“Monuments are for the living, not for the dead.”

-Frank Wedekind

 As the second week of this journey draws near, a new question emerges on the horizon. Did the Communist regime start establishing ideological monuments within and beyond USSR borders gradually, or all at once? After today’s DH meeting, the more I think about it, the more appealing it is strive to achieve a project in which the map can track the establishment of monuments throughout the years. However, the tools utilization and coding aspects of the project will be a daunting task.

 With every new day, I am reminded of the short time that I have to work on something that is of a larger scale. On the one side, my research is not done and I have not yet created a dataset. On the other hand, I also have not chosen what tools I want to use and I have not learned how to use them. And finally, I have yet to choose the platform that I will build my project on. All these things I plan to (meaning, personally feel like I need to) sort out by the end of Week Two. On a brighter side, my research question, thesis and outline have been formulated!

It feels as though I have spent a lot of my free time on achieving personal goals that I had set for this summer (reading books and learning languages, mainly), yet I have not dedicated enough time to do the required research on the subject. That being said, I need to step my game up, so from this moment onward, I need to prioritize. Needless to say, DH is on the top of my list right now!

Last night, an Art History professor emailed me links to some useful books – tonight, I will give them a look, and I will start building from scratch.