Where I Go And What I Go There For

I was trying to figure out what to write. I had a big paper due for my 20th century British Short Fiction class and the uncanny (unhomely) objects in Elizabeth Bowen's short fiction intrigued me. Items such as shoes and fireplaces have evil powers (like Jamie, I guess I was into the devil) in her short stories. The ominous machinations of Bowen's "things" often accompany characters' attempts to save or find a home. I saw the possibility of connecting the modernist attempt to cope with an unstable environment with Masahiro Mori's Uncanny Valley graph. I used scholarly articles on thing theory and Bowen. When I read a relevant piece of scholarship, I would go to the bibliography and look into finding the source materials that the author used. As was mentioned in our readings, I employed a hierarchical approach to information gathering: Internet, to school library, to major library. I started with Google Scholar a lot of times. At my school we didn't have a search device like Addison. I wish I could've gone to the Harry Ransom center (also mentioned in our readings) because it houses a major Elizabeth Bowen archive. My research methods worked and I still enjoy reading the paper I wrote.