Originally I was considering the idea I mentioned in my last reflection, about using Jigsaw on a letter or diary based text; however, I have since moved on to an idea that I could use for both this final project and to help with a thesis paper I’ve been working on this semester.
I have been researching spoken word poetry, and specifically, women spoken word artists, over the course of the semester. Recently, when I was doing some research on gender studies and how men and women use speech, I found a study out of the University of Texas that showed that men and women not only use different words, they use them for different reasons. I spoke to my thesis adviser about this idea, and it was his suggestion to use some of the text analysis tools/visualizations we’ve used in this class to represent this difference–or disprove it–in female and male poets from the 20th century. I like this idea because it gives me a clear objective with the project (and the bonus of a contribution to my thesis, which is lagging a little behind..yikes…), and because I’m truly intrigued to see what I will find.
I wish there were a tool I could use to do the same sort of thing, but with the videos of slam performances. That could be truly interesting data. Perhaps I can include it in the project, a sort of add-on tool… We’ll see.
