Top 2 Research Artifacts

The first artifact that I consider choosing for this year's humanities research project is Anne Frank's diary, "The Diary of a Young Girl." The reason I'd like to choose this piece of evidence for my project is mainly because it is incredibly personal. As a young girl many thoughts and emotions come along with daily life to be expressed in the safe keeping of a diary at the end of the day. For Anne Frank, who lived at the difficult times of World War II, a diary was the only thing that could ever keep her sane. While hiding under wraps in complete and utter silence during the day the only outlet she ever had was her diary to express her deepest thoughts and feelings from her revelations and experiences during war. The research questions I'd like to ask now are: How did Anne Frank's documented thoughts, feelings, and factual revelations of war represent many of the experiences the Jews overcame during the Holocaust? Essentially, how did one female teenager represent an entire nation of people along with their demise, survival, growth, and recovery over many years to come? I would answer these questions by initially analyzing Frank's journal entires to compare to scholarly articles. By using a literary analysis approach I believe I can embrace the full scope of Frank's experiences and feelings in her diary.

The second artifact I'd consider using for my humanities project is the diary of Harry Drinkwater from his experiences as a solider in The Great War. Again, using a diary like Drinkwater's serves as a direct source of evidence for the intense emotions, personal hardships, and treacherous events of war that many people experience during war. Using his documented entires help people realize what it was really like to live in a life dominated by war and destruction. Like many people of his time, Drinkwater suffered the tragic effects of war that bring along trauma and depression. For my research question I'd like to ask: How does Drinkwater represent the many soldiers of World War I who experienced trauma from the impact of death and destruction in the battlefield? How did his journal entry help many people during World War I and after learn about the true works of war and its effects on people?