Extra stuff from Hausman essay
Here’s some stuff that never made it into my essay…thought I’d share it. My essay was about the ‘Nunnerator’. This is where I end my essay, but I have one more point to make and I reckon it is way too far-fetched to be considered a justifiable reason as to why a frame narrative is […]
On Virtual Realities and Leaving History Behind
When I visited Tanzania a few summers ago, I was struck by how homogenous the art being sold was. At every market stall and adorning the walls of ‘art galleries’, you saw the same kind of wood-carved animals, paintings of … Continue reading →
The Significance of Memory
Since I just uploaded my blog post on Riding the Trail of Tears, I wanted to draw a parallel between Hausman’s cyberpunk historical fiction novel and author Alison Bechdel’s “family tragicomic”, Fun Home. Both works place great significance on the role of memory in the narrative frame. Despite both pieces being entire different in genre and subject matter, the […]
The Practicality of Historical Virtual Reality
I had this blog post written out to post during our Hausman week, but I forgot to upload since I was preoccupied with writing the essay! My apologies! In Riding the Trail of Tears, Hausman poses a difficult question to the novel’s readers about the practicality of historical virtual reality. The incorporation of VR into literature […]
A Brief History of History
The most difficult question any historian has to face when preparing to delve into a new topic or event is invariably: where should I start? Let’s say we want to examine the American Revolution, where do we begin? We could start with the Boston Tea Party, which really kicked off the tensions that would eventually […]
An explorative rebuttal to the argument made in the Haussmann seminar about rape vs. killing in virtual reality
The seminar discussion for Riding the Trail of Tears evoked some tension in the group when we began debating whether the actions one performs in a cyberspace relate to the actions one would do in real life. Kids are killing … Continue reading →
Wanted: An Explanation of the Nunnerator
In our first seminar, it’s been established that basically no one actually knows who our narrator, or should I say Nunnerator, really is. It describes itself to us, calling its species the “Little Little People” on page 3 and the “real Nunnehi” on page 5. They seem to have their own culture as well, what…
Trail of Tears Presentation Questions!
Presentation questions!! I have a few questions, but I’m really not sure how much discussion they’ll generate- you guys can pick and choose what you want to talk about. I’ll fill in this blog post after seminar on Friday, with sort of a summary of what you said, and also my own thoughts. Did […]
The Hybrid Life (aka the perpetual existential crisis)
I’m not sure if this counts as a blog post, because it’s not really relevant to the book (but I have to do another one for my presentation anyways so I figured may as well). I was looking at essay topic number four “In what ways does the novel address hybridity? For example, you could […]
Some of the many ways that Riding the Trail of Tears confuses me
I think it is safe to say that Blake Hausman’s Riding the Trail of Tears is not just any ordinary novel you might pick up of the shelves. There are many aspects of this book that confound me, likely intentionally so, that I can barely describe the plot before trying to make sense of its … Continue reading Some of the many ways that Riding the Trail of Tears confuses me