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October 29, 2005
Liz's Digital Proposal
While I was doing my first assignment for this class, I noted a dearth of scholarly sites that provided an overall history of advertising. I realized that an all-encompassing history of advertising would be a tad bit much, so I decided to narrow my topic to investigate how soap and beauty aid manufacturers have transformed American society.
Prior to the Civil War, Americans were not the cleanest lot. This situation began to change after the war, begging the question, how did this happen? Using innovative techniques that would become standard practice for other products, personal hygiene hawkers not only changed our nation’s cleaning habits, but the advertising industry as a whole.
While my site will be an archive, it will also include a narrative, detailing how the soap folks changed our personal grooming habits. Most of the sites I saw in my initial project were archival—a sort of “create you own narrative”/”choose your own adventure idea.” As we’ve discussed, an archive can has a narrative, based on the choices made by the site author. However, I was rather unhappy with the limited narratives presented. I would presume site authors felt a need to not spoon-feed their audience, but I thought some of the sites could have used more thought, and not throw us a bunch of ads.
There are several books on this topic. However, with the number of photos that I would propose using, it would not make sense to put this in a print format. I intend to allow users—scholars or laymen—to zoom in on advertisements, allowing for closer examination.
So, if you have thoughts/criticisms, I’m always open…
Posted by ejonese at October 29, 2005 01:48 PM