The past couple of months have been busy for me, though not necessarily for editing reasons. In addition to working on editing projects and my regular part-time job at my local public library, I have also been working as an election official for our state’s party primary. I also have had two extracurricular projects that have kept me occupied.
The first is a local history project we are wrapping up at the library. We celebrated local history with a spotlight on various local institutions and businesses last year, and after attending a rural library conference, I put together a digital map of our town as a final capstone for the project .
Maps
I love working on maps. I have been known to create my own maps when working on editing projects (my personal favorite was the one of Old West boomtowns for a kids’ history book I edited several years ago) or just when researching topics for fun. Quantifying information with maps helps me visualize and process the data better, and this project was no different. It was also a lot of fun. I have lived here since I was a kid and still learned new things about my hometown. I pity anyone who drives through town with me now because I morph into an unsolicited tour guide.
This project was also exciting for me because I got to delve into primary sources (Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps) as part of my research and also because I got to ponder how to cite those sources.
I love working on citations, an enthusiasm that earned me the nickname Citation Potentate when I was in college. And there is no citation project I enjoy more than determining how to cite an unusual source. Chicago Manual of Style provides an extensive amount of information on how to cite a wide range of sources, but there is still often a judgment call required for the specific situation. The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps were easy compared to a historical plaque, which I did do on an editing project once, but they were created at different times and each had slightly different information, so I couldn’t just reuse the exact same format for each source.
I hope the map will be a jumping-off point for further research, both on my part and for anyone inside or outside the community who wants to add locations or even correct preexisting ones.
Scholarly Conversation
One of my other extracurricular activities that has kept me busy this month was another fun one for me personally. The English department at Matthew Flinders Anglican College, an Australian high school, contacted me several months ago to see if I would give a remote talk with its students about Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. And if there’s one thing I like to talk about even more than random historical sites in my small Arkansas town, it’s Truman Capote and In Cold Blood. The students at the college were doing one of their exams over the book, and the department had selected my master’s thesis on the Southern Gothic elements in the work as their critical text for the year. I was quite honored to be selected for both the exam and the talk, and it was a really enjoyable session.
On a Monday afternoon for me and a Tuesday morning for them, I talked with them about my interest in the book and the background of how my master’s thesis came to be and answered their questions. They were enthusiastic and asked great questions.
As preparation for the talk, I reread both my master’s thesis and the article of mine that appeared in a critical anthology about the book. When I was in college and grad school, I often liked to pick theoretical fights with other critics—it by far generated my best scholarly work—and I have always remembered Michelle Weisman, my creative writing instructor, comparing scholarly writing to an ongoing conversation between people. It is a conversation that starts before any of us are born and continues long after we are gone, but we still get to take part in it when we engage in scholarly work.
That scholarly conversation was exactly what I got to witness in action during my call with the students. I talked about the critics and sources I had agreed with and disagreed with that I had incorporated into my thesis, and they told me very politely but quite directly what they agreed and disagreed with me on in my thesis, which hopefully then inspired them to write superb responses to their exam question.
This scholarly conversation is part of why citations, like mine for the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, are so important. Yes, we want to acknowledge the sources we use because it is the right thing to do, but it is also the helpful thing to do for your readers. We can’t have this critical back-and-forth if we do not have the ability to go back to the sources used and read and ponder them for ourselves. And that’s true whether the sources are fire insurance maps, critical readings of In Cold Blood, or anything else.
If you are struggling with citations or other aspects related to scholarship in your manuscript or in another research project, please reach out to me! I am here to help, and those are projects that are very close to my heart.
