Benjamin Bascom and Dr. Matthew Wickman, English
Literary studies continually shape and reshape the study of historical time-periods. With a fascination on how aesthetic objects—specifically literature—becomes a vantage point through which to see a bygone age, I began my ORCA project with the hopes to better understand the relationship between eighteenth-century British poetry and the scientific paradigms of Newton and Leibniz. Wanting to explore how poets during this time distilled and also complicated the contemporary scientific views, I excitedly delved into the poetry of Alexander Pope and James Thomson. However, as I began this project I simultaneously began to narrow down my personal field of interests in preparation for graduate school, leading me to focus on American literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In order to wed my interests in discussions concerning science and American literature, I determined to study literary representations of technology in American literature. With this decision, I basically transported the framework for my ORCA project and placed it into a different the nation and time period.
A few barriers arose in this pursuit. For one, I needed to develop the critical vocabulary necessary to discuss the texts which I wanted to discuss, and I needed to find a critical edge upon which to hinge my argument. I decided that I would focus on how American writers portray racial and national identity vis-à-vis technological innovation. This decision led me to focus my argument around a comparative exploration between African American and Anglo American representations of technology.
My main pursuit after narrowing down my field was to understand how Anglo writers portray technology’s impact on the human. I began by detailing the Naturalist literary period, which some scholars describe as a time when science coalesced with literature. In other words, I began my research with Naturalism’s influence in combining the scientific and the literary, and from there I looked into how later poets complicated this combination, either lamenting or praising the influence of science in literary spheres. I focused my readings on Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, and Hart Crane and developed what I call a “Biotechnological paradigm.” After creating this paradigm, I then turned to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and reinterpreted dominant interpretations of the novel through the lens of a biotechnological paradigm.
While this work has yet to be completely finished, my time table is to finish the introduction by October 25th and the accompanying chapter by November 21st. I will submit portions of this project to Grad schools in December and January as part of my application to American literature PhD programs. Furthermore, with my honors thesis proposal recently accepted by the Honors Department, I will turn my original ORCA grant into a published honors thesis, come April 2009.
I received excellent mentoring from both my ORCA mentor and from other English faculty professors. This project took shape from many of the courses I have taken. Specifically, the courses I took from my faculty mentor, Dr. Matthew Wickman, provided an atmosphere where the original structure of this project originated; however, I cannot neglect pointing out Dr. Kristin Matthews’ profound influence in helping me shape this current project. In fact, her mentoring has already enabled me to turn a semester paper into a published scholarly article on communist literature in 1930s America, due from the press in January 2009.
I am particularly indebted to BYU mentoring for allowing me to spend last summer reading and researching, instead of earning money for school. Without worrying too much about finances, I was able to spend entire days in the BYU library attempting to shape this current project. Furthermore, my studies throughout the summer taught me seminal lessons in discipline and steadfastness. Instead of vacationing or relaxing in the Bahamas, I vacationed on the fifth floor of the library, basking in the sun that poked through the windows and lounging in the hard, brown chairs.