Most Innovative means one advisor to see me through my four years of college, who spoke to me on Skype the summer before my first year, sees me when I’m happy or anxious or frustrated, is my biggest champion and has gently guided me towards understanding myself and my ambitions.

Most Innovative means taking 300-level courses in my first semester of college– and succeeding.

Most Innovative means traveling to Martinique for free, speaking French, and learning about our global society while making lifelong friends.

Most Innovative means proudly developing a website where I can express myself and practice creating digital content that will help me in my future.

Most Innovative means finding paid internships.

Most Innovative means going to Poland and reconnecting with my heritage. It means spending four days in Tel Aviv by myself less than a year later.

Most Innovative means traditions that grow and change with campus culture while still respecting our history.

Most Innovative means changing my major four times.

Most Innovative means excelling in the major I finally settled on and pursuing a future free of fear of failure.

Most Innovative means that all my classes relate to each other, even if they’re in completely different areas of study.

Most Innovative means working with faculty from incredible schools with unbelievable careers.

Most Innovative means honor societies and leadership societies and grad school applications that don’t scare me.

Most Innovative is traveling to Jamaica to do research for my senior seminar.

Most Innovative means Agnes Scott, and I’m so thankful, every day, that I chose to attend this amazing school.

My first Black Cat was in Fall 2015, the 100th Black Cat week. On a whim, I ran for Black Cat chair for the class of 2019. My peers elected me to the position, and suddenly, I was faced with the task of collecting materials for Rush the Quad, buying paint and decorations, and organizing a less-than-enthusiastic class into committees and chairs to try and make our first Black Cat a success.

Playing off our comical orientation experience, I chose the theme of Camp and set to work painting, building, decorating, organizing meetings, and attending song and dance rehearsals. I almost didn’t have time to take a breath, step back, and enjoy the fun of Black Cat. Now, after completing my fourth and final Black Cat, I’d like to think I’ve learned a lot from this tradition.

While one might think dressing down and throwing painted trash on the quad takes leadership skills, I believe Black Cat has refined my leadership abilities and shown me skills I never knew I possessed. All while I ran around, screaming cheers about the Sprites (our mascot), I was managing teams, seeking out talented people who were best suited for their positions. I learned to roll with the punches, to check my pride and ambition, to comfort those who needed it and to give younger classes guidance. I’ve raised money and managed budgets. I’ve learned how to use a power drill. I’ve definitely learned time management.

I can take all of the skills I’ve gained during Black Cat week and adapt them to future work in my career. Certainly not the screaming and singing and painting signs with catchy phrases about the 90s, but the time management skills, the committee management, the budgeting and accountability required.

It hasn’t fully sunk in that I’ll never celebrate Black Cat again. I’ll never rush another Quad, sing at Bonfire, cheer at Trivia, party at Party Day, clean up decorations, or watch Junior Production. But in addition to having fun these past four years, I’ve learned something and gained valuable skills. And that’s why I love Black Cat so much, and why I’m so sad this year was my last. 

—

On May 18, 1899, my great-great-grandparents, Michelina Mickelsky and Martinus Rusiecki, arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from Warsaw, Poland, via Antwerp, Belgium. They settled in Luzerne, Pennsylvania, to work in the coal mines. In 1911, Michelina gave birth to my great-grandmother, Frances. In 1939, she gave birth to my grandfather, John. In 1963, his wife, Judith, gave birth to my mother, Laura. We are Polish through and through– after all, my mother is only three generations off the boat.

On my mother’s side of the family, our Polish heritage is strong. It is evident in the Catholicism she practices, in the way bits of Polish slip into her speech, but most visibly, in our food.

Regardless of the time of year, a rainy day means pierogies. Kielbasa is our preference, over hot dogs. Horseradish is ever-present on our refrigerator door, despite no one actually enjoying it.  

The home-made cookbooks that my mother received from my great-grandmother fill glass cabinets above the marble countertops. Inside these aging, hand-bound books, are yellowed recipe cards. Sometimes, the words change from English to Polish mid-sentence, as if whoever wrote them couldn’t find the word outside of her mother tongue. Sometimes, the words are indiscernible altogether. On some cards, there are red-purple stains that look (and smell) suspiciously like horseradish, despite no one actually enjoying it.

I never understood how unchanged and genuinely Polish my food was, until I traveled to Poland, and experienced it for myself.

—

Just like I hadn’t been to Europe before, I have never traveled in a group. Nor have I traveled with people my age. We clash almost instantly. I’m here to find my heritage. They’re here to vacation. It’s evident in our approaches to food.

My peers look curiously at our hotel breakfast. They don’t seem to understand why, exactly, there are four different kinds of sausages on offer. I, on the other hand, pile my plate high with Kielbasa, and I exclaim in delight when the first taste of savory, spicy pork hits my tongue.

My peers are anxious to eat the pierogis at lunch, at a crowded, overfilled restaurant tucked behind a bustling, cobblestone Warsaw street. The dumplings are stuffed full and overflowing with mushrooms, onions, potatoes, and meat, and cooked to perfection, their edges just slightly browned. As I bite into them, all I taste is the familiar; a home cooked meal on a Thursday night, my mother wearing an apron that proclaims OUR LADY OF ANGELS CATHOLIC CHURCH, listening to NPR and poking impatiently at pierogies in a sizzling, spitting skillet.

My peers decide to eat American food for dinner. Instead, I am on the hunt for the Polish street food I remember from Church bazaars, the smell of grilled onions and smoked meat filling the air as I jumped on the bouncy houses with my friends from school. I find a stand that sells Kielbasa on white bread smothered in sweet, juicy onions, and slathered in brown mustard.

My peers get ice cream for dessert, but I’m on the hunt for Paçzki, massive, fruit-filled doughnuts that my mother gets for us every Fat Tuesday. The confection is covered in powdered sugar, and I have to hold it with two hands, like a real American cheeseburger.  

You’ll get sick off of that stuff, my peers say, turning up their nose as I lick sweet fruit off my sugar-covered fingers, or I stuff some escaped onions back into my makeshift sandwich, or push potato back into the pierogi, or add another sausage to my breakfast plate. The food is too heavy; it’s too rich.

I won’t get sick. Like a world-class athlete, I have been training to eat this food my entire life.

—

Just like my Polish heritage is influenced by my father’s Judaism, Polish cuisine is also heavily influenced by the centuries-old Ashkenazi Jewish population of Poland.

Before World War II, Poland had the largest population of Jews in Europe, and the second-largest population in the world, outside of New York City. I am surprised by how seamlessly the two cultures blend; from the latkes served with my pierogies, to the Matzo ball soup served as an appetizer for my kielbasa dinner. The simultaneous Ashkenazi and Polish diet of cabbage and onions and potatoes intertwine, coming together like the Ashkenazi and Polish double helix that is my genetic code.

Even the bagel, the most ubiquitously Jewish food, was invented on the streets of Krakow. On a rainy morning in the Cloth Hall of Krakow, I eat the very first bagel. It tastes like every bagel I’ve eaten before– and I’ve eaten a lot. I’m a New York Jew, after all.  

This cloth hall and this bagel have been around since the 13th century. Maybe my ancestor once pulled a wooden cart across these uneven cobblestone streets. Everything in Poland seems like a memory of a past life, of places I’ve visited but never have seen.

—

In Auschwitz, I have apple cake with lunch. Apple cake, to me, is a rarity outside of Christmas dinner. The cake-pie hybrid is crisp and refreshing and tastes infinitely better than the water-without-gas I’ve been drinking. I’m dehydrated from all the tears I have cried.

As we return to our tour, we leave a barrack and enter a courtyard that was used as shooting grounds for thousands of helpless prisoners. In the middle of the gravel, bullet-riddled, brick-surrounded square, I see my mother’s second cousin, Pam.

Speechlessly, I walk over to her. We both have earphones in, listening to our separate tours. I wave. She looks shocked, before hugging me. My professor, Dr. Kennedy, looks concerned, before I say, excitedly, that this is my cousin.

I knew they were in Poland at the same time as me, but I never imagined to see them 4,945 miles from home. They live in North Carolina. I live in Georgia. We’ve only met once, when I was six, at my great-grandmother’s funeral, in Pennsylvania.

Yet here we are, in a death camp, in Poland.

—

When I return to Krakow, I meet my mother’s second cousins in the Old Square for dinner. We find a restaurant, and order soup prior to our meals. It’s like I’m at a family reunion. Pam and her husband, Robert, ask me about my trip, about college, about my plans for the future. They ask me what I thought about Auschwitz. They’re curious as to how I felt– they know my dad is Jewish. They heard my grandfather passed away last fall– how is my mom doing?

We’re served chicken noodle soup. It’s identical to my mother’s, down to the spices and long, spaghetti-like noodles.

My mother’s second cousin and I lift our spoons to our mouths and moan in delight. “Wow,” She says, smiling at me. We have the same chin, the Danielowicz chin. “This soup tastes just like my mom’s.” It doesn’t just taste like her mom’s soup, or my mom’s soup, or our Great-Grandmother’s soup. It tastes like Poland. It tastes like home.

After deciding to invite pirates and philosophers alike to my salon, I decided it was integral to the evening to discuss the topics of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality, as well as Democracy, Human Nature, and Authority. While Kant, Locke, and Rousseau discussed their beliefs on the matter, the Pirate guests would offer their input as to best actualize the philosopher’s theories, as Pirates put ideas into action.

Finally, I was tasked with putting my salon online in digital format, so that it was easily accessible to not only those in my class, but to anyone who is interested in Enlightenment history, or Golden Age Piracy. The Agnes Scott College History Department loves digital history and this project correlates with the Summit curriculum and the development of our digital portfolios. Below is my methodology for my project, and a link to view the final website!

Introduction

As a Digital and Visual Literacy tutor, I knew that I had not only the training but the resources to create an engaging and dynamic digital salon. That, coupled with my love of Enlightenment history and my interest in piracy, I threw myself into my research and creation of, what I believe, is my most comprehensive and well-designed website to date.

The Frontispiece (Home Page)

I spent a lot of time working on the frontispiece, or home page, of my digital salon. As the landing page of my subdomain, I wanted to make sure it was eye-catching, informative, and provided suitable navigation for the rest of my website. I wanted to include the quote that formed my thesis, the Yoke of Nonage quote from Immanuel Kant. That, contrasted with the image of Blackbeard directing two men underneath a yoke, provide a direct correlation between the Enlightenment and Piracy that I continue throughout my website.
I first selected my template because it allowed for video as a header. The first piece of media created for my digital salon was the header video, which shows images of the Golden Age of Piracy with an overlay of a waving black sail. All photos, including the pictures in the video, were either from Wikimedia Commons or sources otherwise.

As the reader scrolls through the Frontispiece, the reader comes to a series of text boxes that link to three critical areas of research, the thesis, evidence, and analysis that make up the backbone of the website. The images included in the text boxes are ornamentations from Captain Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Pyrates. As this text formulated much of my research, I wanted to include the beautiful ornamentation that I had come to know and love in my readings.

The reader then comes to a miniature “about” section, preceding the more in-depth separate page with navigational links. These sections allow the reader to quickly learn about the class, as well as the creator of the site. If the reader clicks on the links, they go to my digital portfolio or the Agnes Scott History Department website. These links allow the website to function not only as a research project but as an advertisement for Agnes Scott and myself as a content creator. Throughout the Frontispiece, as the website logo and icon, I have an image of the Jolly Roger, Calico Jack Rackham’s flag and the most enduring symbol of the Golden Age of Piracy.

About the Project (About Page and Scope)

I chose to include a page introducing the history of the salon, as well as the purpose of the digital salon. The project is not typical, and therefore, the average reader might not understand the reasoning behind the project. I further chose to include the methodology essay, albeit differently formatted, on the about page, so it is readily available to my classmates and the reader.

The page that introduces the scope of my project is when the research behind The Enlightened Pirate is introduced. I begin the page with a quote from noted pirate historian, Phillip Gosse. It was impossible to research the entirety of the Enlightenment, the Golden Age of Piracy, or the connections between them. As I explain on the page, I chose to narrow the research scope for the project based on coursework, primary source documents, secondary source research, as well as geographic range. I also included an image of an engraving from the 1772 edition of Encyclopedie, again, via Wikimedia Commons. After defining the scope of research, I was able to write my thesis and begin researching The Enlightened Pirate.

Research (Thesis, Analysis, and Evidence)

My thesis, as presented on the thesis page, went through several revisions. I wanted to create a thesis that adequately stated what I was attempting to argue but also provided sufficient information for someone casually reading the project. I chose to accentuate the thesis page with a quote found in a valuable secondary source, Bandits at Sea: a Pirates Reader, that informed my research but did not directly make it into any analysis. I also chose to include one of the more complete images we have from A General History of the Pyrates, an engraving by Benjamin Cole that depicts Bartholomew Roberts, and his flag.

Next, I have a category of posts that summarize my research, or, what would be my essay, if this was a traditional research essay. I wrote six posts, three about piracy and the enlightenment, and three about enlightenment philosophers, to best examine the evidence and argue my thesis. I chose to outline the philosophy of the Enlightenment philosophes attending my salon, that is, John Locke and the Right of Rebellion, Immanuel Kant and the Yoke of Nonage, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and The Social Contract. I then chose to synthesize my argument in three short essays; Enlightened Pirate Democracies; Piracy, Human Nature, and Autonomy; and Freedom, Liberty, Equality, and Pirates. Each post contains links to direct evidence, as located further on the website, as well as footnotes.

I also chose to create images for each post, by combining an image of Enlightenment art, or a portrait of an Enlightenment philosopher, with an overlay of a pirate flag, in the same motif and design style of the video header.

Like the categorical organization of my analysis, I chose to organize primary source evidence in one category, with each piece of evidence having its own post. This system allowed for an efficient tagging and categorizing and allowed me to link back to direct evidence with ease. While I did not upload every piece of evidence utilized, I thought that uploading the primary sources that I found showcased my research abilities.

The Salon

While the Salon page precedes my scope and research on the toolbar, as it was the most in-depth page, I decided to leave it to last in my methodological essay. On this page, I showcase the guests of the salon; with the guests being three Enlightenment philosophers and six pirates. For each guest, I show a portrait, and give a brief biography, alongside essential arguments or accomplishments. For the Philosophers, I link to the posts that further outline their arguments.

I chose Kant, Rousseau, and Locke as guests for my salon because of the similarities in their arguments about autonomy, the human condition, and social contract theory. While each offers a different argument, and in Locke’s case, one that precedes the other two by a century, all of the philosophers chosen created a cohesive base argument for my research.

In regards to pirate guests, I chose the most famous, most successful, and most notorious. This was difficult, and I had to leave out many notable pirates (Edward England, Emmanuel Wynn, Henry Every, Mary Read) to create a concise guest list. I also chose pirates based on the availability of primary and secondary sources on their lives. For instance, while Mary Read may have been more ruthless than Anne Bonny, I chose to showcase Anne Bonny because there were more resources about her life and her actions.

Beneath the guests of the salon, I included one of the most famous images of the salon era, Madame Geoffrin’s Salon, painted by Anicet Charles Gabriel Lemonnier in 1812, again with the imagery of the pirate flag. The text is what would have been my conclusion if this were a traditional research essay. It summarizes the topics discussed at the salon and leaves the reader thought-provoked and interested in learning more.

Biography and Links

The bibliography is separated into primary and secondary sources, just as they would be in a research essay. To keep the dynamics of the rest of the website, I decided to consolidate the bibliography into a file-like widget, which allows the reader to view the full citation of a work, only if they wish. I think this allows the page to be less cluttered, and it also is pretty impressive, if I do say so myself.

Finally, I included a link to my digital portfolio and the Agnes Scott College website, to continue to promote my work and the college.

I really enjoyed creating my digital salon, and I am incredibly proud of my work. I hope you enjoy looking at it and learning more about the Enlightened Pirate!

View The Enlightened Pirate here!