read. I made Utopian People, Utopia (General), and Community Biographies.

Hoepfully this will help me from getting too overwhelmed! I'm super excited for all these new books and just wanted to make this post real quick to make note of this exciting new discovery, which probably everyone else already knows about!

What is a Heurist Database? [Using a Heurist Database Part 1]

Earlier this year, before I decided to give up finding a digital solution to my note-taking problem (after trying many things, like a personal wiki and scrivener), I also found this really promising ~thing~ called Heurist. I tried it for a day or so, but was overwhelmed and confused by it (despite great and super quick response to the one email I sent the Heurist folks!) and, since I was without my ADHD meds at the time (and thus was not capable of thinking very well for any extended period of time), I just gave up, and switched to notecards.

Now that I'm back on my meds consistantly again, earlier this month I suddenly got the urge to give this program another try, and I am SO glad I did!

I find the connection between these utopians & the communities & the papers & the organizations, etc super fascinating, so I am building a thing I can use to keep better track of these connections as I research various people/communities. :)

— Ameya Warde (@ameyawarde) October 20, 2018

I tweeted the above this morning and it made me realize that I haven't posted about my current database project over here yet! So, I'm going to try to explain what I'm doing and how I'm doing it.

It's been a bunch of trial and error, and my Dr. Computer Scientist boyfriend helped me a little but I've finally gotten the hang of the program (I think?) and so I want to share how great it can be, along with some tips for how to set it up, in case anyone else is googling desperately to find a little guidance on this like I was. I still have a LOT to learn about this program's capabilities, but at least I'm feeling confident enough about the basics to share!

So, Heurist is a free data management system that researchers can use to manage, analyze & present their data, based out of the University of Sydney.

I am currently using it to keep track of all the utopian/intentional communities in the US (and some outside of it) before WWI, as well as all the people I can find involved in these experiments and the utopian/etc community in general.

Before this I had been working within a personal research wiki, but I felt the need to write coherently in full sentences on each page if I added anything, which slowed down my research and threw me out of my "groove" while I was researching.

A thing I like about the Heurist system is that I have been able to add a lot of fields where I can just plug in the info/ copy/paste a quote and the citation and then keep going. It helps me stay in the flow when I'm working, which is really important for me. I can go and turn them into proper sentences/writing later.

 

Heurist also allows me to link various records together with specified relationships, including those that have inverse relationships.

 

I really like that I don't have to constantly be compiling lists of, say, every Fourierist community, because it happens automatically as I create pages for each community. 

Right now I have the following record types (some came with the program and I don't need/know how to get rid of, like for the "digital media items"

I mostly use the record types:

• Person
• Community
• Organization
• Philosophy(/Religion)
• Historic Publications
• Utopian Works
• Misc/Other

Each record type has it's own template, thought it's rather hard to get a good screencap of, but here are just basic examples of the different templates for Person, Community, Philosophy and Historic Publication as of today:

Every template is definitely a work in progress. I make tweaks and changes to them every day in order to record more information or to be easier to navigate/add info to, etc.

I will make more posts in the future about different aspects of this program as I figure it all out. I'm finding it to be a really, really great for my current project!

Index Card Note-taking System- now with PRINTING!!

A few months ago I was super gung-ho with my new note taking system, but as I have yet vanquished my bad habit of taking far too many notes, and since my hypermobility means that writing is painful for me, I started to burn out.

"If only I could just print out these notes," I thought! Well, since my printer didn't accept note cards, I figured I'd just print out the text (which would save time since I could copy/paste!) and glue them to the note cards, which for some reason I still wrote the topic & citation (number) on.

It worked for a while, until I started getting lazy, and instead of printing and cutting/pasting every time i got a page or two worth of quotes, I started pushing it back further and further...

And now, well, 5 months and 2 moves later, I have a ton of empty-but-cited note cards and only somehow two of the printouts I had made left.

SIGH.

I am full of regret.

But! Now I'm staying with my boyfriend, and his printer CAN print on note cards.

4x6 at the smallest, which complicates things, as all the hundreds of cards that I already have done are 3x5... but what can you do?

(Weep, is the answer.)

Anyway, over the last week I've been figuring out how best to do this new set of note cards, and as of now, I've come up with this.

Subject (in the header)-> More specific subject* 

The quote/thoughts/notes. 

Chicago-style ciation (in the footer)

*(handwritten bc headers have to be the same and I don't want to start a billion new documents)

Now, I know ideally you should only have one fact (or quote) per note card, and many of mine probably have too much info on them, but as of now, I'm just going with it. Hopefully as I continue, I'll get used to paring my chunks of copy/paste down and be better at distilling to the very essence of the facts I want to remember. For now, though, this is fine with me. I'll update as my system evolves!

The Great Courses: Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature

I've just finished The Great Courses: Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature, with Professor Pamela Bedore, PhD, and I highly recommend it!

While my focus isn't on utopian literature, I do think it's important to understand the utopian lit in circulation before and during the projects I am studying (up until ~1920), for context. So the first 8 of these lessons were  relevant, particularly the ones that discussed Brook Farm & the Fruitlands, and my gal Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I took my first notes with my new printing-to-bigger-notecards system on the lectures, as well.

I did, of course, listen to the whole lecture series, too, and it was absolutely fastinating. And, honestly, I don't think my TBR (To Be Read list) will recover from the new To-Read book list for some time!

I personally bought this course off Audible, but I don't necessarily recommend them, only because they're owned by Amazon, and Bezos sucks. But, if you already have credits over there, I do think this is a great way to spend one-- MUCH cheaper than the price at The Great Course website. Many libraries carry Great Courses lectures as well, so that is also worth checking out, if you're interested!

5/5 stars, I do recommend checking this out! :)

Summer's over! Time to get back to research!

Now that my son is headed back to school, I have time once again to get back into my research! I moved at the beginning of summer, and I'm about to move again, so I'm reconfiguring my research set up and habits again.

This spring, I wrote out a LOT of note cards. I stopped because my EDS/HSD (a connective tissue condition) means that all the writing is killer on my hands, especially my index fingers, as the pressure from gripping the pen makes the joint hyperextend excessively. 

I tried the PenAgain, which a lot of fellow EDSers use, and was super pleased at first, but after just a couple weeks I realized that:

1. They run out of ink SO QUICKLY
2. It's better than regular pens, but still makes my fingers/hands cramp
3. I take way too many notes (but i'm also probably not going to stop)
4. Sometimes I just really NEED to have multiple copies of the same card to put in different places in my organizational system, but neither my fingers nor my attention span play nicely with that need. 

So, what I really think I need, is a way to print out note cards.

A LOT of them. 

So this morning I've been trying to figure out how I can do just that. 

Articles like this one taught me that, hey! Sometimes regular printers can print on note cards! Including mine! HOORAY!

But, then it says how to print out of Word, which I do not have a functioning copy of. So, after looking up some free word processing software options, I downloaded WPS Office. It does have a page layout template for notecards, but then I realized it doesn't have a citation plugin for my reference manager, Mendeley. So then I downloaded LibreOffice, which is Mendeley compatible... but then I couldn't figure out how to format it to index card size! So, back to WPS Writer I went.

Oh, and somewhere in there I downloaded Zotero and started trying that out, too, since Mendeley wasn't giving me any good options of how to cite The Great Courses lecture I'm currently listening to. Maybe my next post will be about how I manage to get this system working!

History Students' Research Guide and Tools: Historiography vs. Literature Review (VIDEO)

How is a Historiography Different from a Literature Review? from ccsulib on Vimeo.

On Writing EVERY Day (Advice from Twitter)

As a person who follows hundreds of academics across social media, I very frequently see reminders that we should all be writing something every day. Indeed, that was the main reason for making this blog, so I could practice stringing sentences together at least several times a week. But, as anyone who has seen this blog can see, I haven't actually been writing about what I'm researching, only how I'm researching.

The problem is, I haven't known what to write about my topic. I'm researching a number of rather obscure people, groups, and communities, so I don't feel like I have enough information about anything or anyone to write about in any way worth my time quite yet. I did start an annotated bibliography recently, but other than that, I haven't really been "writing" anything yet. Outside of the hundreds of index cards I've been furiously scribbling my notes onto for the past week, that is.

So, during a work break this morning, I shot off the following tweet:

Many academics say it's important to write EVERY day, but what about when you're in the early days of a project, just really starting to take notes and gather information?

I feel like I *should* be writing, but *what* @ this stage? 🤔#twitterstorians #AcademicTwitter #PHDchat

— Ameya Warde (@ameyawarde) March 13, 2018

Now usually, when I ask questions on #twitterstorians or #AcademicTwitter, I almost never get a reply. But, by some magic (and kind RTs from @AcademicChatter, @raulpacheco, & @erin_bartram!) I actually did get a slew of them this morning, and I think they're worth sharing here, too.

Prelim literature review, summaries of works read, essentially annotated bibliography.

— Spring Forward Spice (@errabund) March 13, 2018

In the beginning of my PhD, I wrote a couple of paragraphs summary for each paper I read as in overview why this paper is important for my project. That was quite helpful at a later stage :)

— Mara (@CuriousZebra_) March 13, 2018

That’s when I find my favorite pen and some quality paper and just start jotting down notes or start a mind map. For me, that tactile endeavor is enough in the early stages.

— Daniel Martínez (@dmmartinezphd) March 13, 2018

I like to do literature review when I start a project, to get a feel of where the field of research is at. I also jot down lots of notes/ideas for current (or future) research projects!

— kelsey rose (@kelseyrosemcd) March 13, 2018

Idea dumps are game changers

— Caroline (@carolinecpro) March 13, 2018

I wrote blogs on some of the empirically or theory, or just to explore ideas in a short, low pressure way.

— Professor_of_Power (@Prof_of_Power) March 13, 2018

There were also a number of tweets in support of note-taking itself being considered academic writing:

I count all of that as writing. Early writing just looks different than what you write when your project starts to gel.

— Erin Cassese (@ErinCassese) March 13, 2018

.@ashley_edes @ameyawarde thanks for the kind words! Any sort of written reflection (even "God I don't know where my project goes" IS #AcWri

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) March 13, 2018

My website is temporarily down (hopefully back soon) but here's a blog post on what counts as academic writing (surprise - A LOT) https://t.co/eVTrXjvzTq we can't just count "putting words on the page"

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) March 13, 2018

And I think @HthrLynnJ's points are especially important and worth highlighting:

When I don’t know what to write, I free write about ideas I’m having related to the work, including what I’m finding challenging. I try out different lines of arguments. I make notes on things I’m reading. Idea generating is tough. I write through it to learn and grow from it.

— Heather Johnson (@HthrLynnJ) March 13, 2018

Last semester I tasked one of my PhD students to write to “Notice and Wonder.” As academics, our job is to develop new ideas. When we write, we record how our ideas are evolving. Our papers become contributions by nurturing and growing those ideas.

— Heather Johnson (@HthrLynnJ) March 13, 2018

You bet! Learning to write to learn has been one of the most valuable processes I’ve developed in this endeavor.

— Heather Johnson (@HthrLynnJ) March 13, 2018

Sunday Roundup: 3/11/18

So, I think I might start doing these, if I can remember to add to it throughout the week. I didn't this week and it lead to taking too much time Sunday morning just going through twitter alone to find the link-worthiest links.

So these are all just some of my favorite or worth-sharing-again tweets/links I saw this week.

History:

• Please buy me (and @FernRiddell) this hat.
• @DigiVictorian reminds us that etiquette is bizzaro
• @VictorianHumour shared some old timey clapbacks
•  and also this terrible pun
• Scientists finally say that they definitely found the bones of Amelia Earhart... probably
• @ZinnEdProject reminds us of the anniversary of Bloody Sunday
• @ZaneSelvans tweeted about the likely trans man and British surgeon James Barry (1789-1865), very interesting, I'd never heard of him before! 
• @thehistoryguy posts an excerpt of some 16th century #FakeNews... I can't tell if I want to laugh or cry at how very human such BS seems to be...
• @LizCovart shared the post How Native American Slaveholders Complicate the Trail of Tears Narrative, and I really liked this line: 'Smith went one step further, likening the ugly truth of history to a “mangy, snarling dog standing between you and a crowd-pleasing narrative.” '

Academia, etc:

•  @CDSLeeds announced their support (along with other Unis and @chron_ac) of the Ableism in Academia Conference on 23 March. It will be live-streamed!
• @SFdirewolf signal-boosted a call to save Intro to Disability Studies at Standford
• @einterview alerted me to the SAGE Research methods "Open House" going on now-- So much Methods material free for download!!
• @RaulPacheco shared a helpful thread on the color-coding scheme he uses while marking up the papers he reads
• he also wrote a thread on why he writes (such great and SUPER useful) posts about the 'mechanics of doing academic research'-- Since I am "home grad schooling" myself, I rely HEAVILY on Dr. Pacheco-Vega's blog, and I wish more academics would write posts like this, too! (raulpacheco.org)
• Oh, and this thread on how he outlines a paper!
• @alicetiara reminds us to thank the authors of academic work we appreciate- I am going to start doing this, it's only polite! 
• @prabhbob points out the need for people to stop writing the clunky and outdated "his or her", etc and switch to "they" instead -- Agreed!
• @LDBurnett connects the recent attacks on the liberal arts/humanities to the kick-ass theatre/debate/civics/public speaking students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school that have taken America by storm since the tragedy they experienced
• @barunlz posted me in meme form

Important miscellany:

• @debreese shared an excellent list of kid/teen books written by Indigenous Women!
• @rahaeli points out why people making fun of Uber Health are missing the point, and ignoring the needs of the disabled in particular (As someone who takes Lyft to all my doctors appointments, I completely agree)
• @sesmith makes an important challenge to editors & everyone who uses words to switch out ableist terms like 'idiotic', 'moronic,' 'insane,' 'imbecilic,' etc (I would add "dumb" to that list) for better, less offensive, and more describtive words 
• and @elle_em reminds us that G*ypsy is a racial slur, and to stop using it unless you're Romani/Roma.
• while @thalestral calls out those who use "triggered" as a joke or a synonym for "offended" when it is neither of those things, and is an actual psychological phenomenon related to PTSD.
• And Marjory Stoneman Douglas student @davidhogg111 posted this gun control script from Everytown for Gun Safety for calling our representatives

And finally:

• I can't stop thinking about this. Why? I think it has broken me, too. And i'm trying really hard not to make it my new social media cover picture...

Research Methods Virtual Open House @ SAGE Research Methods

SAGE Research Method's "Virtual Open House" is going on now. Free access to a TON of online research methodology articles, chapters, ebooks, etc. I've just lost several hours of my day to collecting some really great resources over there!

Free access runs until March 18.

Learm more: Research Methods Virtual Open House: Doors are Open!

#AcWriChat 3.9.18 - Building a network through blogs & social media

I just happened to catch my first #AcWriChat on twitter this morning! Today's chat was about 'Building a network through blogs and social media.'

I'm not really in a 'build a network' stage yet, but I'm glad I attended. @TextandAcademicAuthors shared a lot of great resources, including lists which included some academic bloggers I wasn't following yet! (I love finding new blogs to follow!)

I'm now going through the #AcWriChat archives and I wanted to make note (/link) of some of the other chats that I'm finding useful:

#AcWriChat 12/15/2017 - Imagining

This #AcWriChat event focused on imagining your writing project: thinking about the writing project, reflecting on insights, and looking for ways to interpret and explain findings

 #AcWriChat 12/29/2017 - Organizing (part 1)

This week we will begin to look at the organization of a writing project, specifically gathering ideas from existing literature, prioritizing content for inclusion in the new work, and outlining the thematic structure of the manuscript.

There are more chat archives over at: TAA #AcWriChat re-caps on getting organized, writing productivity, and more!

School Supply Wish List!

Wow. I burn through index cards QUICKLY.

Yet another reason why I was so hoping to find a good digital alternative!!
Sigh.

To help me keep track of what I'm using and what I need, I just made a list on Amazon (as I do for everything), and I figured it only makes sense to also post it here, just in case any generous person with a few bucks to spare ever happens across the link and wants to contribute a pack of note cards or something. 😉👼💓

 My Home(Grad)Schooling Supply (Wish) List!

 

History (and related) Podcasts!

• BackStory with the American History Guys
• Ben Franklin's World
• History of English Podcast
• History Extra
• Myths and Legends
• New Books in American Studies
• New Books in Anthropology
• New Books in Biography
• New Books in Critical Theory
• New Books in Gender Studies
• New Books in History
• New Books in Intellectual History
• New Books in Native American Studies
• Office Hours
• Philosophize This!
• Stuff You Missed in History Class
• The Bowery Boys: NYC History
• The History Chicks
• The Pamphlet
• The Way of Improvement Leads Home
• Who Makes Cents | A History of Capitalism Podcast

Okay, but what the heck do I do with all these research notes?!?!

- me, for months.

I've tried a wiki, which, though it doesn't quite work for the note taking/collecting stage that I'm currently struggling with, I do generally like and will still probably be using further down my workflow pipeline (that is, unless I find a Heurist database more helpful than a straight up wiki for that stage, as this week I've been experimenting with that).

After realizing that it wasn't quite the thing for this stage of the research, I shifted over to Scrivener, where I first basically copied the format of a wiki page with each section getting it's own text (page/note), but allowing for more unstructured info and quotes, etc. But that still wasn't quite what I needed (duh, I say retrospectively.)

Then I found the idea of conceptual matrices (yes I spelled it wrong in Scrivener) that seem to work so well for things that aren't biographical research... I tried those, continuously having to break them down so each page wasn't getting so unwieldy, and so here I am now, with this total mess:

 

#REGRET

So, I've spent waaaay too much time the last couple of days trying to figure out what to do, looking into various possibilities (I do NOT understand how people use Evernote for this, I would simply DIE of overwhelm) (and TiddlyWiki sounded promising, but was super confusing and I gave up on that, too.)

Sooooo, what did I end up with after all this searching?

Why, the very system I was trying so hard to find a digital alternative for, of course!

Index Cards.

Credit goes to Ryan Holiday's Thought Catalog article The Notecard System: The Key For Remembering, Organizing And Using Everything You Read, in which he explains that index cards were:

"... responsible for helping me publish three books in three years, (along with other books I’ve had the privilege of contributing to), write countless articles published in newspapers and websites, send out my reading recommendations every month, and make all sorts of other work and personal successes possible."

Uh, yes please. I would like to have anything approaching that level of productivity!
Okay, okay. I should use the notecard system. But of course I then spent half a day trying to find an explicitly digital-index-card system (Scrivener's not counting bc I need a bazillion cards) because, trees! Hand cramping! Supply costs! Travel! Etc!

NoodleTools, though aimed at k-12 students, seemed pretty close, but then I just gave up. I don't want all my notes in such a closed system, anyway. I should just use the actual, physical cards.

So, I can't afford a printer to just print & paste things onto the cards, and my hand is already aching at the thought of what's to come, but I  know darn well that this is the best possible system that currently exists that works best for my brain.

My brain is weird, you see (I have severe ADHD..) and I really do work better with physical copies of things, though my millennial self generally prefers that which is digital and techie. But, ADHD brains in particular really do need things, especially information, to be "externalized" and physically manipulatable (our working memory is crap).

In fact, I thought to write this post after reading this article by fellow ADHDer Aimée Morrison at Hook & Eye this morning, in which she describes why she uses paper for research notes, which is the same reason physical copies work best for me, too:

For me, paper is visible in very important ways: scale, scope, the gist. How much progress I’m making, how much I have left. Where the holes are, sometimes literally. Paper is a massive memory aid, an externalization of my working memory, all the more crucial the larger or more complex a task becomes. Colour coded sticky notes and pens and paper clips and highlighting–I scan it from above and easily zoom down to what I need.

For me, electronic text is inscrutable and frustrating, like trying to watch a movie in the front row of the cinema with a pinhole camera: I can’t get any sense of scale or make sense of anything, and I get dizzy, to boot. There’s no way I could follow any kind of narrative and it’s a challenge not to barf. All the blue light, not enough screen, too many tabs and open windows and nothing findable. Stress nap!

I found this article to be super validating for me, especially since a few days ago I had already gone ahead and ordered some supplies! Thanks, Aimée! :)


Woops this post turned out way longer than intended, but I realized I should make a record of all the things I looked into first, so I don't forget and do this whole thing over again next year!

Annotated Bibliography, Chicago Style

when it includes manuscript sources, archival collections, or other materials that do not fit into a straight alphabetical listSo yesterday I took some notes on how to research better, and one of the sources I used was “The Annotated Bibliography Exercise” by Dr. Steven D. Krause from The Process of Research Writing.

It made good points about the usefulness of making an annotated bib. so I've decided to start gathering what sources I've used so far into a few of them (I have a few concurrent projects under the same general umbrella of utopia/etc). I'm going to have them here on the blog (on pages, instead of posts) but may not share them for a while.

But, before I start on that, I need to check out the specifics of how to do this in the Chicago Style. So, I figured I'd make a post on this, too, at the least for my own easy reference.

Annotated Bibliography in Chicago Style

Since I cannot afford access to the full Chicago style manual, I'm using these pages for reference:

• "Annotated Bibliography Samples" The Purdue Owl
• "Creating an annotated bibliography in Chicago style" Eastern Nazarene College 
• "Citation & Style Guide" Middlebury Libraries

According to these sites, an annotated bibliography entry done in Chicago style has:

• one summary paragraph describing the source and it's major features
• summaries can be descriptive or 'can evaluate the quality of scholarship in a book or article
• Another accepted method of making an annotated bib in Chicago & Turbian style is to have the proper citation and then the next line (indented) contain a very brief descriptive phrase in brackets, i.e. (from Middlebury Libraries): " [a seminal text describing argument in nonsymbolic language]

• The first line of each summary paragraph should be indented, but the rest of the paragraph does not need to be.
• The first line of the entry's citation must NOT be indented ("Hanging indent"), but if it spills over into subsequent lines of text, those SHOULD be indented.
• Text should be double-spaced, with 1" margins on all sides

.... Okay, well, the pages contradict each other on whether or not the whole summary (not just the first line) should be indented, so I went ahead and got a 30 day free trial for access to The Chicago Manual of Style Online (CMOS 17) (and... there isn't just a simple entry for how to format an annotated bibliography. ...?!?! Sigh. So, looks like I'm going to have to dig a little...

Building the entry:

• Author's names should be listed exactly as they are in the source, excepting when:
• there are different people using the same name & initials, a full name may be given. (15.12)
• If multiple authors have the same first and last name, middle initials can be added to clarify if they are known (14.73)
• A single author uses both their full name and initials in different works, the author should be listed by the same format of name for all their works (preferably the full name). (14.73)
• If an author is well known by both their full names & with their initials, the rest of the name may be added in brackets, i.e., (R.S. Crane + R[onald] S. Crane.(14.74)
• If an author always uses their initials, they should be listed with the initials, not their full names
• If the author or editor is unknown:
• Initial articles should be ignored (but included) and the entry should begin with the title. (14.79) 
• 'Anonymous' should generally only be listed if the work was explicitly attributed to "Anonymous" (i.e. on the title page, etc) (14.79) 
• If the author was not listed in the work but is known or guessed, the name should be included within brackets (and with a question mark when the identity is guessed but not known for certain) i.e., " [Hawkes, James?]. "  (14.79)
• If a Pseudonym / Pen name is used:
• Between the name and the period [pseud.] can be given. (14.80)
• If 'widely used', the pen name is treated like real names, i.e. Mark Twain or George Eliot
• If the real name is 'of interest to readers,' it can be included after the name (and before the period) in brackets. (14.80)
• 'If the author's real name is better known than the pseudonym, the real name should be used. If needed, the pseudonym may be included in brackets, followed by pseud.' i.e. you could list ' Brontë, Charlotte. ' or ' Brontë, Charlotte [Currer Bell, pseud.]. ' as the author of Jane Eyre. (14.80)
• If an author has published under different versions of their real name (as in married names, etc), a source should be listed under the name used in that work, but a cross reference note can be included, i.e. "Doniger, Wendy." and "---. See also O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger."

Order of entries:

• Entries should be alphabetized by the last name of the author. CMOS recommends letter-by-letter alphabetizing, but word-by-word is also acceptable. (14.65)
• Hyphenated last names should be treated as one word, and unhypened names should be checked in reference sources, but for 'unhyphenated compound names of lesser-known persons for whom proper usage cannot be determined, use only the last element (including any particle[s])' i.e. Websters says that Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's last name is 'Mies van der Rohe', but Charlotte Perkins Gilman should be listed as Gilman  (8.6)
• Unusual name formats:
• Names starting with O' are treated as if there were no apostrophe (16.73)
• Names with particles (d', di, la, van, etc) can vary. Merriam-Webster's biographical entries are authoritative for the historical figures they include. Otherwise, personal preference of the author, and cross referencing of other sources (LoC, Websters, Encyclopedias, etc) should be done and one method decided on for that particular name. (16.71)
• Last names including Saint, San or St. should be listed as the family spells their name, but cross-referencing may be helpful (16.74)
• Titles such as Saint or King or place identifiers ("of England") are left out. (14.83)
• If a letter is accented, it is treated in this context as unaccented. (16.67)
• "Authors usually should not use the 3-em dash for repeated names in their manuscripts." (i.e., using '---' in a list of bibliography entries under the same author. Some publishers/editors might use them, though. (14.67)
• In bibliography (excluding bibs. of the works of a single author), 'titles by the same author' are usually listed alphabetically, with the initial 'the, a, or an' left out. (14.71)
• An entry with only one name should be listed before an entry starting with the same name but also including other authors. If multiple such multi-authored entries, they should be alphabetized by the next author's last name (though only the first author's name should be inverted) (14.66)
• If an Organization, corporation, association, etc, published something and there is no personal author listed, the group name should be listed as the author, no word inversion. (14.84)

Format:

• In the example image of an annotated bib. entry, the first line of the citation is a "hanging indent" but ALL the rest of the text is indented. (Figure 14.10)
• All formats of sources should be included in the same alphabetized bibliography, unless dividing it into sections would make it significantly easier for readers. Bib. lists might appropriately have divided lists when: (14.62)
• 'it includes manuscript sources, archival collections, or other materials that do not fit into a straight alphabetical list'
• 'readers need to see at a glance the distinction between different kinds of works—for example, in a study of one writer, between works by the writer and those about him or her'
• 'the bibliography is intended primarily as a guide to further reading'
• When a list is divided, 'a headnote should appear at the beginning of the bibliography, and each section should be introduced by an explanatory subhead.' Each source should only be included in ONLY one section. (14.63)