Francis Farmer

In class the other day we went to the library so that we could learn from the librarian how to research information using databases and scholarly recourses such as Galileo, Ebsco Host and Google scholar. After the librarian showed us how to use the sources to our advantage we used what we had learnde to research our own subject. the subject (person)that I choose to research was Francis Farmer, whom was mentioned in an article that we read in class.Although there was much information on nonscholarly databases about Francis Farmer I found little information on Francis Farmer using the databases I had seen the librarian use. this is the information I found using some of the databases the librarian showed me.
Francis Farmer was an actress in the mid 1930’s. “The story of the rapid rise and tragic descent of Frances Farmer, the 1930's Hollywood actress, has been told before -- most memorably in the 1982 film ''Frances,'' starring Jessica Lange. It would be hard for any actress to compete with Ms. Lange's heartbreaking performance…” (Hoban 17). Francis Farmer was the rock star of her day. She went through the classic quick rise to fame, controversial views, diminishing mental stability, big comeback, then tragic death ( she died from Esophageal cancer).

Researching Process

The person that I researched was Ice Cube. In order to research some information on him I went on the internet. I choose to look up information on the internet,about Ice Cube, because the internet was the easy to access and it was quick and easy to get such an abundant amount of information off the internet in a short period of time. When I opened up the internet, by clicking on the E-net icon on the desktop, I typed in google.com int the search slot located at the top of the internet screen. I choose to look up information on google because google was a common search engine that I usually used to look up information for projects and was very suceesful with looking up information on. When I arrived at the google search engine I clicked of web for the where I wanted to look up information. in the box titled search I typed in Ice Cubes name. When I did this google came up with over 388,000 websites with ice cube mentioned on them or actual information on Ice Cube. I choose to look at the first five websites that popped up with Ice Cube's name on them. After looking at these websites and getting a few bits and pieces of information off them I typed in another search term. I did this in order to get more information on Ice Cube's life when he first became known publicly (and before he became know publicly), because the first term I had typed in had given me more information about what he was doing now, and I wanted more background information. The term that I typed in to get background information on Ice Cube was Ice cube- biography. When I typed this term google came up with over 197,000 websites that had Ice Cube's biography in them. When I looked on about three of these websites I found a lot of the background information that could help improve some parts of my paper. This was the research process that I used.

Tricia Rose

Tricia Rose is a professor of African studies at Brown University. She is also a feminist and Hip-Hop scholar and a native new yorker. She specializes in Black Culture, Black politics, Black social thought, Male/Female issues and popular culture. She is also the Author of a very informative book titled Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. I feel this would be an excellent literary resource on the subject of Hip Hop for the following reasons. This book had a very well written analysis on the biography of Hip-Hop music. It doesn't criticize this very innovative, historic, important, complex, raw art form. It is a very honest, clear, eye-opening and compelling look into the very real world of Hip-Hop. This book verbalized the realness of Hip-Hop. When I read this book, it gave me many thoughts. It made me think Hip Hop is a raw expression of feelings that are at times so unrefined, it may come of as brash, abrasive, misogynous, demeaning and offensive. All of the previous things said add up to Hip Hop equaling real human emotion. Every thing that one feels is not always good or pure or innocent or holy or moral and that is just reality. Hip-Hop can be a grim, startling, harsh look into reality at times, it can be the underworld that proper society wants to over look and ignore and act as if it doesn't exist. Hip Hops is real, grimy, hood, gutter, unrefined, ingenious, love, hate, harmony, self love, reality, truth, dreams, happiness, sadness, sorrow, drama, pain, ecstasy, lows and highs.. All of this wrapped up in one. I think I would love this book because it expresses that. There are very few writers and people who understand this concept. For anyone and everyone who is looking for a meaningful and well-written analysis on the history of Hip Hop, I would strongly encourage reading this literary masterpiece.

Dizzee Rascal

Friday in English class we begin on new unit on Hip- Hop culture. In order to redirect our mind set off of America's Hip- hop culture Ms. Irving showed us afew clips of otherHip-hop artist performing in videos in other countries. Many of the videos that she showed in class had artist that looked and basically sounded like the American artist that we knew of. Another thing that stood out in the videos that she showed us was that the artist that rapped were mostly of different races, not just black people.

One of the artist that we viewed in class was Dizzee Rascal.
Dylan Mills is the rapper known as Dizzee Rascal. He was born October 1, 1985. Dylan Mills grew up in East London and was raised by his single mother in Bow, England. While he was growing up Rascal was somewhat of a problem child in the area he grew up in. He was kicked out of four schools and put in jail for stealing cars. Mills got introduced to the music seen by one of his educators, and begin to MC at the young age of fifteen. Dylan's style of rap was considered garage with fa mix of reggae and grunge. While Mcing he came up with a name Dizzee (his nickname) and Rascal ( what many of his teachers called him because of his devious ways in school). Threw this common style of rap that was being used by many of the rappers in his area Dylan Mills became widely know as Dizzee Rascal.
In 2003 Dizzee Rascal started to became a hit nationally with his album “ Boy in da Corner”. A few days before this record was released Dizzee was stabbed several times at Ayia Napaa (a hotel resort), but made a full recovery after the album was released. Since the album was so huge it earned Dizzee the U.K.'s prominent music award, the Mercury award.

Peer Review

Yesterday, February 4, 2008, I participated in peer reviews in English 1102. Peer reviews are readings where a fellow classmate looks over a draft of a paper another classmates writes and then gives that classmate advice as to how to improve on his work and vice versa. They are meant to help a writer create a better final product, and especially provide student writers with opinions of how they could better their paper before they turn it in to a professor. In The peer review group that I had their were three people assigned to the group including me. First the people in my group each read over one another's papers then commented to each other on what needed to be improved on the paper. We also filled out questionnaires for each of the papers we read to help us guide our reading and problem seeking. I found per review to be very helpful. It gave me more insight on what I was to suppose to be writing and what was missing in my paper. The things that worked well in my peer review group were telling each other what worked well in the paper first and then telling what was wrong in the paper ( giving criticism). The questions that were given by our teacher to help guide our peer review discussion were fa nice addition because they helped us figure out some things to look for in one another's paper. Another thing also that worked well in our group was writing comments on one another's papers so that if we did not have time to discuss all the good and bad things about our papers we could at least have comments on our papers as to what was wrong with them. There really was not any thing that I would not have done in the peer group that I was in. I liked peer review it really helped and I look forward to doing it again on future papers.