Reflections on what we have learned so far

Thanks for sharing some of your thoughts last class. You offered some pretty good takes on what we have done and also challenging questions. I addressed some in class and would like to address another one here.

With regard to what we will be doing “after Goethe” keep in mind that all of our activities will lead up to actually mapping Goethe’s itinerary in the Story Map Journal and then analyzing his experiences through texts, videos, and images.

This does not mean that we won’t read other texts, but it is you who will to some extent decide what we read. It will be your articles, the other travelogues you might find from that time period, that will constitute our reading.

This course strives to provide you with an opportunity to work on an actual scholarly research project from beginning to end. At this stage in the project it might sometimes not be clear what this will all amount to. But hang in there, and, whenever possible, make assignments your own: If my prompt for a writing piece, for a research question, for finding an article is not exactly what interests you, find the article you are interested in, write about what you think is relevant in Goethe or in another travel text, etc.

You should find ways to own your learning process–I ask you to practice research skills as well as close reading, arguing about the ins and outs of a text, and thinking critically about it not so that you demonstrate it to me; I ask these things to create opportunities so that you can find out how you best work, how you cope with challenges and difficulties.

Here are once again your thoughts: