A Brief Introduction

Hello all!

For those of you who do not know me, I am a Junior at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania studying American Studies. Currently I am studying abroad at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England for the year and it has been one of the best experiences of my life. Anyways, for the Spring 2012 semester, Dickinson required I take a class titled, "Humanities 311," which takes a closer look at British culture. Part of this class was composed of each student doing an independent project of their choice in order to allow them to explore a specific aspect of British culture more closely. This independent project was compiled of a minimum of twenty hours of fieldwork, journal entries, along with a final essay to tie everything together. In case you could not tell by the title of this blog, I chose to take a look at Norwich and its relationship to literature, as Norwich as known as a literary city and recently sent in a bid to be a UNESCO City of Literature. As part of my fieldwork I attended a series of literary events, which varied from poetry readings to literary competitions to writing workshops on how to improve one's writing skills. For the majority of the events I attended, I had to write a journal entry about the event: what I observed, any questions I had, and how it related to other events as I continued to attend more and more around the city. In this blog I will be posting the journal entries I have written about each event in chronological order. Each one gets more in depth, and I found through attending these events how fascinating the world of literature really is. I hope through my journal entries you become fascinated, too.

Enjoy!

Ashley Davis