Oops…I didn’t respond to Chapter 7 of FieldWorking but I did complete Box Activity 38 in Research Journal #17, so feel free to refer back to that.
Response to Chapter 7 of FieldWorking
Out of all the chapters I’ve read thus far in this textbook, chapter 7 is the most relevant to my research project. In fact, the chapter is titled “Researching Archives: Locating Culture” for goodness sake. How convenient is that? In addition to being relevant to my research project, I found this chapter to be extremely interesting which made reading the fifty-eight page long chapter (not a front to back tally) quite enjoyable. I find reading about things articles, papers, books, etc., that are enriched with history pleasureable. I do love old black and white films after all. 
My favorite example article in the chapter was the excerpt entitled “The Fridge”. It was humorous and provided a lot of insight into that family. The grandfather in the excerpt reminded me of the grandfather Lionel Barrymore played in the movie “You Can’t Take It with You”. Both of them were kind-hearted, wise, and extremely humorous grandfathers. Family archival materials are very neat. They provide information about one’s family throughout the generations, and come with rich and often times funny stories about family members.
The chapter describes the different types of archival material out there for use in one’s research project. There are electronic archives, alternative archives, museum archives, historical archives, family archives, and online archives. I believe old editions of The East Texan fall under historical archives. So needless to say, archives are plenitful and are waiting to be examined and interpreted. An impactful quote to mention is one that nicely sums up the importance of using archival materials. “Whether you supplement your study with archival research or identify a fieldstudy topic from personal, historical, or online sources, archives can provide the shape, texture, depth, and color that help bring a study to life.” (FieldWorking pg. 379)
