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Scrutinizing Images

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SHORT ASSIGNMENT: SCRUTINIZING IMAGES
If you haven’t done so already please begin this assignment by reading John Stilgoe’s essay “Scrutinizing Images.”In the essay Stilgoe presents both a rationale and method for utilizing period photographs in generating question for historical research. Within the first two major writing assignments of this course you will be asked to utilize maps and images as key texts in deciphering the stories and histories of particular places or things. So, at least in the context of these two assignments, learning to read and interpret images and maps is a critical skill. In class we have spent some time looking at and interpreting maps of different eras in an attempt to ascertain the stories they carry and the historical questions that they raise. This assignment will ask you to undergo this same process with a number of images.
Step One: Observe
Look closely at the three images you’ve been given in this assignment (you can download high quality versions of these from the Carmen website). Ask yourself the following questions: (please don’t try to look these up, we’re interested in your thoughts, not what you can pull from someone else).    – What do you notice first?  – What people and objects are shown?– How are they arranged?  – What is the physical setting?  – What, if any, words do you see?  – What other details can you see?
Step Two: Reflect
Having looked at the images closely, make some hypotheses about what the images are and what they mean. Ask yourself the following questions:– Why do you think this image was made?– When do you think it was made?– Who do you think was the audience for this image?
– What tools were used to create this?
– What’s happening in the image?
– Does the image relay or tell a story?
– What can you learn from examining this image?
Step Two: Questions
This process isn’t intended to provide answers, but—ideally–to raise more questions. One of the simplest questions you can ask about an image is “what is that?”, but you might also ask whether the hypotheses you raised in step two are correct or not. Reflecting on what you wrote down in steps one and two, ask yourself the following questions: – What questions does the image raise for you?– How might you go about finding answers to your questions?
Deliverables:
Provide a roughly one page discussion of each image (so, you will turn in three pages in total). Your 1 pager should discuss what you observe about the image, your reflections on the image, and what questions the image
raises for you. 
Calendar:
– 1/17 – Assignment distributed and explained.
– 1/24 – Assignment due for in-class discussion.  
Submission Format:
Digital Submission: Via Carmen Dropbox
File type: .doc or .docx
Font: 12 point font, double spaced
Citation Style: N/A

Dos and Dont’s
– Do, look closely at each image.

– Do, think about the image and ask yourself the questions posed.
– Do, bring your own knowledge and experience to bear on this assignment (you can’t not do this).
– Do, proofread your papers before you turn them in.
– Do, have fun with this assignment. These are interesting images with interesting stories to tell.  
– Don’t Google search the image and write down what it says about it on Wikipedia.
Being “right” about your image isn’t the point of this assignment, making close observations and thinking deeply about those observations is.– Don’t tell us how much you love or hate the image. We don’t care how beautiful or not beautiful your image is. Don’t waste space or time on discussing how you feel about its aesthetic merits.   – Don’t start this assignment the night before it’s due!!!! Your observations will be superficial. More importantly, you won’t have any fun writing it and we won’t have any fun reading it.

My Town

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MY TOWN

Landscape research happens in many ways. You’re probably familiar with doing research by looking up books and articles about the thing you’re studying, reading those, and reporting on what they say. This assignment asks you to find and tell a historical story through researching images. You have each been assigned a town or small city to research. The key here is that you tell a story using a close reading of the images that you find. These images can be pictures, paintings, maps, advertisements, etc. So, we are not asking you to give the history of your town as it might be written on a historical society website, (i.e. “My town was founded in 1837 by Ebenezer so and so”). Rather, we are asking you to read a story in images and to write that story in words. This means that you have to be researcher, detective, interpreter and writer.

Your primary sources for this assignment are very specific, maps and images. With that in mind, you’ll need to identify maps and images of or about your city. Internet sources are a good place to start but you should quickly move beyond a standard Google search. Some places to start:

The Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/

David Rumsey Map Collection: http://www.davidrumsey.com/view/view

The Internet Archive: https://archive.org/

USGS Topo View: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/maps/TopoView/

Mapping Inequality: https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining

Maps and images can be searched for using the OSU Library System’s catalogue, but the librarians who work in the library’s map room can also help you to locate maps and other images that may be useful to you.

Having found a number of maps and or images, take a close look at them. What jumps out at you? Do you have maps or images from a specific period or documenting a specific event like a flood or a fire? If so, can you read the

effects of this event in later maps? Do you see particular industries or infrastructures in your maps or images? What are these? Do they have an effect on the town? If you’ve found something that seems interesting, dig a little deeper, here is the place where you might turn to other sources such as a book or a newspaper articles to find more information.

Once you’ve identified and researched a story you want to tell, write a 1000 – 1200 word essay telling the story you’ve discovered.

Audience:

Write your essay using a journalistic tone, i.e. as if you were writing for a magazine or newspaper. This means that you should assume that your audience does not have any prior-knowledge of your town or the events that happened there, but that they are reasonably well educated, literate people. For this audience, your style should be engaging, drawing your readers into the story you’ve found and letting them in on why that story is interesting or why it matters. Don’t bore your audience, they may stop reading. Most importantly, please keep in mind that you are not writing to the instructors. Imagine that your audience doesn’t know that you’re a college student writing this essay for an assignment. Your audience is just interested in an informative, interesting, and possibly even entertaining read. You may include as many maps and images as you need in order to tell your story, and you may crop/enlarge/highlight maps and images as necessary. You should provide captions that describe the images you choose to include in your essay. Be sure to properly cite all maps and images as well as all other quotes and ideas.

Calendar:

– 1/10 – Assignment distributed and explained

– 1/12 – a helpful lecture

– 1/17 – another helpful lecture and a helpful interlude.

– 1/26 – drafts distributed to peers (you should have a full draft of your paper by this date)

– 1/31 – in-class peer workshopping

– 2/7 – final drafts due by 2:20 PM via Carmen upload.

Submission Format:

Digital Submission: Via Carmen Dropbox

File type: .doc or .docx

Font: 12 point font, double spaced

Citation Style: Chicago Manual of Style–Notes and Bibliography System

Towns/Cities

Akron, Ohio

Springfield, Ohio

Marietta, Ohio

Portsmouth, Ohio

Lima, Ohio

Dos and Dont’s

– Do, visit the map library and speak to a librarian.

– Do, visit the Ohio Historical Archive and speak to an archivist.

– Do, spell and grammar check your paper.

– Do, have a person you trust proofread your paper for content as well as mistakes.

– Do, visit your town if possible.

– Do, have fun with this assignment. Find a story you want to tell.

– Don’t plagiarize.

– Don’t try to sell us on your town. We’re not interested in moving there, we just want an interesting story. You’re not writing ad copy.

– Don’t start your paper the night before it’s due!!!! – It will be boring and it will be poorly researched. More importantly, you won’t have any fun writing it and we won’t have any fun reading it.

Roadside Attractions

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Paul Bunyan monument. Bemidji, Minnesota, Vachon, John, 1914-1975, photographer

Paul Bunyan, dinosaurs made of abandoned car parts, enormous balls of twine, an entire palace made of corn, the stuffed carcass of the world’s largest bull; these are the sign-posts and ephemera of America’s highways and byways. Comically bad and appropriately out-of-scale, roadside attractions express our shared desire for a larger than life purpose, a collective identity, a national mythology, an American story. The American landscape is littered with objects both strange and banal, yet even the most ordinary object can hold a hidden story. What is it? What was its purpose? Who built it? What happened to it? With these questions in mind we will approach an investigation of some extraordinary objects that compose our every-day landscape. These “roadside attractions,” while less audacious than their more celebrated kitsch counterparts, none-the-less hold stories — interesting and even valuable stories.

For this assignment you will each be assigned one of the following objects at random:

– a grain elevator
– a levee
– a trolley line
– a mill (saw, grist, flour, etc.)

Your job is to research and describe your object through the investigation of a local example. Much like the first assignment, I am not asking for a book report about your object, rather I want you to investigate a local example in order to tell its story.

With that in mind, you’ll need to identify a local example and find out as much as you can about it. There is no set definition of “local”, however, you must be able to visit your example. This means you should consider the forms of transportation at your disposal before settling on a particular site to research. Internet sources are a good place to start looking but you should quickly move into more specialized resources. For this assignment good places to look are detailed maps and local newspapers. Excellent sources of maps and newspapers for the Columbus area are:

– The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps: (OSU login required)
– Baist’s Real Estate Atlas Survey of Columbus and Vicinity
– The Columbus Dispatch 1877 –
– The Columbus Citizen 1899 – 1959
– Chronicling America (Historic Newspapers) (OSU login required)

Note: maps, images and newspaper articles can be searched for using the OSU Library System’s catalogue and research databases, but many resources for this project are available at the Columbus Metropolitan Library, located on Grant Street in Downtown Columbus – it is okay to go downtown.

Note also: You will almost certainly have to leave campus in order to complete this project in a satisfactory manner. Plan accordingly.

Once you’ve identified your local example and researched it, write a 2000 – 2500 word essay telling the story you’ve discovered. Your essay should address the following points:

– In general, what is your attraction and what does it do/how does it work?
– In general, why did people build your attraction?
– When was your specific attraction built and who built it?
– Why was your specific attraction located where it was? What did it relate to?
– How long did your specific attraction last/function? Is it still functioning?
– If your specific attraction became obsolete, why did it become obsolete?
– What condition is your attraction in today? Is there evidence of it?
– In general, what impact did your attraction and attractions like it have on the American landscape?

Audience:
Write your essay using a journalistic tone, i.e. as if you were writing for a magazine or newspaper. This means that you should assume that your audience does not have any prior-knowledge of your object, but that they are reasonably well educated, literate people. For this audience, your style should be engaging, drawing your readers into the information you’ve found and letting them know why that story is interesting or why it matters. Don’t bore your audience, they may stop reading. Most importantly, please keep in mind that you are not writing to the instructors. Imagine that your audience doesn’t know that you’re a college student writing this essay for an assignment. Your audience is just interested in an informative, interesting, and possibly even entertaining read. You may include as many maps and images as you need in order to tell your story, and you may crop/enlarge/highlight maps and images as necessary. You should provide captions that describe the images you choose to include in your essay. Be sure to properly cite all maps and images as well as all other quotes and ideas.


Submission Format:
Digital Submission: Via Carmen Dropbox
File type: .doc or .docx
Font: 12 point font, double spaced
Citation Style: Chicago Manual of Style–Notes and Bibliography System

Dos and Dont’s
– Do, visit the map library and speak to a librarian.
– Do, visit the Ohio Historical Archive and speak to an archivist.
– Do, visit the Columbus Metropolitan Library and speak to a librarian
– Do, spell and grammar check your paper.
– Do, have a person you trust proofread your paper for content as well as mistakes.
– Do, visit your attraction.
– Do, photograph your attraction and include your photographs in your paper.
– Do, have fun with this assignment. Imagine you’re a Detective Freamon from The Wire. Track things down.
– Do, tell us as specific a story as possible.
– Don’t tell us a vague story about all grain elevators, levees, trolley lines, or mills. That story will be easy to write, but insufferably boring.
– Don’t plagiarize.
– Don’t try to sell us your attraction. We’re not interested in buying it or building a new one, we just want an interesting story. You’re not writing ad copy.
– Don’t start your paper the night before it’s due!!!! – It will be boring and it will be poorly researched. More importantly, you won’t have any fun writing it and we won’t have any fun reading it.