Digitizing my research portfolio has been a whirlwind full of frustration and headaches, but by golly I believe I did it! I managed to get my documents up using Scribd and a scanner. Through trial and error, I realized that my fieldnotes and WA2 and WA4 had to be scanned as pictures. Then they were uploaded to Scribd without a problem. The one thing I don’t like is that the stuff on my artifacts page and WA page is all under one link, thereby making my table of contents page seem redundant. I’m still iffy on the whole pictures deal. When I spoke to Holly Stevens at the Special Collections Office, she said I couldn’t upload the pictures I’ve taken of the newspapers online. So, I uploaded the pictures I listed on the table of contents, and I am burning the rest to a disk until I obtain the permission needed to upload them.
Research Journal #25 December 2, 2009
Oh, my research portfolio…What can I say about it? A lot of it is in my polka-dotted spiral. All of my fieldnotes are in its pages, along with a reflection/freewrite/expanded fieldnotes or two on what I had found intriguing in the newspapers I examined. Beginning sketches of WA4 are also included. Stuffed into the back of the spiral are handouts from class, feedback on WA3 and WA4, and handouts from the Commerce Week on Writing. Outside of my spiral, I have uploaded pictures on my laptop from my camera. These are pictures of various aspects of the newspaper. Advertisements, articles, important headlines, the header of the newspaper throughout the years, pictures of Greta Garbo movie flyers (I know they don’t relate to my project, but I couldn’t resist. I love her movies!), pictures of pictures of the campus and students, and a list of then-current students and ex-lions who lost their lives during the war. Mary McCrary (one of the oral histories I listened to) lost one of her sons to the war. You can see his name of the list. My research portfolio also includes notes over the oral histories of Mary McCrary and John Allen. I ended up using John Allen’s oral history for WA4, since he was a student at E.T. from 1936-1940. Although, he wasn’t a student during the peak of WWII, he provided rich information about student life leading up to the war, and civilian life during WWII. WA2, WA3, WA4, and eventually WA5, will be included in my research portfolio. They all have to deal with The East Texan in some way.
So, what does this all mean? I have been pondering about this for a while now. The heavy influence from the war throughout the years changed the campus and its students. There were more women on campus, as the men were off fighting. Rationing inflicted everyone, as supplies were needed for the soldiers across the Atlantic Ocean. People were trying to do their patriotic duty as mandated by the government, by purchasing war bonds, enlisting in the armed forces, the red cross, and women’s branches of the military. Women were encouraged to write to their boyfriends, husbands, and sons who were fighting in a different continent. Of course, no one would do perform their patriotic duty if there wasn’t a reason to do so. Before the U.S. entered the war, people were aware of the conflict in Europe, but that didn’t impact their daily lives as much, if any at all, like it did when America was involved. If Japan hadn’t attacked Peal Harbor, the U.S. wouldn’t have found it necessary to enter in the war at that time. I’m not saying that the U.S. wouldn’t have gone to war at all, but hypothetically if they hadn’t, daily life of American citizens would not have been impeded. Lets look at Japan and Germany. In The East Texan, I’ve seen political cartoons and propaganda that deal with Japan and/or Germany. They invoke the terror. For instance, there was cartoon dealing with war bonds. In the top panel, a man is walking by a poster that says, “For defense, buy United States savings bonds.” He says to himself (and essentially the audience/reader), “…Too busy today–I’ll get around it tomorrow.” In the panel below that, the is escorted by a big, burly Nazi soldier holding a gun to his (the man’s) head. They are walking past the same poster, only this time the top words are X-ed out and -AGE is added to bond (bondage). I don’t know about you, but if I was living during that time, I would head over to the nearest bank and buy as many war bonds as I could afford. That cartoon is scary! If the enemy wasn’t there, people wouldn’t have had anything to worry about. The threat of the enemy was great enough for the U.S. government to impose all of these regulations, civilian defensive acts, the draft, the printing of propaganda, etc. Interesting what studying these newspapers lead me to. Talking with Dr. Carter has helped a lot too.
