Christopher Columbus Research (Vicky)

Shiyue Jiang

English 1110.01, MWF 10:20AM-11:15AM

Instructor: Cathy Ryan

Assignment: Christopher Columbus Research

March 10, 2017

 

  1. Bartosik-Velez, E. The Legacy of Christopher Columbus in the Americas: New Nations and a Transatlantic Discourse of Empire.Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2014. Project MUSE,

https://muse-jhu-edu.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/book/32653

Note: “Christopher Columbus introduced the Old World to the New World and thereby

changed the course of history and marked the beginning of modernity.” This book

introduced how important Christopher Columbus for the New World.

Abstract: This is a book published in 2014 by Elise Bartosik-Velez. This book explained that the reason why the capital named by Columbus and relationship between the new world and classic empires.

  1. Burpee, L. J. “Columbus and His Voyages.” University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 12 no. 1, 1942, pp. 124-127. Project MUSE,

https://muse-jhu-edu.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/article/550872/pdf

 

Note: “The first chapters of this very substantial book are devoted to Columbus’ early life in Genoa, his adventures as a seaman on the Mediterranean, his years in Portugal, contemporary accounts of the man, his appearance and character, his failure to interest the King of Portugal in his great enterprise of finding a western route to the Indies, and his removal to Spain in the hope that he might be more successful with Ferdinand and Isabella.”

Abstract: This is an article talked about Christopher Columbus early life and his adventures

 

  1. Carey, H. M. “The imaginative landscape of Christopher Columbus (review).” Parergon, vol. 11 no. 1, 1993, pp. 144-146. Project MUSE,

doi:10.1353/pgn.1993.0047

 

Note: “The figure of Christopher Columbus has become so associated with his encounter with the Americas that it has become difficult to extricate him from N e w World culture. H e has become an honorary American and a representative of the frontier, Utopian, tragic and heroic age his voyages initiated. Like Christ, he marks with his life the end of one era and the inauguration of another. “

Abstract: This is an article described the mental world of Columbus and his attitude to the world. And the author talked about the question that was Columbus a fool or knave.

  1. Bauer, R. “The Tropics of Empire. Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies (review).” MLN, vol. 124 no. 2, 2009, pp. 538-541. Project MUSE,

doi:10.1353/mln.0.0131

Note: “In his first chapter, Wey Gómez attends to the close connection between geography and politics in the “world machine” of scholastic and early modern European cosmography.” “Chapter 2 focuses on the scientific debates conducted after Columbus’s arrival in Spain in the committees appointed by the Catholic Monarchs during the late 1480s in order to assess Columbus’s proposal for an Atlantic voyage.”

 

Abstract: This article contains about why Columbus sailed to south, importance of latitude and relationship between geography and politics.

  1. Pope, P. “The Race to the New World: Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, and a Lost History of Discovery (review).” The Canadian Historical Review, vol. 93 no. 4, 2012, pp. 671-673. Project MUSE,

doi:10.1353/can.2012.0066

Note: “This is a fast-paced narrative of transatlantic exploration in the 1490s, using the political and diplomatic context to connect Columbus and Cabot professionally in ways not previously noticed or, at least, not previously emphasized. “

Abstract: This paper talked career of Columbus from a diplomatic view in a simplified way.

Dalkey : Edmund White (Shiyue Jiang)

Shiyue Jiang (Vicky)

English 1110.01, MWF 10:20-11:10

Instructor: Cathy Ryan

Assignment: Dalkey

February 19, 2017

Edmund White

Edmund White is an American novelist, memoirist and essayist. He was born in Ohio, in 1940. He is good at writing the topic of same-sex love. I clicked into some interviews randomly, and I was attracted by the name of Edmund White, because he made a conversation with himself, in other words, he interviewed himself.

In the interview, he communicated his early books including published and unpublished, he talked about the feeling when he is writing, and what is his next book. Also, he compared his autobiography series with early fiction. Since he lived in Europe, he asked himself if this element affect his work.

If I have a chance to interview Edmund White, I would ask him his thoughts about LGBT, because he wrote a lot of novel about gay. And I would also ask him the reason why he went to France to live and does this action affect his own life. Lastly, I am interested in that when he writes same sex love novels, if he was affected by his novels.

 

The following is the lists of his works.

Fiction

Nonfiction

  • The Joy of Gay Sex, with Charles Silverstein(1977)
  • States of Desire(1980)
  • The Burning Library: Writings on Art, Politics and Sexuality 1969-1993(1994)
  • The Flâneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris](2000)
  • Arts and Letters(2004)
  • Sacred Monsters(2011)

Biography

  • Genet: A Biography(1993)
  • Marcel Proust(1998)
  • Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel(2008)

Memoir

  • Our Paris: Sketches from Memory(1995)
  • My Lives(2005)
  • City Boy(2009)
  • Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris(2014)

Anthologies

  • The Darker Proof: Stories from a Crisis, with Adam Mars-Jones(1987)
  • In Another Part of the Forest: : An Anthology of Gay Short Fiction(1994)
  • The Art of the Story(2000)
  • A Fine Excess: Contemporary Literature at Play](2001)

Articles

Common Sense (Vicky)

Shiyue Jiang (Vicky)
English 1110.01, MWF 10:20-11:10
Instructor: Cathy Ryan
Assignment: The Lost Thing
February 12, 2017
Common Sense
In any country, before going to college, we have to go through an exam to test whether we have the ability to enter our favorite college. This test is important for both the candidates and the parents. It is called SAT or ACT in the United States and it is called the college entrance examination in China.
The college entrance examination is particularly important for Chinese students, because students can only take this exam once a year. If you do not get the ideal results because of any reason, you can only go to your second or third volunteer school. In China, education is a very important role in finding a job, and transferring university seldom happens, it means that the level of your university determines your future work. In other words, the college entrance examination is an important turning point in the lives of Chinese students, it determines the future level of work and standards of living to a large extent. So, whether candidates, parents or teachers, try every means to help candidates to a good university. It is not sure to know when is the beginning, people think that art students will be more likely to enter a better university, even when a student achievement is not good, their first choice is to turn to learn art.
In China, people like to rank or classify schools and students. Most university will be divided into three levels and so on. Since childhood, academic achievement not only determines which school to attend, but also determines the class you stay. In the first year of high school, all the students learn all the subjects together, but there is a gap between people gradually. Before students are going to second year, in addition to liberal arts classes and science classes which most people will choose, art is another choice. In this class, there are two kinds of people, one is really like art, the other is poor student. As the requirement of art students is lower than other students in the college entrance examination, people formed a common sense, students major in art have poor academic achievements, or, learning art is a good shortcut to a better university for poor students.
However, in fact, not all art students are representatives of poor performance. Although the requirements for art students in the college entrance examination is lower than that for other candidates, they have additional art test. Art test refers to a test of their major abilities, such as performing exams and painting exams. The difficulty of art test is not less than the college entrance examination. For instance, candidates major in painting were asked to draw the same picture, thousands of painting will eventually be tiled in the huge stadium on the ground. The time for examiner is limited, they might only spend few seconds on each painting, it is not an easy thing to stand out against an unique style and color.
Therefore, art students should not be a synonymous of poor academic achievement.

The Lost Thing (Vicky)

Shiyue Jiang (Vicky)
English 1110.01, MWF 1:30-2:25
Instructor: Cathy Ryan
Assignment: The Lost Thing
February 5, 2017
The Lost Thing
What is the lost thing? Who lost thing? Why this thing was lost? These are questions in my mind before I watched this short animation. This little story tells that a boy found a lost thing and helped the lost thing to find his attribution.
For me, it is a story of loneliness, forgetfulness and friendship. In this industrial city, everyone is too busy and they mechanize their lives. They rest in the beach, but nobody except the main character notice the big, weird lost thing. They are too busy to listen to other’s request for help. Everybody is very indifferent. In this city, people lost their innocence. They live in the grey buildings even without windows. They pierce the ball as they obliterate their innocence. Pete knows everything but he doesn’t know the lost thing. The progress of mechanization can’t replace people’s emotion. People forget the lost thing, forget their innocence without notice. The main character just said hello to the lost thing, but he harvested a valuable and special friendship.
The cold of industrial society and the warm of weird creatures becomes a strong contrast, reminding us don’t lost ourselves during the development of industrialization, reminding us to keep our kindness and innocence.

Character Sketch (Vicky)

Shiyue Jiang (Vicky)
English 1110.01, MWF 1:30-2:25
Instructor: Cathy Ryan
Assignment: Character Sketch
January 26, 2017
The Headteacher Bang
It’s 6 o’ clock in the early morning. Bang gets up this time as usual, then he rinses mouth and washes his face quickly to make sure he can arrive at the playground earlier than most students. When Bang walks to the playground, there are almost no students there. After 15 minutes, practically every student is there. As the music plays, he leads his students running. This is not difficult for him. He has insisted on exercising in the morning for ten years, from the beginning when he became a teacher of the New Oriental.
Finishing the morning exercises and breakfast, Bang comes back to his office to prepare his class. Although he is always repeating the same knowledge for different students, he still spends a lot of time preparing courses, making his lessons more interesting, so that his students can understand easier.
The rest of class time, couples of students come to his office to chat with him about daily life and academic problems. Bang always says, “Before you become a talent, you should be a human first.” For the high school students, in addition to grant them academic knowledge, he teaches them more how to deal with problems in their daily life and how to solve the contradiction between people.