Tweethis Statement Results

      I put my Tweethis statement on Facebook and got responses from a couple of people who liked my idea. My Austrian friend Mike Wotke was not extremely helpful, but maybe the word "Venice" will attract at least some people to my paper... Anyway, here are the responses I got:

      I didn't really think this was enough social proof, so I did what Dr. Burton suggested and asked my entire FHE group about it on Monday. The guys for the most part were pretty unresponsive, probably because these particular ones have probably never read Shakespeare in their lives. However, one guy suggested that I look at persecution of Mormons throughout their history instead of just modern times. A lot of people agreed and told me to look at things like Haun's Mill, the Extermination order, the polygamy debate, and so on. I didn't end up using all of these events in Mormon history, but I think the ones I did include work pretty well in my paper.
      Thanks, family!

Final Paper

The link to my final paper:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QYw3WtGo_94mMBX2l1SEIA8_RfyS8CUGrWtqLwPkikY/edit

Basically what my paper is about is a comparison of the treatment of Jews historically and in The Merchant of Venice and the treatment of Mormons since the establishment of the church. Both groups have endured similar religious oppression. I compared aspects of Shakespeare's play to events in Mormon history, namely: their marginalization, the Kirtland Safety Society disaster, the Extermination order, and the issues surrounding Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.

To Be Mormon or Not To Be Mormon: Shakespearean and Modern-Day Christians

      This is my (very rough) draft of my paper. I still need to write down all of the background and historical information, and cite all of the sources. I figured I would write down the general arguments and points I wanted to make and then flesh it out over the weekend.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O3628GRemNzhsfyL91gs_qY3EewtWX6caBBYMzHVUns/edit

      I know it's very basic right now, but any feedback would be really helpful. I think it's an interesting topic and I like seeing the parallels between Shakespeare's time and now in terms of religion, especially since I get to talk about my own religion in the process!

Phase 2--Progress Report

I'm required to document my research and writing process for the Shakespeare research paper I'm doing this month. According to the assignment instructions, here are the components I must include. If I have met those requirements, I have included a link to a post or posts that document my efforts for that component:

• Digital Media:  http://ontiverosrachel382.blogspot.com/2012/02/phase-2-digital-media.html
• Social Proof (phase 2):   http://ontiverosrachel382.blogspot.com/2012/02/phase-2-social-proof.html
• Performance Analysis:   http://ontiverosrachel382.blogspot.com/2012/02/phase-2-performance-analysis.html
• Annotated Bibliography:   http://ontiverosrachel382.blogspot.com/2012/02/phase-2-annotated-bibliography.html

I've said before that I wanted to explore Christian oppression in Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, and Hamlet, and relate those issues I find to issues in the present day. But, I haven't found much in Othello. Can I just do it for Hamlet and Merchant of Venice? I'm using Hamlet to discuss oppression within the Christian religion (Protestant versus Catholic) and Merchant of Venice to discuss oppression of non-Christians in the legal system and in trade. Would that work? 

Phase 2--Digital Media

A list of some digital media I found concerning my research:

• Shakespeare Explorations with Patrick Stewart: Merchant of Venice
• This is the DVD I used for the Performance Analysis post. Basically it is a video of several scenes acted out from The Merchant of Venice, and then some commentary on the background of those scenes. A little unconventional, but it helped me understand the deeper issues involved with antisemitism. 
• Audio version of Merchant of Venice (and Hamlet, too)
• Inspired by our listening to Hamlet (which was also helpful since I'll probably do a part in my paper about Hamlet as well as MofV), I found an audio version of The Merchant of Venice and listened to that. It was good just to hear the play again, get the plot, characters, important quotes, etc. into my mind again. I picked a lot of the most passionately-read quotes to analyze for my research just because they stuck in my memory better after hearing them. 
• Shakespeare in Shelfari--1996 film version of Hamlet.
• I had never heard of Shelfari before, but apparently you can look up any book you want (I looked up Hamlet, Merchant of Venice, and Othello) and it gives you all kinds of information about it--character list, themes and symbolism, summary, quotes, authors and contributors, even a note to parents about the subject material. This is a good starting point to get first ideas for a paper. The most helpful thing here, though, was the list of media connections for each play I looked up. Hamlet, for example, has several film versions, and I got the 1996 version from Netflix and watched it.
• Merchant of Venice on Slideshare.net
• You can look up anything on Slideshare! I simply searched for "Shakespeare merchant of venice" and there were tons of great results. There was a slideshow giving some background to the play, another giving a short summary, another discussing a few themes of the play and their relevance during the Renaissance. They even had one that was a slideshow of the entire written play, meaning that you can just read it right there instead of trying to find a version somewhere else online or in print. This site is great because I can do pretty much all of my preliminary research on it instead of going to a ton of different places to find basic information about the play.
• Random blogs about Shakespeare and Christianity.
• I wrote about a lot of these in my other posts, so I won't go into too much detail about them. The reason I like to look at other people's blogs all the time is because everyone's opinions are different. I like finding the ones I agree with and arguing with the people who wrote about things I don't agree with. They helped me narrow down my topic a lot because I would see an idea that intrigued me and then I would search to see if there was any more on that particular side.

Phase 2--Social Proof

Here is a list of a few people that I have attempted to contact or have talked to about my project recently:

• The Humanities assistant in the library.
• I figured I would go up and talk to someone who knew a little more about Shakespeare than I did, and the library seemed like a good place to start. I talked to the assistant at the desk, and it turned out that he was a huge Shakespeare enthusiast (I forget what his name was). We talked for a while about Christians in the Renaissance and whether Shakespeare himself was a Christian or not, and if he was, what type of Christian. He referred me to a book called Shakespeare's Christianity: The Protestant and Catholic Poetics of Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Hamlet. I'm using this book as one of my scholarly sources. 
• Robert Means in the library.
• I emailed him about my topic and he wrote me back, saying that I had an interesting topic. He suggested that I include Hamlet in my research because the play shows that Christians don't just have conflicts with people of other faiths, but they actually don't even trust other Christians who have only slightly different beliefs (in Hamlet, the younger Hamlet has Protestant-like beliefs while dead Hamlet is a traditional Catholic). 
• Ms. Lipson's class members on "Shakespeak."
• Shakespeak is an educational blog created by a teacher named Ms. Lipson. I looked at a few of the posts some of the students wrote. One of them was really interesting because it had a lot about the history of the Moors.  Apparently the Christians took over the Moors' kingdoms in Africa in the Middle Ages and forced them and the Jews to convert to Christianity. Some of the other posts talked about Christianity and stuff. It was good to see that students somewhere else were looking at the same kinds of ideas in Shakespeare's plays that I was. I posted a few comments, but there was no way to contact any of them by email, so we'll see what happens.
• http://shakespeak.edublogs.org/2009/09/17/moors/
• Emily's "My Very Own Secret Shakespeare."
• This girl named Emily (last name unknown) wrote an interesting post on her blog, comparing Antonio to Christ. She wrote all about how he was so generous, such a loyal friend. He exemplified the selfless, empathetic, and merciful qualities that Christ himself had. I agree that Antonio was those things--to Bassanio, his close Christian friend. However, I found it kind of ridiculous that she only talked about how he treated his friend and other members of his own faith while completely ignoring the fact that Shylock pretty much got the shaft because the Christians in the play could barely tolerate him, simply because he was a Jew. He ends up with basically nothing by the end of the play, not even his religion, because they forced him to convert to Christianity. I wrote Emily a comment on this post, explaining that perhaps she was forgetting the most important side to the story: that Christians back then (and even some today) treat people like scum because they have different beliefs than they do. We'll see if she replies. 
• http://ortonemily232.blogspot.com/2012/01/christianity-in-shakespear.html
• Media Center worker in the library.
• This guy that helped me find the DVD of the performance that I wanted to analyze (I have no clue what his name is) asked me what I wanted it for. I told him that I needed it as part of my research and that I wanted to write about Christian oppression in Shakespeare and how it relates to oppression today. I gave him some examples, and he told me it was a cool idea to see the connections between the past and the future with those issues. So someone thinks my idea is cool.

It was kind of a slow week with social proof. I think I was more concerned with finding reliable scholarly sources than with talking to people about my work. I am still waiting to hear back from a couple people that I emailed last week, but I don't know if anything will come of it.

Phase 2--Performance Analysis

In the BYU library media center, I found this video called "Shakespeare Explorations with Patrick Stewart: Merchant of Venice." Basically this is what they did: Patrick Stewart and other actors discussed and acted out some of the scenes from The Merchant of Venice on a set and then discussed theatrical and literary items in the play. They did a lot of scenes with Shylock, like his monologues and arguments with Antonio and company about the debt, and so they discussed the character of Shylock in quite a bit of detail. This was helpful because I'm focusing a lot on Shylock in my paper.

First, they went into some detail about the history of the Jew-Christian conflict. Ironically, Jesus and his disciples, who started Christianity, were practicing Jews. Judaism and Christianity are both monotheistic religions, yet the two groups became rivals soon after Jesus’s crucifixion (an execution enacted because of Roman law at the time). “Historians agree that the break between Judaism and Christianity followed the Roman destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in the year 70 ce. In the aftermath of this devastating defeat, which was interpreted by Jew and Christian alike as a sign of divine punishment, the Gospels diminished Roman responsibility and expressed Jewish culpability in the death of Jesus both explicitly (Matthew 27:25) and implicitly. Jews were depicted as killers of the Son of God.” Even though Jesus was executed according to Roman law, the culpability moved away from the Romans, and the death of the Son of God became the Jews' fault. This thought, though unfair, nevertheless gives at least some reason as to why Christians hated Jews so much.

Fastforward to the late Middle Ages, when Jews became prominent in moneylending and trading. Because they were so good at what they did despite the sins of their fathers (who killed the Son of God), it aroused feelings of jealousy and resentment in Christians. However, they had to tolerate Jews because they had an important role to play in trade. Jews could not own land, but they were allowed to lend money with interest while Christians were not (Jews lived on the "margins of society," so they did many things that the Christian religion prohibited). 

This information brings us to Shakespeare's day, the Renaissance, and sets the stage for the few scenes that Patrick Stewart and co. performed on this DVD. When you have background knowledge of a subject, it has much more meaning, and some things become more significant than they were before. Shylock's monologues lamenting the inequality of his treatment by Christians go from being the complaint of one man about unfair treatment to a plea for the equality of an entire nation. Thus, the actor is speaking for all members of his religion when he says, "Thou calledst me dog before thou hadst a cause. But since I am a dog, beware my fangs." Christians' pre-judgment of an entire nation created the entire problem in The Merchant of Venice in the first place. It felt like a more real and present issue to be able to see the play performed in a more modern setting (I suppose 1991 is "modern") and with such passion.