I am still a bit unclear on the final project. I’ve been thinking about what exactly it is that I want to do…I was thinking about comparing a short story or poem from Deaf culture and comparing it to another culture or minority of some kind. As you can see it is still a bit fuzzy, but I thought it would interesting to consider the similarities and differences. For example, in an article I recently read a theorist suggested a Deaf cultural analysis of a text, much like a Feminist or Marxist reading. In his essay, he connected parallels between Harry Potter and the Deaf-World. I thought that this was a new and fascinating take on these issues. Although this is something I am interested I am not quite sure how it can be accomplished. I know that I cannot use Harry Potter because of copyright issues and that it is possible I will not be able to find Deaf poetry on Google books. Another Deaf related possibility is that I have seen Laurent Clerc’s (a famous Deaf person who helped bring French sign language to the U.S.) memoirs I could try a distant reading to a Deaf short story and see if there are any thematic similarities. As I said these are just some ideas I am interested in, it is possible that it will not work for my final project.

A more traditional idea that I am interested in exploring would be to compare Sherlock Holmes first short story to his second and see how the ideas changed and developed. The action of his first short story took place primarily in the U.S. whereas the second happened in London. I do another distant reading to see how many similarities there really were. These are ideas that I will need to polish and work on before I make any decisions about the project.Regardless, let me know what you think. 🙂