Housekeeping:

• Mapping Project coming up! Be sure that you review the instructions and the Google Maps tutorial video.
• Extra credit option: your posts this week gave me an idea–for extra credit (make up for a blog or earn an extra 15 points), create a Google Map for your neighborhood. The map should include at least 3 points. Bonus if these points carry historical, social, or cultural significance for the area. Create this map any time before the end of term and categorize it under “extra credit options.”

Maps analysis and discussion…

• Bias in maps?
• Colonialism vs. Gentrification?
• Shaping our notion of power and “center,” not just space…

—-  // —-

Isabella Whitney (ca. 1540-ca. 1580)

• Potentiall lived in London
• Working class; single woman throughout her life
• Published A Sweet Nosegay (1573) a very strong collection of poetry focusing on unexpected subjects like the working class, trade workers, and her relationship to her sisters and The Copy of a Letter lately written in meeter, by a yonge Gentilwoman: to her unconstant lover (1566–67)
• The first woman to publish secular poetry under her own name
• Linda Gregerson:in a world that measured privilege by the power to withdraw from common public life, Whitney flaunted her immersion in the colour and noise of urban commerce. In a world that measure womanhood by its powers of modulated restraint, Whitney practiced exorbitant indecorums (505).

Quick pre-discussion reading: take a pen and mark words you don’t understand, sections you think are important, and start circling places mentioned in the poem.

When you’re done, write down answers to two of the questions below:

• What is the purpose of this poem? Is it trying to argue something?
• To whom is this poem addressed?
• What kinds of things does Whitney leave behind in her imaginary will?
• Are there places in the poem that specifically address men and women? In what ways are these moments similar? How are they different?
• Does the poem address  print culture in any specific ways? Where? How?

Next Week:

• Your blog should include drafts of your research for the Whitney project. You should include at least two points of interest, including what you plan to write about it, where it is located (will you be able to place it on a modern map?), and your sources for the information.