Today, along with several of my other classmates, I had the pleasure of presenting and analyzing an image from one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. What I most enjoyed about this class was how the atmosphere of collective discussion ended up highlighting and emphasizing points of interest in the text, image, and context that I (as a presenter) had not previously considered. For example, in my question - which touched on visual cues - I had not considered the shading in the image as significant until Dr. Kooistra and my other classmates mentioned it. Just touching on that one detail allowed for the discussion to be opened even further; to me, this highlighted just how necessary the contributive process of discussion can be in relation to individualized research. 

What I also found interesting was how effective images are at portraying/expressing contemporary attitudes that surround the literary context. Through image analysis alone, we were able to explore Victorian ideals surrounding race relations, attitudes on the homeless, violence, and female agency. I am familiar with exploring these concepts in an explicitly textual manner, but analyzing such ideas through image highlighted new aspects that I had not previously considered.