Do you doodle? Ever wonder what your doodles mean?
Game for you: Interpret Beth’s doodles! The info in this blog is all you need to know to play. First, here’s a sample of my doodling:
I love discovering connections across time and space and between stories that I encounter in my academic and editing work. Recently, I edited an academic article by a couple of Chinese historians.
Due to some translation difficulties and unfamiliar formatting of archival citations, I had to find various “Top Secret” CIA and US government correspondences (now declassified) from the early 1970s. Fascinating stuff!
The article (Shen & Lin, 2024) is about China-US relations (1971-1976) and efforts to bring about the peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula.
In 1973, North Korea actually initiated a meeting with the US (see below). The meeting never happened because the US required that China invite South Korea to the meeting, but China refused…. complicated diplomacy!
I also came across annual reports (1966-1976) from the US Army in South Korea. Each report consists of almost daily journal entries documenting notable goings-on. Every entry could be the starting point of a fabulously interesting history book!
Let’s take the month of October, for example. Some random October entries from 1969, 1973, 1970, and 1975, respectively:
While editing this article, I was also teaching about race relations in the US military in my “20th Century World History” class, and multilateral diplomacy in my “Global Issues” class. So many connections everywhere!
And between editing and teaching, I doodle. Like this:
Now, over to you—given this context, how do you interpret my sketchbook doodles? Can you find meaning in the chaos? Let me know what you think: beth@artbybws.com.
The article mentioned: Shen, Z., and Y. Lin. (2024). “Sino-American rapprochement and China’s dilemma in dealing with the Korean Peninsula issue (1971-1976).” Asian Journal of Peacebuilding, 12(2), 155-182.
Some of the databases with declassified documents: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/, https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/, https://nautilus.org/