Servants of the Map--Mandatory journals

Mandatory Journal 1:
Select a topic related to the book (several of them are historical people mentioned in the novel) and find about them. For the historical people consider who they were, what their ideas were, and how they were received by the general public.

Topic

1. William Bartram--Chee Kue
2. Charles Darwin--Andre
3. Henry Godwin-Austen--Bob
4. Asa Gray--Vathana
5. Joseph Hooker--Caroline
6. James Hutton--Alex
7. Charles Alexandre Lesueur--Nora
8. William Maclure--Marit
9. William Murray--Kao
10. Robert Owen--Becky
11. Rembrandt Peale--Evan
12. Thomas Say--Sophie
13. Johann Scheuchzer--Maggie
14. John Cleves Symmes
15. Godfrey Vigne--Connor
16. William Wells
17. Sikh wars--Croix
18. East India Company--Eric
19. Rappites--Emily
20. Adirondacks and health--Jessica
21. Tuberculosis and historical cures--Sarah
22. Fossils in the late 1800s--Annie
23. Surveying, triangulation, theodolite, heliotrope
24. Ubiquitin--Peder
25. Sign languages in the late 1800s
26. Taxonomy and classification

Mandatory Journal 2:
Servants of the Map: Creative Project

In his novel Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner uses the title engineering term as an overarching concept for the book. The angle of repose is the lowest slope that a pile of granular material forms when it is at rest—the lowest slope at which the material will begin to slide and the steepest slope at which it will not slide. The author considers this as he applies the term to a largest concept:

‘…Remember the one who wanted to know where you learned to handle so casually a technical term like ‘angle of repose’?’ I suppose you replied, ‘By living with an engineer.’ But you were too alert to the figurative possibilities of words not to see the phrase as descriptive of human as well as detrital rest. As you said it was too good for mere dirt; you tried to apply it to your own wandering and uneasy life. It is the angle I am aiming for myself, and I don’t mean the rigid angle at which I rest in this chair. I wonder if you ever reached it. There was a time up there in Idaho when everything was wrong; your husband’s career, your marriage, your sense of yourself, your confidence, all came unglued together. Did you come down out of that into some restful 30 degree angle and live happily ever after?...Was the quiet I always felt in you really repose?

Project:
In much of her work, Andrea Barrett also takes concepts from science/the natural world and applies them to the larger world of her characters and human interaction
Select a concept from the natural world that Barrett uses in one of the stories from Servants of the Map and explore how she uses the concept as a lens through which to view human interaction. In an interview with Robert Birnbaum, she states:
It’s like watching a little clump of DNA split and recombine. It’s not entirely accidental that some of these people’s traits are related but with variation to people in their past. You see certain traits pop up with mutations, if you will. Part of it is about that, the way that we are made by our families both biologically and emotionally. What is inherited? What is made? What is biology and what is culture? How much is predetermined in us?...How do women separated by such a wide stretch of time and maybe bearing some resemblance to each other but in a very different culture, how do those traits play out?
Examine how the concept is connected with at least two of the stories in the book and how we view human interaction in our world. Present your thoughts in a creative project. I do not want to put limitations on what your final project will look like, except to say that it cannot be written. We spend much of our time writing our thoughts/analysis in this class; use this opportunity to utilize a different method of expression and tap into your creative energy.
This project will take the place of one of the journals for this book.