Knowledge in Progress

After our last lecture, I'm attempting to branch out and find relevant information through connecting socially. I'm still searching for connections between Moby Dick and its popularity in WWI so this post will walk you through a little of my past hour and a half of exploring.

 I found Google's blog search feature (which I, prior to class, hadn't known existed), which was extremely helpful. So about an hour and a half later the only thing I really have to show for my "research" was finding the information below:

 

If you quickly read this paragraph that popped up on my google blog search, you'll see it's exactly what I'm looking for! Unfortunately, I had to buy a subscription to read the rest of this article… no thank you. But it has given me a great head start… "myth," "psychology," "disillusionment" sound great! Now that I have a couple topics to specify my search with, I can take it to the scholars since it doesn't seem to be a hot topic within the blogging world of Moby Dick.

So you're probably wondering what in the heavens I was doing for the rest of my time trying to research. Well, I started reading the blogs! I actually found some really neat ones!

I started out with this blog. I didn't find anything pertaining to my topic, but I thought it was interesting that the author referenced a contemporary author, Nathaniel Philbrick who wrote Why Read Moby Dick?

 

 

So I looked around and found that Philbrick is definitely popular in a lot of Moby Dick blogs. I quickly found the actual radio interview with the author talking about his book!

 

 

 

Then, of course, I had to know what people though of Philbrick's book! So, below is a snip of my favorite review.

 

 

Well as un-fascinating as this may seem, I kind of really liked this train of research thing. Although my productivity wasn't at its climax in regards to my topic (Moby Dick's popularity in WWI), I really learned some interesting things about Moby Dick and got some fresh perspectives - and I didn't even include all the blogs I read through!

We talked in class about documenting the research process - the good and the bad- and I'm really glad that this class is helping me better my academic research strategy.

Here's to my knowledge in progress.