Month: November 2022

In this lesson, I learned how to write the introduction and conclusion sections of the report as well as the literature review. 

Course notes: 

• To complete all academic writing, three essential components must be achieved. 
• Whether it’s a report, a journal article, an essay, or a thesis, these are all critical elements of successful communication with your readers. 
• Regarding the research and its reason, have a clear understanding. 
• what kind of information, data, and learning offers study and find information conclusion reiterated that the target and contact the results. 
• The introduction and conclusion may play opposite roles, but they join to create a “book frame” or “sandwich” for all the writing frames. 
• The introduction should define the research topic, inform the reader of the purpose and motivation of the study, and guide or directions to conduct the investigation, and tell the reader the results. 
• The conclusion section reconnects the reader to the topic objectives, evaluates learning, summarizes information for the reader, and considers any crucial contributions to established knowledge or the foundation for further research. 

And I have read some papers this week. The following is the abstract of some articles on my research topic. 

Some ideas of magic realism:

Source:

The history of the term magical realism started from 1798 to this day; from Germany to Latin America, and then continues spreading up to the rest of the world, internationally (Bowers, 2005:7).

Definition:

In his book Magical Realism and the Postcolonial Novel: Between Faith and Irreverence, Christopher Warnes tries to draw a basic yet simple definition of magical realism. He defines magical realism as a mode of narration in which a real and fantastic, natural and supernatural, are coherently represented in a state of equivalence (Warnes, 2009:3).

Characteristics:

“To do so,” Bowers writes, “takes the magic of recognizable material reality and places it into the little understood world of the imagination. The ordinariness of magical realism’s magic relies on its accepted and unquestioned position in tangible and material reality.” (Bowers, 2005:7).

As Chanady explains, this narrative point of view relies upon an ‘absence of obvious judgements about the veracity of the events and the authenticity of the world view expressed by characters in the text’ (1985:30).

In this lesson, I learned how to write the introduction and conclusion sections of the report as well as the literature review. 

Course notes: 

• To complete all academic writing, three essential components must be achieved. 
• Whether it’s a report, a journal article, an essay, or a thesis, these are all critical elements of successful communication with your readers. 
• Regarding the research and its reason, have a clear understanding. 
• what kind of information, data, and learning offers study and find information conclusion reiterated that the target and contact the results. 
• The introduction and conclusion may play opposite roles, but they join to create a “book frame” or “sandwich” for all the writing frames. 
• The introduction should define the research topic, inform the reader of the purpose and motivation of the study, and guide or directions to conduct the investigation, and tell the reader the results. 
• The conclusion section reconnects the reader to the topic objectives, evaluates learning, summarizes information for the reader, and considers any crucial contributions to established knowledge or the foundation for further research. 

And I have read some papers this week. The following is the abstract of some articles on my research topic. 

Some ideas of magic realism: (my topic)

Source:

The history of the term magical realism started from 1798 to this day; from Germany to Latin America, and then continues spreading up to the rest of the world, internationally (Bowers, 2005:7).

Definition:

In his book Magical Realism and the Postcolonial Novel: Between Faith and Irreverence, Christopher Warnes tries to draw a basic yet simple definition of magical realism. He defines magical realism as a mode of narration in which a real and fantastic, natural and supernatural, are coherently represented in a state of equivalence (Warnes, 2009:3).

Characteristics:

“To do so,” Bowers writes, “takes the magic of recognizable material reality and places it into the little understood world of the imagination. The ordinariness of magical realism’s magic relies on its accepted and unquestioned position in tangible and material reality.” (Bowers, 2005:7).

As Chanady explains, this narrative point of view relies upon an ‘absence of obvious judgements about the veracity of the events and the authenticity of the world view expressed by characters in the text’ (1985:30).

This week, we shared the current research progress of the report through group communication.

I changed my original research topic. Due to the apparent stagnation of my research field and direction in the original topic, I discussed my potential topics with the team members and the professor and got suggestions during the course discussion. Therefore, I changed a topic that I was more interested in.

Here is the topic to share.

• Title：The Effects of Magical Realism Film Language on Audience: a Case Study of Life of Pi

• Keywords：Life of Pi, magical realism, postmodernism, film language

• Introduction:

• Reference (possible related):

Bowers, M. (2004) Magic(al) Realism.1st eds. New York: Routledge.

Cole, S. (2004). ‘Believing in Tigers: Anthropomorphism and Incredulity in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi’, Studies in Canadian Literature, 29(2), pp.22-36.

Theo D. (1995), ‘Magical Realism and Postmodernism: Decentering Privileged Centers’, Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community, pp.191-208.

Assignment requirement:

Read the following paragraph and paraphrase the authors point in your own words.

The authenticity of a documentary is ‘deeply linked to notions of realism and the idea that documentary images are linked to notions of realism and the idea that documentary images bear evidence of events that happened, by virtue of the indexical relationship between image and reality’.

Horness Roe. A. (2013) Animated Documentary. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Paraphrasing:

Horness(2013, Animated Documentary) argued that the reliability of a documentary film is closely related to the concept of realism as well as the realistic concepts associated with documentary images and through the relationship of index between pictures and trues, the concept of images from documentaries had proof the events that real occurred.

Horness Roe. A. (2013) Animated Documentary. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

This blog is about an animation documentary named A is for Autism (Tim Webb 1992).

The documentary A Is for Autism (1992) is directed by Tim Webb. It describes Autistic children and adults sketching out the look and feel of their sensory world in an early awareness-raising film.

According to Honess Roes’s ‘Taxonomy for Documentary’ (2013), Animated Documentary has been recorded or created frame by frame. A Is for Autism is comprised of those and it includes collages of drawings, live-action sequences, and voiceovers that offer an insight into different aspects and forms of autism.  Illustrated by collages of drawings, it gives a rare glimpse of the very private and personal worlds of autistic children and adults, their thoughts and feelings, and, especially, their sensory responses to and experiences of the world.

Secondly, Roes argues that documentaries are about the real world rather than a world wholly imagined by its creator. And Webb’s choices in his works to demonstrate the inner worlds of the autistic reflect Rose’s argument. He spent a large amount of time regularly recording the feelings and thoughts of autistic people. Hence, the interview context completely depends on the autistic rather than the director’s subjective thoughts.

Thirdly, presented by the producer as a documentary, A Is for Autism (1992) is underpinned by music made of a flute and a piano, and the assembled sound is edited to help present both individual narratives and the broader picture of the autistic world. The interaction between the sound and the images adds additional layers to a visually dense film, leaving the audience to view it multiple times before fully comprehending its illustrations and associations.

While, in his book Blurred Boundaries, documentary theorist Bill Nichols writes that the documentary ‘is dependent on the specificity of its images for authenticity’ (1994: 29). This documentary film uses the simplicity, uniqueness, and clarity of autistic works to convey the real world of autism. This film relates to the research fields that are more likely to be based on images because it can more specifically illustrate the content and phenomenon. However, Christina Formenti (2014) locates animation documentaries in the realm of docu-fiction due to what she perceives as the lack of objectivity of what we observe on the screen (2014: 108-110). But this movie shows the objective perspective from the real content of autism rather than the subjective comprehension of the director. It is derived from the roles being recorded, while the producer is merely the editor.

In the end, A Is for Autism is more likely to be a documentary because it mainly recorded the experiences of the autism group and it provides opportunities for the ordinary audience to learn about people with autism.