Week 10: Writing

Apologies if these posts are becoming rather boring, but my main focus is writing my paper now.

At the outset of my project, I wanted to avoid writing about politics, and look where I am now. Anyways, I'll be looking at both political propaganda put out by Obama and Augustus and media about them put out by the public. I won't be analyzing each man's character; I'll be looking at the persona that is created by them and forced upon them. The connecting thread between Augustus and Obama that I latched upon was the theme of hope. Augustus came to power when Rome was embroiled in civil war, and he put an end to it.  I also saw this between Nero and Obama, but the idea of propaganda is stronger between Augustus and Obama. Also, Augustus isn't remembered for fiddling while Rome burned, which helps. 

The afternoon class is in the French Revolution now(although, I don't think we've actually reached July 14 yet), and a couple of the classes have been spent looking at pretty pictures by Jacques Louis David. This ended up not being entirely relevant to my topic, but lots of pamphlets were printed during the time of the French Revolution expressing different opinions as well as offering a source of information to the public. This form of social media may be more formal than the words scrawled on a tavern wall, but these pamphlets were the "tweets" of the time. There were new ones every day, and they were widely circulated. That was a bit of a digression, ah well. 

The end is in sight. 

Week 8-9: Presidents and Emperors

Even with spring break being over, there still seems to be a general lack of people on campus.

The major thing that happened and is worth sharing is that I've changed my final paper topic again, and it will probably make some people mad. I'm going to compare a US president to a Roman emperor in terms of how their image was created by social media. The first idea was to compare Obama to Nero and Nixon to Domitian. Professor Kendall and I discussed which presidents to use and which were least likely to incite a riot...because you know, avoiding riots is usually better for everyone involved. To this end, Professor Kendall and I changed the Obama/Nero comparison to Obama and Augustus. This gives me the opportunity to focus on public language in propaganda which is all around better. I'm writing the first draft now. Yeah, that's what my weeks are now: writing, reading, class, writing.

The afternoon class moved past the Renaissance and onto the Enlightenment, and the reading for that time period was Montesquieu and Gibbon. Both were about the fall of Rome. The morning class studied "the five good emperors," Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius. The term "five good emperors" was coined by Gibbon oddly enough.