Blog Post: Melissa Elezovic

Lili Elbe Digital Archive Blog Post

By Melissa Elezovic
December 16, 2019

To be honest I really had no idea what I was getting myself into with this class and the Lili Elbe Digital Archive project. I am part of the Quinlan School of Business majoring in Supply Chain Management, so everything about this class has pushed me out of comfort zone. Originally I had enrolled in this class because it was the only class I could find to fulfill my engaged learning requirement that also fit my schedule. As it turns out this course has probably been one of the greatest courses I have taken at Loyola University Chicago.

Being able to help out with the Lili Elbe Digital Archive has been one of the most memorable experiences during my time at Loyola. I want other students from different parts of the world to be able to use the Lili Elbe Digital Archive for any of their research needs, or even just to learn about Lili Elbe in their free time. I have been able to expand my horizons and learn more about queer theory, sexuality and gender through this course which I belive to be so important especially in our day of age. Lili Elbe’s narrative is one of the first transgender narratives, and it is especially significant because Elbe’s story is based on the true story of the historical Lili Elbe. The Digital Archive allows you the read the narrative in all different editions. The narrative was translated from the German typescript into Danish, and a different German edition came from the typescript. The German edition was then translated into the British edition which ultimately led to an American edition. The archive allows users to interact with all editions or allows them to focus on the edition they prefer.

One of the most useful skills I have taken from this course is being able to use Oxygen to code letters for the archive itself. Oxygen is a platform that allows for XML coding. Letters must be coded before they are able to be displayed on the website, because it allows the reader more accessibility. Coding was one of the biggest obstacles I encountered this semester. In the beginning it was overwhelming, but being able to code in small groups of three and with the help of Caroline McCraw, an MA student from Loyola’s Digital Humanities, it actually became fun. I was familiar with coding at the beginning of the semester but only with business analytic, so this was a huge step out of my comfort zone. The letters we encoded had historical significance and added to Lili Elbe’s story; these were letters that Lili received or sent.

I have helped encode three letters for the Lili Elbe Digital Archive. The first letter was the most difficult to do, because it was my first time using Oxygen, and XML coding in general. When coding you have to know how to tag locations and people and where to insert paragraph breaks. All these minor details can have a huge effect on how the user interacts with the archive. The amount of work that everybody on the project team has put in has been mind-blowing. I am happy that I got to help in any way possible even if it meant encoding a short letter. I take a lot of pride of the letters that I have helped encode in my group, because it is a new professional skill that I can add to my resume.

I was a part of the scene collation group which is in charge of picking out important scenes from the different narratives that have a significant difference. You collate scenes based on a theme that you believe to be highly relevant in whatever piece of work you want to collate. Along with picking out the scenes from the different narratives you always have to come up with a rationale as to why you think this is an important theme that needed to be collated among different narratives/versions. One of the biggest problems my group and I encountered was picking out what theme we wanted to collate. To make sure my group and I did not fall behind we started picking out important scenes that had some impact on us as readers, and scenes that allowed us to better understand Lili Elbe. From there, once we had a couple scenes picked out from the first few chapters we realized they all had a common them which was gender identity. When we are picking out our important scenes Dr. Pamela Caughie pointed out that the surgeries Lili Elbe underwent should not be the focus, and my group and I one hundred percent agreed. There is so much more to Lili Elbe than just her surgeries. Our focus for the scene collation became more focused with how Lili presented herself to others and how she felt before, during, and after the transition.

Another theme that my group and I thought would be a good fit for the narrative is gender performance. A lot of gender roles are exagerated in the narrative, and for good reason. It makes the narrative easier to read and more understandable. After Lili Elbe awakens from her first surgery there is a “change” in her handwriting and her voice becomes higher. She now has “female handwriting” which is hard to believe, but it is a narrative tool used to mark the change that Lili is going through. Even after her second surgery Lili feels the need to constantly wear make up and dress up, because she believes she has to. She wants so badly for others to see her as Lili, the woman she has always been.

Working on the Lili Elbe Digital Archive has been an amazing opportunity for my undergrad career. Even after the semester is over I will definitely be checking the website to see what updates and changes have been made.

Loyola University Chicago’s mission statement is “We are Chicago’s Jesuit, Catholic university – a diverse community seeking God in all things and working to expand knowledge in the service of humanity through learning, justice, and faith.” Working on the Lili Elbe Digital Archive as a part of the English Engaged Learning requirement I took my Fall 2019 semester as an undergrad here at Loyola. This class really allowed me to connect to Loyola’s mission statement, because throughout the semester espeically towards the end when some of the letters I had encoded were put up on the website I felt like I was helping make a difference in the world, no matter how small. In today’s society people who do not fit the “normal” are often times marginalized and made to feel like they do not belong in our society. I can only hope that people will read and use the Digital Archive of Lili Elbe to try and understand a different perspective and a different story from their own in an attempt to understand that as human beings each one of us is completely different.