The Decade that was Lost

I, Jonathan Portuesi, as a driven and academically motivated person in the professional sector, see myself as a 'process' oriented person rather than "product" oriented person. What I mean by this is that by being focused on the 'process' I was able to learn more from the the people I interviewed and the research I participated in because I wasn't focused on a specific product. Yes the product (the Zine) was important, but what I really had to ask myself throughout this class was "did I touch another person's life  in Hollins Market other than my own and was I able to form lasting connections with people whom I may have never met if I did not take the class- AMST 422?" 

This past week in class has been interesting in that I think we are finalizing our research project and coming to a conclusion as to how we (as a class) should approach the Zine mapping. However, that being said, I think we need to work diligently this week as we do not have that much time before the end of the semester and before we have to submit out final product.  Ideas: For the "present" section of the Zine, I feel as though I have a few approaches that might end up working in our favor. One approach to consider for this class would be for someone to use their artistic skills to create an attractive design that the reader will not mind reading as supplementary material for our project. Another idea that I had for the "present" section of the Zine would be to get quotes from all of the interviews that we made and features them on either the Zine map or in the electronic part of our presentation. Wikipedia defines it as "a small circulation of self-p

During this past week of class in AMST 422, the task for the majority of the class was to head out to Hollins Market and try to get an interview with as many people as we could which was considered to be our Fieldwork. Unfortunately, since barely anyone spoke English in the market, this language barrier is starting to prove to be very difficult most of the shop owners within the Market are of Korean ethnicity. However I have been working with the Korean language program here at UMBC to develop some interview questions in Korean and also develop the Consent Form so that it translates correctly from English to Korean. On Monday 16 April 2018, I was also given the task of going to the Irish Railroad Workers Museum in order to broadcast/ spread thw word about out project to potential audiences that would be interested in  Zine created by our AMST 422 class. The task was also to ask if they might be interested in being featured in this project. I was told , however, that the event was tak

During class this past week, I was given the assigned task of going to the actual Hollins Market to try and conduct some Field Research. My individual task was specifically to go around to all the storefront owners to see if they would be willing to consent to an interview for our class project. The main goal of this interview would be to showcase their business in our Zine that we are still in the process of making and hopefully, extending the "reach" of Hollins Market to more than just the local community. Since  most of the shop owners were of Korean ethnic origin, they inherently did not speak that much English, at least not enough for me to be able to get them to consent to an interview. However, I was able to at least establish a connection with one of the shop owners. The name of the store than consented to an interview by any one of the student in AMST 422 was Mike's Lunch. This store luckily had another worker (of Korean origin as well) that was able to underst

During class this past week, the entire class received what I thought what was some much needed constructive feedback on the project that AMST 422/682 has been tasked to complete. The feedback that was received came from people who have now graduated or are continuing their education and have taken the class before. By taking AMST 422 prior, they were able to understand what was expected of us not only by Professor King, but by the Community as a whole. The theme that seemed to be prevalent in most of the feedback received was that whichever way we were presenting our project, the presentation needs to be able to capture the eyes of the audience right away or else we will lose their undivided attention during the rest of the presentation. So in other words, we need to be able to make a good first impression on our audience.  As far as what the (past) group has accomplished since last week, I think we have made strides in the right direction. By utilizing the feedback from the previ

Blog 2:  Reflect on and describe our tour of Hollins Market for your next blog assignment… pictures are great to add. What did you see? What did you learn? What do you want to know more about? (Please be respectful as these posts are public... thanks.) During this week of class, our class AMST 422 was forwarded the opportunity to go on a tour of Hollins Market with one of Professor King's friends name Curtis. He showed us the surrounding area of Hollins Market and we got to see a bunch of really cool different places that I never knew were literally right down the road from me. First we strolled along to an area where there Blog 3: REFLECT ON OUR PROJECT (post by end-of-day Tuesday) - Read ALL your classmates blogs before class