Daily Log 1/5/18

Research and Discovery: the Start of the Senior Paper

We started for the first time this year to develop our senior papers in class. For homework, we had to find a non-academic article on a topic or question that interested us. The class period was spent researching that article and filling the information into the table attached on google class. The table keeps us organized, which is super important for an undertaking like the final senior paper. It has categories about aspects of the article and how they were developed: organization, content/purpose, research, style, audience. On the table there are two more columns for two academic articles which we will find and research next week. The purpose of all of this preliminary research is not solely to find evidence. By reading about the topic we want to apply to film, we find out what scholarly conversations are happening, and discover new avenues to our interest in the paper. We're not supposed to have even the purpose of our article figured out yet; researching is the first step to deciding what the paper is specifically about and what conversation we want the paper to contribute to. The final paper is about applying an academic lens to film, and we would need to define and research that academic lens first before doing much else.

As far as academic lenses go, I'm most interested in applying psychology to most fiction I read and watch. I really like pondering how events in a story contribute a particular character's characteristics, personality, and actions. Fiction is an especially excellent medium to explore psychology, since, next to plotting and world building, character development is a major component. People in fiction go through problems (because they are in a story which needs conflict), and these help the audience relate to and care about them. Looking at fiction psychological lens would mean analyzing a character's growth arc, their background, their world, and their circumstances to explore their personality and mental health. Doing this kind of interpretation helps us relate to the characters themselves better, and it allows us to better understand human nature in general.