Our group had the ghost story and we chose to do a slumber party that a ghost story was being told at. I was an actor that played a ghost. We made the decision to choose the slumber party because it would give the comedy aspect along with a way to tell an easy ghost […]
I’ve always had a soft spot for monster stories like Frankenstein and Dracula. So, I searched the archives for Dracula related Items. A lot of the things that came up were secondary sources and were more recent than what I wanted. After some searching I found a full copy of a first edition of Dracula […]
When a person talks about Disney, you cannot help but get a huge smile on your face and remember all of your favorite childhood movies. Yet, you would never have the thought of plagiarism come to mind, let alone being accused of it. In 1999, an individual named Fariborz Rowshanfekr sent a synopsis for Cinderella III […]
On March 23, 1913, Oscar Wilde came out of hiding to speak with his nephew, Arthur Cravan. Everyone thought he was dead because he has been banished for so long, and it came as a shock to them that Wilde showed up out of the blue. In his two part installment for a magazine, Cravan […]
I wrote last about the great concern I had for my sisters of the nineteenth century, knowing that the most sexual and anatomical knowledge they had was of Frederick Hollick’s The Matron’s Manual of Midwifery, and the Diseases of Women During Pregnancy and in Child Bed: Being a Familiar and Practical Treatise, more Especially Intended […]
Originally published as a serial story in Le Gaulois in 19o9, Gaston Leroux painted a unique picture of the life behind the stage and the fine line between love and insanity. It was, in some ways, the beginning of an astounding mythos that is a household name. The Phantom of the Opera. It sends shivers […]
I grew up fully immersed in the culture that surrounds Star Wars. So, naturally I was quite interested when I came across a 1977 Starlog Magazine article about the very first Star Wars film, right as my excitement for the upcoming sequel was beginning to boil over. The article “Creating the Space-Fantasy Universe of Star Wars” […]
We all grow up hearing the tale of peter rabbit; read by our mothers as we lay tucked up in bed. Nursery rhymes were a big part of our childhoods they were taught to us by our mothers and fathers who learned it from their mothers and fathers. I see nursery rhymes as a link […]
As a follow up assignment to my previous blog on Jane Austen’s lack of credit towards authorship on her literary works while she lived, I decided to investigate several other female authors around this time period. My goal was to discover whether or not they originally used their names as author on their works as […]
All that I know about Jack the Ripper is that he was a major serial killer in 1888 London, England who murdered five women in a month time period in the Whitechapel area. No one knows who this Jack the Ripper is because the case was never solved and all the files where supposedly perished […]
How do you rewrite Hamlet? While I’ve always been a fan of re-imaginings and adaptations of Shakespeare, I’ve never thought I’d write one. Even just rewriting a part of one scene proved to be a challenge. However, I’ve learned so much from this assignment, about adaptations, but also about myself and my writing. Being given […]
Children’s books did not start to appear until the mid 18th century, but when they did most of them were in a way like our children’s books today. They shared lessons, gave advice, and were also comedic. According to M.O. Grenby, “At the beginning of the century very few such enjoyable books for children had […]
Based on my group’s rhizomatic approach to Shakespearean adaptation, we did not feel the need to carefully consider the methodical aspects and criteria of adaptation. Lanier stresses that creativity and originality of the adaption are the lifeblood of Shakespeare. Each new adaptation is inextricably tied to the original text- it not only reveals a new interpretation of Shakespeare but it […]
So my group and I got the wonderful challenge of adapting a scene from Hamlet into a Film Noir style video. I played Harriet (A.K.A. Horatio), the young scholar chosen to speak to a tormented spirit. One of our first decisions about the project was to gender bend the characters, so we changed Francisco to […]
For our adaptation, we were assigned a “ghost story” angle, which felt a little redundant, as Hamlet, already is a ghost story in many respects. In order to make this ghost story work as a different telling of Hamlet than the original, we had to discuss and attempt multiple different angles, but we did not […]
When my group received the prompt “Tech Hamlet,” my mind went to theatre. Tech is slang for the crew backstage and most theaters are populated by a resident ghost. But I digress. The mythos of this adaptation of Hamlet came easily; the dead King is replaced with a missing CEO of a computer technology company […]
For the hamlet adaptation my group did the horror story version. We created five characters so that every group member could act in it. We divided Marcellus into two different characters, Marcie and Mary, I acted out Marcie. Other than acting I also helped write and edit the script. It was difficult to integrate the […]
My group was tasked with adapting Hamlet into a horror film. I played the role of Bernard (Bernardo). We chose to take a modern approach because most horror films take place in a modern time period. For example, The Cabin in The Woods the film started with a group of college friends who were going […]
Upon plucking “Film Noir” from the hat, our group excitedly chattered away about all of the great ideas we had for the adaptation. We were thrilled to play with the dark moods of Hamlet, which would translate perfectly into the style. We all had a general idea of what “Film Noir” meant—it was dark, drama […]
Image via Wikimedia commons Our group had the privilege of doing a war adaptation of Hamlet. We were trying to go for a WWII look and feel. To do that we had to take a more modern approach to the language and we also decided to modernize the names. I can’t see men in WWII […]
(Bernadette, Courtesy of Hamlet en Blanc et Noir) For our film adaptation, my group had Hamlet in Film Noir. Needless to say, Hannah, Katie, Katie, Cheyenne, and I took the idea and ran with it. The issue of gender presented itself. We are all female, but all the the parts to the scene were male. […]
There was one thought which seemed to bounce back in forth in my head as the performance one week ago today came to its conclusion: Well, that isn’t quite how I thought it would go. I had expectations for this project which, in hindsight, were almost impossible for the time and creative constraints which came […]
A Hamlet Adaptation: Spy Agency. My group included Morgan Henschel, Austin Maddix, Heidi Satori, Joy Jadin, and myself (Johnna Beversdorf). By taking the original idea of Hamlet and warping it into a spy film, we attempted to stay as faithful to Shakespeare’s original as possible by changing the kingdom into an agency. In doing so, we held the […]
My group had the difficult task of adapting Hamlet into a ghost story. I played the part of Bernice (aka Bernardo) and was involved in some of the editing of the script before we presented it. Our group had a bit of a difficult time with our adaptation, as Hamlet is already a ghost story and the […]
My group was assigned the “war film” angle for the Hamlet adaptation, and I was immediately excited because all I could think of was the PBS version of Macbeth with Patrick Stewart (my favorite movie of all time.) Since “war film” is kind of a broad angle, it was my idea to do a WWII […]
When first introduced with the topic of Tech Hamlet there was much excitement and anticipation within the group as ideas started to fly out and onto paper. I have never actually read Hamlet, so at first I was a bit confused, but my group was really good at introducing me to the major ideas and […]
Tech Hamlet did not seem as much of a challenge as it ended up being. We very quickly decided to base our story in a tech support facility where a “ghost” was haunting the computers. It developed into quite the endeavor as time progressed, especially because of the perfectionist nature and overenthusiasm of many of […]
The adaptation Hamlet video project was quite difficult. Taking Hamlet’s scene one, act one and acting it out in three and a half minutes is hard enough, but then adapting it to an adaptation, randomly drawn from a hat made it even harder. My group randomly drew Spy Film; we got excited over the adaptation […]
The group that I was a part of was the post-apocalyptic Hamlet. Within this group, I was the lucky one to play Horatio. We had a time limit of three minutes and the short scene that we had to adapt was longer than that, so something had to be cut. As a group we decided […]
I was in the Post-Apocalyptic Hamlet group and was the camera person. We decided to cut out Fortinbras for two main reasons. The first reason was to fit the time limit. The second was we wanted to make it seem like the characters were the only ones left on alive in the world and this […]
My group had the war film adaptation of Hamlet. I was going to be the ghost but once we decided o film our adaption I was in charge of filming, lighting (we were outside at night), and sound effects. We filmed it with a cell phone and then uploaded it on a computer. Since we […]
Our group received the challenge of adapting the first scene of Hamlet with a horror movie angle. We initially went with a stage production (later filmed by Emma and I) and started flinging ideas at the wall to see what stuck. The play began to take shape: Our setting would be a dorm room, with […]
Challenged with the assignment to create an adaptation of Hamlet, our group was given the angle of spy film which we immediately set out to create with much energy, excitement and perhaps a dash or two of nervous knots. Determined to execute the task at hand, we immediately began tossing ideas on the table—as well […]
Writing film adaptations of, The Walking Dead may seem like a cake walk. After all, the viewers see is the end result of this production. Let me tell you first hand this is not as easy as it may seem. In writing our own adaptation of Hamlet. I found it was most difficult to cut […]
I was in the Post Apocalyptic Hamlet and I played Marcellus. I also helped with the discussion of where we were going to film and the costumes. To fit our time limit we had to cut something out and we decided to cut out Fortinbras because we thought that it would be interesting if our […]
For the adaptation project, I was in the post-apocalyptic group for the ghost scene in Hamlet. I played the role of the ghost, Megan played Horatio, Elizabeth played Marcellus, Tyler played Barnardo, and Morgan filmed the scene. For our scene, we cut some large chunks of dialogue from Marcellus and Horatio on pages 13-15. This […]
The coolest thing I found was a comic book that came out in 1981 called Uncanny X-Men: Days of Future Past. I have been a fan of the X-Men for a very long time and although I haven’t read this story, it is highly regarded as one of the best X-Men storylines in comic book […]
Transforming Hamlet into the style of Film Noir was quite the adventure; an adventure that was dark, dramatic, and a little bit chilly. When doing any adaptation, executive decisions must be made. Early on, we (Hannah, Katie, Katie, Anita and I) decided that we wanted to maintain the integrity of Film Noir by transforming Act 1, […]
My initial interpretation of the Shakespeare adaptation project failed to include possible difficulties. With the guidelines of the predetermined adaptation (horror film for my group), and a maximum time length of three minutes I perceived the project to come easily. It did not. Upon discussions my group decided to modernize the Shakespearean language in order […]
(Spy Agency Adaptation, My role: Horatio, script editor/actor) Making our spy adaptation was a fun challenge that stretched our creativity. It was challenging because we had so many creative ideas, but knew it might not be the best idea to change the entire script and plot just to fit those fun ideas in. My group […]
I was searching for something interesting on archive.org, throwing around names, books, things that I liked, when something caught my eye. It was just a two page pdf file, an article from 2011. The title was “Abraham Lincoln ‘wanted to deport slaves’ to new colonies.” From what I’ve learned in history and such, Abraham Lincoln […]
On November 18, 1978 at the Peoples Temple Compound in Jonestown, Guyana, the charismatic cult leader Rev. Jim Jones led a mass suicide and murder that took the lives of 900 cult members. This audio recording takes place in the time immediately before and during the mass execution. The tape starts with Rev. Jim Jones […]
The German Holocaust (1939-1945), led by the infamous leader, Adolf Hitler, was one of the world’s greatest and most well-known executions of mass genocide (USHMM). One of the main contributors to the massive response and support Hitler received during his rise to power came from his book, Mein Kampf, which was dictated to Rudolf Hess while Hitler […]
Although this isn’t part of the final draft, last week’s lecture had the gears in my brain turning like mad. They were red-hot with ideas. It made me think of a certain forgotten character that plays a major role in Phantom of the Opera. Called the Persian by many who frequent the backstage of the […]
The sinking of the RMS Titanic has remained fascinating despite the fact it sank over a hundred years ago in 1912, inspiring films, books, documentaries, a traveling museum, a mini-series, and even a kid’s slide (insensitive?). As a “Titanic buff,” one of my biggest disappointments was not being able to attend a reenactment of the […]
As I was looking for cool things to explore in the archives, I tried to look for anything that would be really different back then compared to how it is today. One of my first thoughts was to search the keyword “marriage.” I was not disappointed! I found a little article in a very old newspaper–we’re taking […]
I recently read the book The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman. She wrote about the family of Camille Pissarro an impressionist painter that lived from 1830-1903. I found the family very interesting and decided to google their family a little further. I came across the book Letters to his son Lucien, by Camille Pissarro. […]
***NOTE: Upon multiple attempts to post a screenshot of the referenced text and annotations, I was repeatedly denied the ability to do so, only having been told that the system was unable to process my request at this time. To reference the source, please visit https://archive.org/stream/ost-english-wasteland00elio/wasteland00elio#page/n11/mode/2up *** As I rummaged through the vast expanses of […]
I am a nerd. I am a nerd who is proud of being a nerd. One of my favorite pastimes is reading through my “Good Housewives” manual from the 1940s. I have recently become more and more interested in historical teaching manuals– especially as I move farther into my degree in education. I found this […]
I really think that this piece is incredibly interesting simply because it puts into perspective how women were treated in the 1680’s. Not only does this piece show that, it also shows how women felt about themselves. Some of them did not feel comfortable talking about their private parts in that era, even though we […]
I have been haunted by the thought of this book ever since I first heard about it. In English, the title is translated as The Hammer of Witches and is a guide book on how to root out, torture, and kill witches or people suspected of witchcraft. As a practicing Wiccan, this book has fueled many […]
Speaking as a woman, there is so very much that I do not understand about the way my body works, and I know that I am not alone in this respect. I have been well enough acquainted with the internet to know of the vastness of videos and articles simply supplying facts about the female […]
(Photograph taken from Chas. I. Martin’s “A History of Door County, Wisconsin, Together with Biographies of Nearly Seven Hundred Families and Mention of 4,000 Peoples”. Courtesy of www.archives.org.) After searching around the website, archives.org, I decided searching for Door County would be neat. I then went to the oldest publication the site had, and came […]
How many times have you found your self in this situation, a situation in which you have become a third wheel to a telephone conversation. I would argue that almost all of us have found ourselves in this predicament at least one time or another. I know I have. Another person that found their self […]
We all know about Oscar Wilde. Author of his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, many plays including his last famous one, The Importance of Being Earnest, as well as hundreds of poems, Wilde is a name known by many. However, his writing isn’t the only thing that people think about when they hear […]
All that I know about Jack the Ripper is that he was a major serial killer in 1888 London, England who murdered five women in a month time period in the Whitechapel area. No one knows who this Jack the Ripper is because the case was never solved and all the files where supposedly perished […]
Growing up, I was a reader. I spent most of my time reading books and fairytales, but I always wished that there were a genre of children’s books that would be unique. For some reason I’ve always thought that children’s books were cool, but not the type you’d expect. I was fond of R.L. Stein’s […]
I love Marvel and comic books, so I decided to look for an Avenger comic book. It didn’t take me long to find an Avengers comic book by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby published in 1966 The cover of the comic shows a little box saying that it’s being sold for 12 cents and is […]
For centuries, humanity has been enthralled with mysteries. Big Foot. Loch Ness. The Lone Gunman. Roswell. The Apollo Moon Mission. The Illuminati. Each of these myths and legends have long captivated the attention of man, but are they all myths? Sure, it is unlikely that Big Foot or “Nessie” exist, or that Roswell, New Mexico is […]
Embroidery has been something I’ve enjoyed since my Grandma taught me how to cross-stitch when I was eight. Granted, I’m not very good at it, nor do I have the time to sit down and do it very often, but when I get the chance I enjoy stitching things for me and my friends. Anyway, […]
I found a lot of interesting children books on Archive.org. But the more I looked, the weirder some of them got! I found two that I have to share, and I think you will all agree on how strange they are! The first one is called The Child’s Curiosity Book: Embellished with Cuts, there is […]
Inspiration can come in many forms. From a snippet of an overheard conversation to the latest ancient alien news, inspiration is found in many things. One simple idea sparks and ignites a story. And, like the snaking trail of gunpowder to TNT, this single idea grows longer and longer until it explodes. And the resulting […]
Little did I ever consider the origins of the phrase “Goody Two-Shoes.” An 1888 edition of a children’s book titled Goody Two-Shoes can be found on the internet archive which includes pictures to embellish the tale. My first question upon this discovery was whether Goody Two-Shoes, the common phrase, originated before or after the publication […]
So everyone has heard of Woodstock, right? It was that giant hippie festival where people sat around, did drugs and chilled out for a couple days. That’s what I thought until I stumbled upon an archive describing the history of Woodstock, taking place in New England. This idea was much different than drugged up hippies […]
Near and dear to my heart, Jane Austen has been my favorite literary author for an innumerable number of years. My favorite book by her? Pride and Prejudice of course. While perusing the various literary works associated with Jane Austen in the Internet Archive, desperately scanning them for something to share, I realized that her […]
Cursing, swearing, profanity, whatever you call it. ITS FUCKING GREAT. Since the beginning of time it’s been considered inappropriate, offensive and even rude to use this type of language. I always viewed profanity as just adding a few extra fun words to your sentence. When I was growing up I didn’t always quite understand the concept […]
As a student of a small school in a hick town about thirty minutes (twenty if you drive like I do) north of Green Bay, Wisconsin, I didn’t expect to be on the same grammatical level of students from other more prosperous schools. I walked into my first English class with my hideous pink bleeding […]
I completely understand getting annoyed about people misspelling words or using the wrong words entirely, I really do. But the thing about the English language is that it is ever changing, and any rules applied to it can change again in the next fifty years. Some rules today are still being debated on whether or not they are […]
Oh. My gosh. “I could care less about that math homework,” she tells me with a groan in her voice, a roll of her eyes, and a clear misery thanks to the homework in question. “I could care less about what the circumference of Jupiter’s third moon is,” he says with slurred words before leaning […]
There is no better feeling than logging onto your preferred social media website and seeing someone’s tweet or post: “Three strikes and your out!” (Insert sarcasm here) The feeling I get inside when I see the improper use of “you’re” or “your” is one that I might have when something horribly embarrassing happens. Imagine your […]
Learning a language is a challenging task at any any age and you always seem to be learning new words as you grow. A particular set of words one learns later in life (usually) are swear words. Ah yes, those wonderful gems that evoke such memorable reactions from our parents the first time we use […]
When I was in middle school, one of my teachers would go on an hour-long tangent whenever someone got “hanged” and “hung” mixed up. I don’t remember what exactly these long-winded lectures usually entailed, just that I thought she was kind of crazy and nitpicky. However, over the years, I have found myself increasingly less […]
My brother was always a very smart person. Growing up, he could always come up with the best arguments. He could sometimes even win an argument against my dad, which I thought was almost impossible. Anyway, I attributed his brightness as the reason why he was and still is such a grammar freak. The first […]
The English language is bullshit because of the ‘gh’ sound, okay? Take for example the words tough, through, and thought. All made up of the same five letters and look very similar. Tough is pronounced “tuff.” If English made any fucking sense, through would be pronounced “thruff” and thought would be pronounced “thufft” but IT DOESN’T […]
Humans of the world: your existence on social media is slowly diminishing what little faith I have left for humanity. I don’t know if these high schoolers think that it is cute, funny, ironic, or some other form of culturally pleasing behavior to forget everything they learned in their second grade language arts classes, but […]
We all have those little communication quirks that we have no control over. You know, the ones people correct you on. The ones you sometimes feel self-conscious about, but cannot control (without effort or maybe speech therapy). And, despite how self-conscious we might be, I cannot help my quirks, just as you cannot help yours. If […]
The amount of pet peeves that I have with the way people talk is never ending. While I know that the way I talk and my word choice isn’t always the best, it doesn’t mean that I do not have pet peeves with the way people talk and write. From using incorrect punctuation to misusing […]
This is my first time ever reading blogs, along with writing one. Please bear with me, I’m sure I’m going to muck it up. When it comes to the English language I’m able to tune a lot of mistakes out. Or maybe I’m the one guilty of slaughtering the English language. It could have something […]
“I ain’t got nothing” or “I don’t know nothing”–grrrr! My greatest pet peeve in the English language sits comfortably alongside the semicolon; and that is the use and abuse of double negatives by many people including, unfortunately for me, a few within my family sphere. This is as much of a pet peeve of mine […]
Let’s take a trip back to your sixth grade English class, remember that? When you first learned about the difference between there, they’re and their. It was simple and you spent about three days on it right? Well, our teacher should’ve spent more time on this topic because people still don’t seem to understand […]
Theoretically we have all been taught the proper format of the English language starting very early in life. However, some seem to think they are exempt from following proper grammatical structure simply because they enjoy ruining my day. I am under the impression that the difference between they’re and their should be universally known, but […]
Oh, the Oxford comma…it is simple, seemingly insignificant, and yet it holds the singular power of either making or breaking your sentence. Think about it: it’s one miserable little keystroke which if used properly can avoid confusion, and if neglected can encourage grammatical anarchy. Consider, for a moment, the following word series: “We invited the […]
“There car is parked illegally over they’re, and their towing it.” “Their car is parked illegally over there, and they’re towing it.” This should not be difficult. The difference between “there,” “they’re,” and “their,” was something we (theoretically) learned in fourth grade. “I left my keys over their.” Over their what? What, of theirs, did […]
Have you ever had to put down a book because the grammar or style of it was so irritating? I hate it when that happens because a small part of me knows that it could have been so much better. I’ve read a lot of bad writing, from fanfictions that are longer that their source […]
The English language has many concerns with many people. It can be very difficult for someone to understand if they are not accustomed to its ways. As there are many things that drive me crazy within the language, one of the most annoying things to me is a homonym. Homonyms are words that are […]
The English language has many tricky words, phrases, and rules that we encounter on a daily basis. I can often look passed people’s grammatical errors, but there are a few that make me cringe. For one, I can’t stand when people confuse your and you’re. “Your being very rude.” This sentence doesn’t make sense grammatically. […]
I am many things. I am a woman. I am young. I am creative. I am fairly intelligent. I am an avid reader. I am a coffee enthusiast. I am a bit of a hippie. I am blonde and even have blue eyes. Do you know what I am not? A Nazi. We, as a […]
Some people struggle with the basics of using the correct form of a word such as there, their, and they’re or even were, where or wear. I have even seen people use the entirely wrong word, replacing know with no or visa versa. I can understand the difficulty of determining the correct form of a […]
“Nobody doesn’t walk their dog.” “I’m never not tired.” “She can’t go nowhere.” “They did not get none of the money.” Who enjoys listening to sentences like these? Double negatives are not the type of grammar errors that tend to appear in published material; they are more of a way to use the English language […]
I’m scrolling through my Twitter newsfeed in bed one morning- I go past a series of Donald Trump memes, an occasional SoundCloud link, and the customary Wiz Khalifa wake & bake selfie. I stop at a tweet from a girl I graduated with. It reads: “It literally blows my mind.” Literally. It literally blew her […]
To be perfectly honest, I have quite a few pet peeves about the way some people talk. I try not to let things bother me because there’s really nothing I can do about it. So most of the time it doesn’t bother me when I hear someone say, “I’ve done very good,” because I’ll […]
I find it ironic how many people don’t seem to know what irony is. My pet peeve is when people claim irony for something that is simply out of the ordinary or tragic. I don’t get as upset about the concept’s misuse as other people I know, but it’s still annoying. Let’s say you die […]
Whether in person or online I am always judging you by your use of the English language. I am not proud of this, but I have come to terms with this fact. What I have not come to terms with is how relatively intelligent people can butcher their native tongue so badly. I’m not talking […]
Conversation killers they are everywhere you will never know when one will find its way into your conversation. Most time these dastardly things show up in text messages and social media. “Cool” and “k” or “kk” or any other variations are conversation killers peer and simple. If I tell someone something and it demands […]
I may be a Hermione Granger in this situation but I can’t help it. Sometimes it doesn’t bother me. Sometimes I can just let it slide because I know correcting it will be useless. Other times something has to be done. You’re probably wondering what I’m talking about. Well, I’ll tell you. I’m talking about […]
Chips. Popcorn. French fries. Pretzels. I don’t want to be all twisted up on this flavor, but people can get salty about different topics, like that word. The first time I heard the word “salty” used in a sentence not describing the flavor of food is about two months ago when my friend was telling […]
Oh, man. I never wrote a blog post before, and although I’ve probably read hundreds, the entire format now escapes me. So in that case I’ll treat this as an awkward postcard to maybe an obscure aunt retired in Bora Bora or perhaps a letter to a weird cousin away at band camp. In that case, salutations […]
Let me preface this post by first saying: God bless America!…Land of the free and home of the brave…’Merica! I love the English language, and recognize that I am blessed to be able to speak it. But, let’s be real…sometimes English is just weird. I can have a polish relative (which I do by the way). […]