Possibilities for the Seminar Paper

thinking toward the seminar paper

What ideas are you flirting with or otherwise considering for your paper?

I want to do something about the union protests for a few reasons. First, it could help me work through the shock of it all. Second, it's pressing. Third, it was mediated in about a gajillion ways. I'm thinking of starting with a discussion of the mass media and the somewhat-censorship-like-way in which they covered the protests, but I know that's not "media-y" enough yet. I'll work on it in that direction and see what I can get out of it.

What will you need to do to develop these ideas into a paper-length consideration?

A new brain. (Joke)

No, I'll need to meet with Anne and talk to some of my classmates, but I think more than anything I'll need to reread the materials from the course (which I've been having trouble keeping in my brain anyway - maybe related to the shock, maybe related to the density of some of them, most likely related to a combination of both) and think about what light they can shed on the work I want to do. I'll also need to spend hours an dhours and hours in the library.

What assistance from others could you use in thinking this through?

I could use many, many sets of eyes. I work best in f2f conversations, and I could use a few of those with classmates/Anne to make sure I'm working in the right direction.

What ideas do you have about how we can use online resources (as well as the other resources of class) to support you in writing the most kick-ass (or insert otherwisely appropriate adjective here) seminar paper of which you are capable?

Actually, online resources will be really useful for me for different reasons than most people, I think. Because the whirlwind of mind-blowing cacophony (from which I am still recovering ;( ...) surrounding the union protests, I am unable to remember discrete moments during that time. In fact, I don't even really recall my birthday, which was February 25th, because of everything else that happened. I've never really suffered such a huge shock before, so it's uncharted territory. But the archive of posts from our union Twitter feed and from my personal Facebook page could help me remember what happened in a more specific way than I can from memory (insert Steigler here, I'm sure) and help me find the sources I need to reference the union protests as accurately and hopefully as objectively as possible.

Week 10 Reflection

What sorts of activities, support, or discussions would be most useful to help you finish our class both most gracefully and most fruitfully?

I liked this week's assignment. I realize that it wasn't super involved, but it gave me a way to work through the assigned readings by forcing myself to work on something less specifically related to the reading at the same time. So while I was working through Kittler, I was working through how I saw the future of the "new media" wiki page. It's not unrelated, but it isn't focused just on this reading, either. It seemed to help me make some of the connections between readings I would normally have made, had this semester not been so crazy.

I think I need to keep making strides towards academic recovery at a steady pace.

Also, please think ahead two weeks, to when your first drafts of your seminar papers are due, for workshopping. What suggestions do you have for strategies we can use for workshopping these papers online?

I find actual face to face conversations much better for workshopping. We tried a few different ideas for online collaboration and peer review in the writing center I worked at, and while they were somewhat effective, I didn't particularly like them. One idea might be to post our essays on the wiki and have others give us comments or add questions in different fonts or something.

New Newspaper Chart

Hey all,

So here's my chart. I've tried to show how my understanding of a few of the readings work through newspapers, but I tried to do so with visual representation. I'm trying out Prezi after trying several other programs. We'll see how it turns out.

Here's the link:

http://prezi.com/wjh0f3gh0p2r/edit/#0_2638445

Here's the direct link to my previous attempt:

http://grammarbandits.blogspot.com/2011/01/sold-and-integrated-over-in-on-and.html

Have a great night, all.

Anna

Mediation of Current Events

Everyone in this class is having a mediated experience around Governor Walker's bill for "fixing the budget." If you would like to share your experiences, and discuss here your observations of the part of mediation in these ongoing events, please do.

I appreciate the thoughtfulness and respect you all bring to our discussions, and look forward to learning from each of you how you are understanding the mediation of what is happening.

I had written a response to this, but I deleted it because it was too angry. Instead, this is how I feel:

(by the way, look at the media connection not only in the fact that this is my Facebook profile and linking to another article, but that it's an article about the media and the protests)

The hypocrisy of all of this is summed up by

A & H Ning Questions

For a final alternative, use this quotation — “Love is downgraded to romance.” — as an opening to try to explain the overall argument(s) of the chapter.

Downgrading love to romance is, I think, more obvious when you've been in love. Love isn't exciting, it's not a bunch of roses or fighting with Matthew McConaughey until he chases you down in the airport, it's not something that follows the plot of the movies. At least that's my experience.

Adorno and Horkheimer are talking about the representation of human relationships through the culture industry. Love becomes romance when romance films and shows begin to tell the masses what "real" love is - it's roses and Matthew McConaughey, or the taming of the shrew (see McClintock!, for example). When we're told what certain emotions look like, or certain human relationships, we're more likely to act in what is considered appropriate ways. I can remember going to a funeral and a wedding as a child and trying to figure out how I was supposed to behave - I relied on the culture industry's representation of normative behavior to figure it out.

(An example I refer to based on my own, very Western upbringing, is that "there's no crying in baseball", or really, ever. Crying is a sign of weakness and weakness is unacceptable, regardless of gender. This is a lesson that I work every day to forget - not because I cry every day, but because I have cried twice in the last four years, and one of those times I had to make myself cry by drinking a beer and watching Steel Magnolias (yes, I get the irony of exploring representation of emotion and relationships throught the culture industry while using a film as an example for how I can become more "cultured"). Le sigh.)

Generalize about how you might apply what you've read in the Benjamin and the Adorno and Horkheimer: describe (again quickly!) a media object you would like sometime to analyze, and add a sentence or three about what our background-theory readings allow or encourage you to say about the object.

Actually, to combine all three of them, I'd like to analyze an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. The reproduction of images, often popular or historical images, in the cartoons, could be really interesting for exploring the aura of the art object, particularly one that has been completely altered for the sake of a different audience. Python often uses images of high art and high culture, but repurposes them for the masses.

Barthes, Language, and Communication

Well, I think my biggest tripping point is that I never took a linguistics class. There are terms in here that I'm familiar with, and I'm following it just fine, but then all of the sudden there's an example that I don't understand at all. Usually the examples are the best way for me to understand something, so I can see a concept in practice, but Barthes' examples (with the exception of the car window example) are more confusing than the concepts. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding the concepts.

For the two chapters, I find the fact that they're referring to each other pretty useless, since I'm just as bewildered by both of them when they're talking about Luhmann. I think the "Language" article almost explained it to me, but then I took a break from reading it because it gave me a headache and I lost the train of thought that illuminated what Luhmann was saying. I never got it back fully. After the third reading of both chapters, though, I started to get it. I think that what makes this difficult for me is that I'm used to having a synchronous conversation about concepts that I don't understand and negotiating my understanding in the moment, rather than returning hours later. Mentally, I'm like a dwarf in "The Lord of The Rings", dangerous at short distances, but not cut out for long distances. I have no attention span for the long haul, and these chapters require the long haul. I'll keep reading them to see if I can understand any more than I do now.

I do find the historical/theoretical groundings provided on the course website very helpful for overcoming some of my confusion.

The concepts I do have a hold on in these readings are Saussure's (which spellcheck keeps trying to make "Sausage", so if I miss one, it's supposed to say "Saussure"). I understand the signifier and signified, and the signification, and I get the little chart that moves to the idea of myth and myth's appropriation of the sign. I understand that there is the actual meaning of an item/object/phrase/article/whatever, and then there is the meaning I associate with it, and then there is the ideological level. I'll try to explain this with an example that isn't useless to me.

Look! It's the Duke, so you know we're in for a fun time, right? Okay, so here is my take on this business with the Duke.

1. This is a picture of John Wayne, el dukerino, in front of an American flag.
2. John Wayne is an American movie star and mostly starred in war flicks and Westerns, so we associate him with guns and general badassedness. (Sign)
3. The myth in this picture, for me, is the ideology of American badassedness, of Manifest Destiny, and American Exceptionalism.

The way I understand these three is:

1 = what it is
2 = what it does
3 = to which use it is put, ideologically

If this were, say, Stephen Urkel from Family Matters in front of the American flag, it would counter the ideology of the Duke. If it were the Hoff in front of a German flag, it would do the same thing as replacing the Duke with Urkel - it would alter the meaning and the ideology that the image represents.

I think I get it.

Reflection #4

The contextualizations have been extremely helpful to me. I don't have any additional suggestions, particularly since my biggest problem with this class so far isn't anything that's related to anything you (Anne) has done as a teacher. My biggest problem is finding time throughout the week to do all the work.

Ninging/D2L prompts have been useful, but I'm not sure the discussion thread works for me as a student. It requires me to return to a conversation hours later, which I'm not very good at. I'm best in the moment - all this focusing and refocusing and unfocusing and refocusing makes my brain hurt. I'm pretty sure I'm not living up to expectations, but I'm sure yours are fine. I do enjoy the comments and the feedback I get from you and they do make me think.

I don't think the tone of the class is not conducive, I just think the form of the class is not conducive. I'm learning just as much about myself as a learner as I am learning about media studies. One of the therapeutic techniques my old doctor used to make me do was to try to make myself aware of how I work best and then working to make the environment as distraction-free as possible. But on the interwebs, there is endless distraction ... and on classmates' blogs. If I can continue to "stray" to other people's work, I can keep myself engaged and learn something as well.

I'm pretty sure that anything that could be altered to accommodate me would do so to the detriment of my classmates and the depth we are attempting to get at in the readings. For me to operate best, I think a central location that does blogging, Ninging/D2L-ing, class calendar, etc, would be great, at least until I find a way to organize all these damn tabs. Otherwise, I think it's up to me to make my experience in this class more productive and efficient.