Assignment #2 – Past: Place and People

1300-1400 words; due October 8 at 11:59PM

Objective

The goal of this assignment is to create a timeline and provide a brief history of the bookstore that you’re researching and of the neighborhood in which it thrives. Doing so will enable you to illustrate how the bookstore developed and the ways it served its clientele, and how it’s a part of the history of a particular place. Making use of the resources on our class Blackboard site, online, and through your site visit, write a blog that outlines the development of the bookstore—touching only on the major turning points and most prominent personalities—and explain its relation to the cultural changes, or the social dynamics, or the historical memories connected to the neighborhood in which it is/was located. You must also incorporate into your timeline/history at least two or three ideas or terms from the course readings, in this case either those ideas and terms that help to define “place,” those from Miller’s chapter discussing the sovereign consumer, or those from the articles discussing how bookstores serve the gender, ethnic, and political identities of consumers.

Format

For this assignment you will compose a short blog that incorporates a timeline of the bookstore’s history, links to any websites or sources cited in your blog, and any visual materials that illustrate the history of the bookstore, the changing demographics of its neighborhood, and the changing appearance or location of the bookstore. All this information is accessible on our class Canvas site, online, and through your site visit, though which items you deem most important and how many you incorporate into the blog will be up to you.

Sample Post: https://unpackingthebookstore.susqu.edu/place-and-people-past-example/

Guidelines

As in the previous assignment, your blog can reflect your own voice and thoughts, although your personal tone should not become intrusive or distracting. And again, you’ll see that I use the final paragraph of the blog for reflection. On this assignment, though, you may wish to use your reflection to consider how your conception of the bookstore’s timeline is affected by your understanding of “place” in relation to time and space, and by the course readings from 9/21 to 10/3. However, you’re free to consider other issues related to the history of the bookstore that you’re researching and of the neighborhood in which it is located.

Blog Post Title: Devise an appropriate title for your post that clearly conveys your narrative’s focus. Avoid simply rehashing the assignment name; what title will best reflect what your post is about?

Provide at least six tags for your post, i.e. “City Lights,” “bookstores,” “Lawrence Ferlinghetti,” “San Francisco,” etc. Tags are index words that inform readers about the people and topics included in your post, so they’re valuable aids in leading readers to your blog. It’s ok if you repeat a number of tags in all your posts. In fact, that’s essential for establishing and advertising the subject matter of your blog. Tags should be no more than two words and they should have a direct and meaningful relationship to the content in your post.

For a good discussion of tags and how to use them read Tom Ewer’s post “WordPress Tags: Everything You Need To Know” here: https://managewp.com/how-to-tag-effectively

To create a useful timeline you’ll want to identify exact dates for the most significant events in the life of the bookstore you’re researching. This would include dates for grand openings, new partnerships, name changes, location changes, expansions, closings, or deaths. As you’ll note in my model, photographs or other visual materials provide specificity and interest to the timeline. As with the map in the previous assignment, however, remember that the timeline is not an end in itself; the significance of the events you list will be evident by their inclusion on the timeline, but they must also be incorporated into your narrative as illustrating some point about the history of the bookstore that you’re researching and of the neighborhood in which it is/was located. In other words, aim to have the timeline reflect your post’s focus or a particular pattern you discern in the history of the bookstore. Feel free to use a caption to make this overt.