Historic Brewing in Rochester: Nearing Completion

With only a few weeks left till our Thesis papers are officially due I'm feeling confident in how my thesis has progressed. I have captured much of the straight history of 1800s and early 1900s brewing and have begun to move onto the more social aspects of brewing. What I have left to do is write about who drank beer and why. I've already touched on it some bits and pieces, but nothing dedicated to it. I will writing about this in both the past and present, and the later involves me surveying local breweries about their target audiences, and observing their actual audiences. I already have this completed with two local breweries and hope to up that number to three or four by early next week.

I think the most interesting thing I've run into is the Temperance movement. Once I finally started writing about it I realized just how relevant it was to almost every other part of my paper. It drove technological innovations, various industries, and the way it evolved even bolstered the brewing industry. Like many things, it started small only targeting the most extreme abuser of hard liquor, but slowly progressed to include all drinkers of hard liquor. Although eventually moving onto the many varieties of beer, it temporarily pushed everyone into the beer world, giving it an effective monopoly in the alcohol world of Rochester.

Pinball Survey

Since my last post, "Pinball Prologue," I have narrowed the scope of my thesis, created a survey to code and quantify data about pinball machine artwork, and discovered additional sources that will aid me in conducting my analyses (both quantitative and qualitative). According to my abstract, my analysis is meant to  "[document] how the depiction of women has or has not changed in pinball artwork over time, and what it might mean today for a [pinball] industry to depend on the visual sexualization of women for its commercial success."


Before I decided to do a quantitative survey, I was going to examine machines from 1930 to present. Once I decided I was going to do a more thorough investigation in a narrower time frame, 1970-1989, I estimated how many survey entries I would have, total, based on the number of pinball machines produced by six major manufacturers. That early estimate revealed I would average 30 entries per year, for an approximate total of 300 machines! I would need to find a way to make the sample size smaller if I was going to complete the survey by the end of spring break.
I also decided I would eliminate entries that did not reach a certain production number, since very limited quantities meant less visibility in the public sphere, but I wasn't sure where that "cut-off" number would be.

So, during yesterday's meeting with my primary advisor, Dr. Tamar Carroll, we considered several ways to refine the quantitative survey parameters to make the selected sample more manageable. In addition to what I discussed above, we decided to eliminate one of the manufacturers from our criteria. Chicago Coin was not as competitive in the pinball market during the 1970s as it had been in prior decades, and production numbers were hard to come by. Stern was not as competitive in the 1970s as the other major manufacturers, so while it would be a huge oversight to exclude them from an analysis of the 1980s, onward, it doesn't seem unreasonable to exclude them in my sample. This is a tough decision and I would be more comfortable making it after a discussion with my secondary advisor.

I discovered early on that despite having different titles, many pinball machines form 1970 to 1978 shared the same artwork with another title. There might have been 2 to 4 machines with the same artwork, because in order to create certain features within electro-mechanical pinball machines, like the ability to add-a-ball OR a replay as a reward, different machines had to be produced to accommodate these features (this began to change with the introduction of solid state electronics in 1977). Duplicate machines with different titles were also produced when a company made a two-player and four-player version of the same game. Sometimes games for foreign markets also received a new title. In all of these instances, because I was focusing on the artwork, I could use the earliest example of the artwork as the baseline for the entry, and simply note 1) how many machines were produced with the same artwork; and 2) list alternate titles within that single entry.

Combined, these methods of narrowing my survey tell me what to prioritize. After all, I can always add entries if I have the time to do so. For now, I should be conservative and develop a solid survey for analysis.

I have also changed my survey sample "questions" from an original set, to a set based on sociologist Erving Goffman's survey in Gender Advertisements, then back to my original set (with revision) again! Although Goffman's survey seemed like a neat ready-to-use package of period-appropriate questions for gender analysis, they were neither as straight forward, nor as appropriate for my thesis, as I originally thought they would be. After receiving positive feedback on my initial set of questions, including suggestions for improvements, I decided I would move forward with those.

My primary advisor and I will meet more regularly following Spring Break to ensure my survey and the thesis, overall, are on the right track.

Finally, there is one more event worth mentioning here. From December to February, I assisted the development of a pinball timeline to be used in conjunction with Pinball Playfields, a permanent exhibit at The Strong National Museum of Play, which opened on February 27, 2016. The timeline is called "Pinball in America." It exists as an interactive display on the exterior of the exhibit space at The Strong, and as an online exhibit, though the Google Cultural Institute. That version is embedded in The Strong's web page (linked above). In addition to the timeline, there are interpretive texts and displays throughout the exhibit that I can now utilize as additional sources for my thesis! What an exciting time.

Stern Pinball Cluster in the Pinball Playfields exhibit at The Strong National Museum of Play. Press photographs of the exhibit, like this one, capture interactions visitors have with pinball machines and other visitors. Staged or not, the content of this photograph demonstrates the behavior that is expected from museum visitors within the exhibit space. Is female participation contingent upon their relationships with male players? Look closely and you can see two individual female players in the back row.

The exterior of the Pinball Playfields exhibit at The Strong National Museum of Play. Photograph taken by author. The digital display that features the Pinball in America timeline is out of the frame, on the right side of the exhibit. Can you believe this used to be a gift shop for butterfly-related merchandise? I'd call this an upgrade. More exhibits mean more opportunities for play, and more play means more opportunities to learn and grow.

What's next? While I have also made progress in writing the body of my thesis, there is still a long way to go! First I will focus on completing the survey, then I will continue writing content.

Breakthrough in Senior Thesis

This semester taught me couple of things with my senior thesis paper. Working on Time management, visiting support staffs and doing heavy research while work remotely is most significance and difficult steps to accomplish. It is an honor for me to announce that American School of the Deaf (ASD), my work place, will have upcoming opening/kickoff gala to celebrate ASD's upcoming 200th anniversary in April 2017!

American School for the Deaf's Bicentennial Celebration. 2016.
http://www.asd-1817.org/page.cfm?p=1232

This week I have posted more literature review and image contents to the appendix for my senior thesis paper.  According to my readers, they felt that I didn't provided enough information of the literature review but too much of digital project reviews. I took their advices and researched for more reading contents related to digital archive projects. In addition, I was worried about naming the professional staffs in my paper, those staff members are who i work with for ASD's upcoming gala/exhibition. After discussing with Dr. Decker about my concerns about naming these staffs, Dr. Decker proposed to mention the title positions instead the name to respect the privacy of the professional staffs.

My challenges with this paper is insufficient data of literature review and my work progress from my internship with ASD. I decided to pay another visitation to ASD. My plan for the upcoming spring break, to travel back to my worksite at ASD to collect more information for my thesis, take up some training workshop with Uni. of Conn. with their digital archive to help ASD digitize their selected collection items.

Planning for the spring break

            Finally, but not at least, I have developed the website for Prospects of Mankind. I haven’t completed and finalized it yet, but I am very excited to display it to the public (especially probably all of you as well!). I can’t pretend that it was super easy to develop and design the website—it truly took time and annoying obstacles to develop it in which way I wanted it to be. You can go ahead and see the website at https://prospectsofmankindblog.wordpress.com/. (NOTES: it is not completed, so it is likely for you to be confused at its incomplete context.)

            For my senior thesis, I just had received the feedbacks from my primary advisor, Professor Carroll, on my draft 2 yesterday (3/16/2016). I am currently reviewing the feedbacks just to understand where she had gave the feedbacks based off her clarifications and additions of transition sentences linking the sections together. The draft 2 was the most difficult task I ever had approached in this semester, as I wrote it. Rather, I had to write on the developments of two types of exhibits (both digital and a traditional onsite). While I somehow had no problem writing the design of the website, I struggled with the design of a traditional onsite exhibit. I did not choose a location to use for the exhibit of Prospects of Mankind because I realized that the issues in related to the space and physical structures would prevent my design of an onsite exhibit. Instead, I was able to provide my studio-based ideas of how an exhibit should look and communicate to the public.

           Since spring break is just around soon, I will spend time developing the website, as well as the selection of the images and documents such as transcripts to add in the appendix of my thesis. Then I will rewrite and edit my overall thesis. I hope I will complete most of those in time because I also have another plan during the break—I have to apply for a visa for my internship in London this summer. Just well…wish me luck on this!

Progression of Thesis

The semester is going by quickly and my thesis is progressing wonderfully. I have not faced any major challenges and I am very happy with the way my paper is turning out.

I have spent this week working on figures and captions, and on the appendix while I wait for feedback on my second draft. I have a couple more pages worth of content to write, which I will pick up again once I have received the feedback. Spring break starts this weekend and I intend to complete my thesis during that time.
   
Below is an image I took when visiting the Baseball Hall of Fame's Museum, and it is also one of the images I have included in my paper. This portion was a part of a case about "The Changing Face of Baseball." The blue label in particular caught my interest, and has been a great supplement to my paper.  It reads:
       Reviving African American Baseball

       Integration of African-Americans into the majors reached a peak of 18.7% in 1981, but their                participation has dropped since then, sinking below 8% in 2009. "Nowadays, kids think that                baseball is a white man's game," said Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities [RBI] founder John                 Young in 1992. His program to organize youth teams in black communities is an effort to reverse        that trend.

Content Analysis and Goals

     Throughout my college career, I have worked on a plethora of papers and projects. However I have never been as passionate about a topic or challenged by the tasks that still lay ahead. My journey in this course is an arduous process, balancing writing and researching for my thesis paper and project with my other coursework. Luckily, my readers and the class instructor as well as family and friends have been nothing less than supportive of my endeavors.

     My methodological tool for analysis is set up in an Excel sheet with individual tabs for 1965 to 1974. I am looking at March and September in alternating years – March 1965, 1967, 1969, ’71, ’73 and September ’66, ’68, ’70, ’72, and 1974. On each tab, there are clarifications such as marking if the content is an advertisement, lifestyle article, or an editorial photography shoot as well as an area to write pertinent information, such as the month, the page, title or company advertising, and authors. Each tab has my categories of analysis, an area for conclusions and observations, and a space for the related image. I chose each advertisement, lifestyle article, or editorial photography shoot after careful consideration of the most significant or extreme examples of my categories. This means each year has 3 images associated with it and that overall I am analyzing 30 images over 10 years. I coded by existence rather than frequency.

      I had a productive meeting with my advisors last week and it inspired me to get my action plan rolling. Currently I have 15 of my images chosen and will have all 30 images chosen by March 20^th.  I will be spending Spring Break analyzing the images and coming to conclusions, as well as writing and editing the paper component of this project. This means that I have the next nine days open essentially to make significant progress in my project. I believe I will be well on my way to submitting my findings ahead of the deadline. By examining just 5 years of American Vogue at this point, I have seen an interesting progression in regards to how fashion magazines construct and represent women’s roles. I have learned so much from my research and my project already and I cannot wait to postulate my findings.

Museum Inclusion, Starr

The process of research is life-changing.  

When I began this project, my understanding of the social responsibility of museums was based on my studies in the Museum Program in theory, my experiences as a visitor to cultural institutions, and what I learned through internship opportunities. 

For the work of this thesis, I have spent the past several months developing a greater understanding to the systems which influence museum accessibility practices, and the history of how efforts have been implemented over time. While, the process of research is stressful, I am so lucky to be studying something which I am passionate about, and consider to be incredibly important to the development of the museum field.

Nina Simon, 2015. MuseumNext Presentation, "Fighting for Inclusion." 

In 2015, museum professionals gathered for the annual conference, MuseumNext, the topic of the several-day workshop: inclusion. Director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, Nina Simon, presented "Fighting for Inclusion" the story of how the Museum of Art & History changed its practice to work towards becoming more inclusive to its diverse community. In her presentation, Simon shows the following slide, a quotation from a trustee in response to the Museum's intention to become inclusive and empowering for the community.[1]

It is perspectives like this which challenge the work that my thesis argues for. This statement articulates, to me, a "call to action" for museum professionals advocating for proactive inclusion efforts within cultural institutions. 

The scope of this thesis has evolved radically since its beginning. What started as research focusing on visitors with disabilities and their experiences within museums has changed to looking at the responsibility of museums to their communities, and how diverse visitors are made to feel welcome and included in spaces that may have, at one time, been exclusionary. 

Through this process, my notions of what access, inclusion, and civic-centered museums mean are constantly challenged and changing. At the same time, it has been inspirational to discover how many museum theorists have argued, in their own way, at their own time, for the same basic ideals which this thesis aims to further.

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[1] Nina Simon. “Fighting for Inclusion.” Museum 2.0, September 23, 2015.