This week I found it incredibly interesting to listen to everyone's Capstone presentation. Not only did I get to enjoy everyones presentations but I felt it was the perfect recap of many of the major themes we studied this semester. I also thought it was interesting to see the different interpretations of each illustrated text as well as the different interpretations the same illustrated novels in different ways.

I found the capstone presentations incredibly engaging today in class! In particular, I enjoyed listening to all the different facets of these stories and hearing all these perspectives and arguments I would have never considered before today I think this speaks to the level of malleability that these Victorian texts have and how their literary illustrations are open to a multitude of interpretations with each according critical focus.

Today was out final class. It was a real treat to see everyone’s presentations to see what their research is all about. I’m particularly excited to see what my fellow COVE digital exhibitors are working on while we navigate this website and add some original scholarship on our topics to the world! I really enjoyed listening to all of my classmates share what they believe their research will bring to the scholarly table.

Today’s class was truly rewarding as we were all able to share our findings and how we were going to incorporate them in our text. I found it really interesting to listen to all the different and even similar routes my classmates took in analyzing their chosen text. Listening to presentations about the works we have covered in the semester was rewarding as it opened up a window into a scholarly conversation based on the works we have been reading this year, and such was rewarding as I was able to learn a lot more historical context based on the texts I did not write my essay on.

Despite the class being done through Zoom and there were some complications, I thought exploring Victorian Illustrated books through the various methods was interesting—especially as it brought new ideas and interpretations. For everyone’s presentations, I found it interesting that everyone literally thought of such different topics even though they were generally the same book (just published and done with different illustrations), it really shows that interpretation really is up to the artist and that the reader is an active participant to meaning-making.

Listening to everyone’s capstone presentation was truly an honor. To get a look into the minds of my classmates, and be able to have an opportunity to see what they see in the works that we studied all semester was a great pleasure. I took a lot from it myself, and applied some concepts that they had mentioned to my own capstone because they had taken context from things that I did not think of yet. This is the great thing about with collabroating with peers, you have the oppurtunity to learn something that you were not expecting to.

There are many things I'll take away from this course - to name a few: I found it interesting how tight-knit the Victorian illustrated books community was; for every author/illustrator we studied, a connection could be drawn between him/her and at least one other author/illustrator we studied. This really puts into focus how developments in this medium happened collaboratively, much like how the process of illustrating an individual book is a collaborative process between writer, illustrator, and publisher.

One thing that stood out to me the most throughout each of the class presentations was what everyone suggested that their analyses bring to the table, because they were all so dfferent from one another when considering the projects themselves and the contexts for interpretation. I know that in the class prior a few of my fellow students (and myself)were a bit confused with how to navigate the question of what our research brings to the table, but as I listened to all of the presentations I found that this had become much more clear.