Reading for 4/21

Hope you had a good week and found the time useful to get your projects in order!

The reading for this week is just to play around on this site -- watch videos and check out the work that kids are doing. As you look over the Listen Up! site for class this week, think about the title of this week. Do you think of this kind of video work as "talking back?"

Looking forward to seeing you all on Tuesday!

LB :)

Project Groups

Here are the groups for the Final Project. Next week, 4/14, you will be meeting with your groups to plan for the project. Please do not let your group down!! Show up at your meeting so you can be most prepared, creative and amazing in preparing the materials you are going to be teaching us. (If you doon't have a group, please email me ASAP so you don't miss out on a huge part of your grade in this class!!)

Prom:
Meghann
Rachel

Teen Interviews:
Kerri
Stephanie
Paola

Cliques:
Lauren
Claire

Obesity:
Janet

Media Access:
Jane

Drunk Driving:
Emily

Drug Education:
Brian
Temi

Music:
Beth
Meg

Body Image:
Tiffany

Teens and Poverty:
Katrina
Jess
Tiffany
Elena

Gay:
Annie
Alyssa
Chris

Reading for 4/ 7/09

Don't forget that we switched the syllabus so this week, you are reading on Youth and Social Networking, while the following week will be a chance to work on your final projects.


Here are the readings for this week:

Henry Jenkins Interview

Testing Horace Mann

And optional but really, really interesting...

Facebook, MySpace and Social Class

Why Youth Heart MySpace

Lauren Greenfield and the Photo Project

Your next assignment for WMST 350 is the Photo Project, handed out in class on March 3. I am attaching the assignment here for those of you who were absent on that day.

To prepare for this assignment, you need to read and blog on the assigned text for next week, Lauren Greenfield's Photobook, Fast Forward.


Read Greenfield's Artist Statement

Explore the photographs in Greenfield's Fast Forward

Feel free to browse around Greenfield's website for more images of teenagers in the media!

See you with your 20 photographs in class on March 18th! Hope you have a great spring break!

LB :)

Prep

Happy Snow Day!

What a great day to sit on the couch and read a great novel. I am so glad I assigned you a chunk of Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld!

The chapters are on the electronic reserves. The book is engaging and reads quite well. I hope you like it. I chose it because it offer a different representation of teenagers in the media (in this case fiction), as they struggle across issues of difference.

Read carefully, and take note of how issues of social class shape Lee's experience as a teenager in an unfamiliar world. Think about how her experiences at Ault teach her about what it means to be in "insider" or an "outsider". What are the rules of the game called "success"and where do teenagers learn them? Look for times in the chapters when Lee realizes that she never learned the rules she was supposed to learn in order to "fit it" at a place like Ault. Where did the other students learn those rules?

Hip Hop Reading

I decided to cut back the Tricia Rose reading for this week. Because Marco McWilliams will be guest speaking this week, I ant to make sure he has enough time to work with us. So our reading for this week will be an overall context, rather than a dense academic piece.


Please listen to this interview with Tricia Rose from NPR

Please read this interview with Tricia Rose from Time Magazine.

I still want you to follow the Talking Points format listed in our syllabus. please be detailed and specific when you write about the readings. And I would love to see you using hyperlink -- especially on a topic like this one!

Discourse and Power

Last week in class, we talked about how dominant discourses shape our understanding of events, people, places and things. Through "discursive constructions" we building our knowledge of what seems "normal," "natural" and "good." These discourses are shaped by ideologies of power.

For example, we talked about how menstruation get constructed in negative terms BECAUSE it is associated with women and women's bodies. How might the dominant discourses around menstruation be different if they were connected to the power of men?

If Men Could Menstruate, by Gloria Steinem.



Any thoughts?