The following students will be doing their presentations on Monday, May 12th. Please see the page on presentation guidelines for more information.

1. Aaron Perkins

2. Carmen Cadena

3. Emily Dahm

4. Mia Erenberg-Harris

5. Fred Glander

The following students will be doing their presentations on Monday, May 5th. Please see the presentation guidelines for more information.

1. Olivia Cole

2. Jeri Yingling

3. Kim Throneberry

4. Daniel Oljaca

5. Tera Baumgardener

The following students are scheduled to do their oral review on Monday, April 28th:   

1. Evan Atwood

2. Daniel Zarick

3. Brian Schuch

4. Jennifer Spitler

5. Lee Hoagland

Hey folks — no blog response necessary, but please read/view the following:

• Shelley Jackson, ”My Body“
• Database of Virtual Art
  

We’ll be discussing hypertext fiction, and I’ll move us into the world of virtual art in class.

Also, don’t forget that oral reviews begin next week. To see the schedule and guidelines, please visit the class site.

Reading/Viewing for next week:

• Watch: “Grand Theft Auto IV – Trailer”  
• Walkerdine, Valerie. “Remember not to die: young girls and video games.” Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature, Nov 2004. 

Below are sets of questions — choose ONE set to respond to:

• If you chose a game with people in it, think about the following: consider the roles: were the people in the game baseball players, boxers, soldiers, etc.? What about ethnicities? What ethnicities did you identify? Who seems to have what role? – what color or gender, for example, are the “bad guys”?
  Who is the hero of the game? What did these people look like? – fat, skinny, muscular, tall, short . . . and what roles did each play? And how does any of this reflect popular or contemporary ideas around race, class, and/or gender?
• What was the goal of the game? To kill all your enemies? To get the gold? To win the race? What obstacles did you have to overcome in order to move from level to level or to win the game? How might any of this reflect contemporary culture (our ideas about success, what it takes to win, the “American” story or ideal, etc.)? In what ways was the game NOT like life?
• In what ways was the game totally fantasy-like or had elements that were not at all realistic of modern society? Perhaps these elements were of a past that no longer exist. And if so, how might that reflect a particular set of ideas in today’s culture; and if so, what?

CHOICE TWO: free writing response to reading/viewing:

• Consider the reading and discuss whether you think the author’s main arguments still hold true or not. Why or why not?  
• There has been a lot of debate around whether video games negatively influence children and young adults’ perceptions of gender, race, class, and ethnicity. How do you feel about this? Make an argument either way — and be sure to support your argument with logic and examples.
• Talk about anything else in the article (and video clip, if you’d like) that takes your attention. You must reference the article, however, and not just talk about the clip.

Reading/Viewing for next Monday’s class:

• Samuels, Robert. “Keeping It Real: Why We Like to Watch Reality Dating Television Shows” (193-201) Common Culture Reader (handout).
• Watch: “I Love New York – Meet the Parents” and “Biggest Loser – Highlights”

This time, in your blog response, relate your thoughts about the readings and reality television to your own experiences/thoughts. What in the article did you agree or disagree with and why? or what particular argument or idea was presented that took your attention? This is a free-writing blog response, so feel free to write in a stream-of-consciousness manner.

End of Semester Oral Presentations – I’ve posted the schedule (those who were in class before break got to pick their own dates; those not there were assigned a date). Please go to the link above to see when you’ll be presenting and the guidelines for the presentation.

Readings for Monday, March 31st:

• Kakoudaki, Despina. “Spectacles of History: Race Relations, Melodrama, and the Science Fiction/Disaster Film,” Camera Obscura, Vol. 17, No. 2, 2002.
• Doneson, Judith E. “Holocaust Revisited: A Catalyst for Memory or Trivialization?” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 548, Nov. 1996 (I will email this file to you; please email me if you haven’t received it by March 19th).
  

No blog response required; however, if you need extra credit, this is a great opportunity to earn it. You must say something substantial and thoughtful about the readings.

Hey folks — I’m giving you until Friday, March 21st to email me your final review. You can find the details at the class website. Reading assignment will be posted tomorrow. Thanks!

FYI: If you brought in your two reviews for class this Monday, which counts as response assignment #7, you received an A. Those with only one review, a B; and those with no reviews, a zero.

Hi folks — I sent all of you emails, but just in case, please note that I’m not holding class on Monday, March 10th — I’ve got a bad case of the flu.

For next class, instead of the typical reading & response, I want you to do two things:

1. Continue working on your issue-oriented reviews.

2. Find two published reviews of issue-oriented art or media; read through each, making notes on what you believe works well and what doesn’t. We’ll be discussing your finds in class next week.

Meet next class at 9:30 a.m.! (and put your clocks forward one hour on Sunday!) 

Reading: 

• Ang, Ien. (2005) Multiculturalism.
• Minh-Ha Pham, “The Asian Invasion (of Multiculturalism) in Hollywood (543-564) Common Culture Reader (handout). For those who weren’t in class to get the handout, I’ve placed the remaining copies in my box in the English dept. on the 3rd floor. Don’t skip this reading — please go get it.
• “Asian ‘American Idol’: Stereotype or Star?”
• Watch: William Hung’s “She Bang – on American Idol”

For this blog response, discuss your thoughts on how issues of multiculturalism (as discussed by the readings) seem to be present within the film we’ve started to watch in class (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Do you agree or disagree with some of the arguments presented by Minh-Ha Pham’s article? Why or why not? What about Ien Ang’s article on multiculturalism? In other words, would Ang and Pham be in agreement? why or why not?

No specific questions this time — just a free-flow discussion on the issues presented and their applicability to the film we’ve started watching in class.