Author Archives: Mason
Capstone
This capstone paper is a culmination of the nearly a year’s worth of research into the topic of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. With help from LTC Ticen, I set out to explain how societal fears have changed during the last 200 years, and with that explain how the story of Frankenstein evolved right beside of them. With the use of both the original work from 1818 and the 2019 film adaptation entitled Depraved, I sought to compare the two and show exactly which part of society’s fears was addressed through the course of the story.
Learning Outcome 6
This reflective essay was chose for learning outcome 6 due to the fact that it is something that is able to synthesize my time inside of the ERH-202 course with Major Iten. It shows both what I thought went extremely well in the course, to include where I learned the most from the course, and also has where I thought the course could have improved to fit more learning styles. Ultimately, I felt that this is the best thing to cover learning outcome 6 due to these reasons.
Capstone Proposal
Literature Review
Learning Outcome 4
I personally chose my literature review of Frankenstein to exactly how this class fits into the framework of the learning outcomes of the department. With the assignment, I was required to review the Frankenstein novel and compare my review with reviews from the time period and have my writing mingle with their writings about the story. I personally thought this was an extremely interesting assignment for the reason that for literature reviews I have had in the past have just been my writing with a few small quotes from the book I am reviewing and with being able to communicate with reviewers from Mary Shelley’s time it felt as if I was writing something more important than just a normal required literature review. I thought that this assignment fit into learning outcome four perfectly because of these reasons.
Learning Outcome 5
I chose to focus for this learning outcomes on the research poem that I crafted inside of my Genre Studies: Poetry course. The reason I did so was that it was one of the most inclusive assignments I have ever done during my time at VMI. Not only did it allow for me to research a person from history that I saw as being under-reported on, but it also allowed me to continue trying to perfect the art of poetry which I found that I thoroughly enjoyed during this course. The ability to be able to look and craft creative work and to synthesize lessons I learned about research through my time in the English Department really began to show myself how far I have come as a scholar in the field.
Learning Outcome 1 and 3
I chose my One Text: Frankenstein course work because as much as I look back on the choices I have made while at VMI, this class still sticks out as one of my top two courses I have ever taken. This class allowed me to view the story that defined a monster that has stretched through the ages in multiple different ways. During the course, I was able to look at Frankenstein from a political standpoint and how it related to Marxism as defined by the Communist Manifesto. The ability to analyze two of my favorite topics, science fiction and politics, during one of my courses pushed me onward in my efforts for this topic. The ability to forge my own work on a topic I enjoyed also left a lasting impression after having my hand held through many assignments through High School and into College.
Learning Outcome 2
I chose my One Text: Frankenstein course because as much as I look back on the choices I have made while at VMI, this class still sticks out as one of my top two courses I have ever taken. This class not only engaged me throughout with guided discussions and interesting assignments but was also one of the reasons that I chose to switch to the English Major from History. During the course, we read three versions of Frankenstein: The Oxford Annotated Edition, Frankenstein for Engineers and Science, and a 2018 adaptation called Frankenstein in Baghdad. The close look and the feeling that I was finally enjoying something that I was reading for a course was such a help to someone who typically hated every second of reading in high school and along with the readings came discussions that were started with a single question from the professor and the class took over and discussed their viewpoints from the reading for the rest of the class. I had never seen this style of teaching before and it has stuck with me since that class that I learn the best in that type of environment.
One question that I still have from the course goes along with one of the papers that were assigned in class that I discussed how Frankenstein was portrayed in popular culture. I would still like to expand on this topic since there are times that I am watching a movie or a series and will see their depiction of Frankenstein and just think about how far it has come from Mary Shelley’s original work.