Fuller 4/27/11

So let me tell you what I have come up with as my project based on what we have talked about. A brief outline;

1. Intro
2. Background/early influences
3. Beliefs as from The Great Lawsuit
4. Analysis of beliefs and their implications? maybe
5. Conclusion

It's the fourth segment that I'm not too sure what to do with. I am going to spend tonight doing some more research, and then hopefully I will be pretty close to writing. If you have suggestions based on that fourth segment, let me know. I will probably be by to talk about all of this again pretty soon.

Project 4/25/11

So I have finished up reading the short blurb of The Great Lawsuit from the Anthology and also the synopsis of the book on JSTOR. My next step will be to talk to you in study hall tomorrow about where to go from here. It would have been nice to have been able to talk about it today, but I was not yet ready. Now I am though. In reading Fuller's stuff, I basically got a sense that she was saying pretty much the same thing over and over again intermixed with a bunch of blah. There really don't appear to be that many different thoughts involved in this work. Something to ponder.

Margaret Fuller 4/24/11

I have not been very successful over the past couple of days in getting a whole lot done, especially in class. I still have a good bit of The Great Lawsuit to read in the Anthology, and I am planning on doing that in study hall tomorrow. Then hopefully I will be able to competently talk to you about my project. Also, tonight (Sunday) I have been reading an article that I looked briefly at about a week ago. It is on JSTOR and is titled Margaret Fuller and the Transcendental Ethos: Women in the Nineteenth Century.  It is actually a very good synopsis of the book once you get into chapter 4, and I picked out a couple of quotes that I thought were especially significant.I have them listed at the end of this blog. Those that contain a number in parenthses are straight from The Great Lawsuit. If you find any of them that you like or think I should write about when you read over this, just let me know. Also, I was a bit frustrated because I would have really liked to use Diigo in my reading, but it won't let me do it in JSTOR because it is not actually hi-lightable text. If there is a way around this problem, I would really like to know. 

• "'We must have units before we can have union' (150). The development as woman as individuals--that is, their cultivation of self--therefore takes on primary importance."
• "Fuller understood, intuitively at the beginning, that the emancipation of women depended on a redefinition of the terms 'female' and 'male' and a reevaluation that the bearing that both these terms had on the culture of the self."
• "'The especial genius of woman I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency'" (161).
• "'Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens into solid, solid rushes into fluid.There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman'" (161).
• "She [Fuller] thus attempts to preserve the ultimate primacy of intuition over rationalism and to face the immediate need to stress the intellectual potential of women."

Project 4/21/11

So I spent class time today reading from The Great Lawsuit in the Norton book. I expect to finish reading through it tomorrow in class, and then we can talk about where I want to go with it. I wanted to read the book, but it was way more work than I had time to do; therefore, I'm really happy to be able to read an abridged version. I feel a little bit better now after talking about my project, and I hope that I will have a better idea of what I want to do when I finish. So, immediate goal is finish the story in class tomorrow. Long term goal...we shall see.

Fuller 4/19/11

I spent pretty much all of class yesterday doing more research on Fuller. I specifically looked up a JSTOR article that was a synopsis of Fuller and Women in the nineteenth century. I also read a little bit of her book itself. I would like to talk with you soon. I have been doing some thinking into my project and I have pretty much decided to stick with Women in the nineteenth century as my main source. I'm not really sure what I specifically want to approach in my essay though. I have considered a couple of ideas including contrasting the fights for rights of different types of people, including prisoners along with men and women. Another idea was to look at different aspects of only her beliefs of rights between men and women. I would like to have some discussion before I go off in some direction I'm going to regret later

Margaret Fuller Project 4/18/11

So today I spent the period just doing background research on Margaret Fuller. I read the majority of the Wikipedia section on here and read her portion of the Norton Anthology as well. I decided rather than blindly diving into her works, it would be better for me to work on narrowing down my field or research by working on a thesis. I really wanted to look more at her contribution to the Transcendentalists rather than her Feminism, but I need to research more. I hope to have some concrete discussion points by the end of the day tomorrow.

1/14/11

So, as I have done nothing further on my project since the last blog, this is going to be short. Like I said, I have an idea and we worked out that I should look at Fuller's thoughts on the interaction between Men and Women. So, yeah. I will try to have picked out and started one of her books by monday. And honestly, you don't need to waste your time commenting on this one. There won't be much to say.

The Project 4/13/11

I feel pretty confidant with my plans to do this project, I think. My current schedule only leaves me about 8 days from the time that I finish with all of my preliminary work to the time that the finished product is due. But knowing myself, I know that I am going to have to give myself a lot of time; otherwise, I'm afraid I won't be motivated enough to hold to my calender. As for the project itself, I feel fairly content working with Margaret Fuller, but I am not sure in which direction to take it. I am going to try to get up with you soon so we can talk about a direction that I can go in.