The time has come for class to end, and for me to evaluate my work here on my blog. It's been fun talking about Hamlet and how Hamlet has been an inspiration and a sort of cultural reference point, and also my less focused topic of Shakespeare and popular culture.
A. Posts: I feel that I have written a respectable number of posts that relate to my topic, and that they tie in pretty well to my Thesis: "Shakespeare’s play Hamlet has been an inspiration and a source of cultural reference points for the people that have gone before us and it still is for us, the people, now." Most of my posts do have some sort of related image, though most of my posts do not have any other sort of media. I don't know if I could say that I spent a lot of time analyzing primary sources. I do a little bit in my post Ophelia, Her Death as Mad and as Picturesque as Our Imagination Paints It which is probably my best and most varied post. I do spend some time analyzing Hamlet movies and references in a popular TV show, though the actual analysis is not spectacular. I do think that they are formatted well, with useful titles, pagebreaks, and tags. I probably should have rewritten my hub post to incorporate Some Supporting Quotes from the Epilogue of Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare's Hamlet and a further discussion on the article
"Whither Shakespop?" ... though my hub post took me ages and I really did want to rewrite it.
B. Research: I possibly could have done a better job researching. I do think that I eventually reached a fair Thesis and was able to draw support for that Thesis with my own work and the work of my peers. My process is fairly well documented and you can see if you go back through my blog how my thoughts jump from one place to another but dwell most on Hamlet, Popular Culture, and Shakespeare's Legacy, and I did show how I was struggling to come to a coherent thesis in my posts In Search of a Focus and Thesis. I have a sources page where I think all of my resources are gathered, in a style that is not MLA, and most of them are properly linked to something related (if it's a book, it may link to the Amazon page for that book, which is what seemed like the best idea at the time). The last few sources are not linked because of technical difficulties in editing the page.
C. Personal and Social: I feel that my personality and connection to my posts is pretty clear through my side-content, and my voice, and probably my design too. There are posts, which I talked about and linked to in the paragraph above, that were explicitly me talking about my process. My hub post shows a pretty clear connection to my peers.
D. Design: I think my design is good. I like the background, and the side-content, and all of my design. I don't think any of it detracts, and I think some of it, like my tags, should be very useful.
