Alexander Smith and Dr. Michelle James, Department of Germanic and Slavic

Before beginning this project I was aware of the vast variety of literature available in both English and German language. Having been fortunate enough to work with Dr. James already on the Sophie Project, an undertaking of the Department of Germanic and Slavic here at BYU, I was also aware of the number of German-language literature pieces that Dr. James has collected over the past years. However, I was not aware of the impact that this literature can have and the insights that it can provide. Being a European myself, I was excited to begin work on this specific area of literature regarding German women’s thought on America.

While working on my ORCA project I was able to spend much time searching for and reading a wide variety of writing from German women authors, who wrote about the new world, from Canada through North America to Brazil and Argentina. This gave me an insight to how Europeans, and in particular German women, thought about the New World during the 19th and 20th centuries, and how their world differed from what they had experienced in the New World.

The project has run smoothly and I have made great progress. I have been able to collect all the texts for the project that are available—some, however, due to copyright reasons, cannot be included.  The PDF texts have been cleaned, and made ready for the e-book reader that shall accompany Sophie Discovers Amerika. The compiling of these texts into the finished e-book reader will only take approximately 3-4 hours of work, and it is anticipated that the project be entirely completed by November 2012.

The Sophie Discovers Amerika manuscript has been submitted to various publishers, and Camden House has shown interest in accepting the project, after a few editorial changes. The PDF texts will be included in this publication as a digital accompaniment.

I am very grateful for the opportunity I have had in working on this project; it has given me great understanding to the meaning of individual research and has only increased my interest in continuing on this path of discovery.