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?

Thinking about Teenagers...

Hi all,

As you can tell, we are making a shift in the course this week as we move from the skills and tools of media analysis (spectatorship positions, textual analysis of Beauty and Madonna, media literacy skills, cultural studies questions for studying media) to a more direct focus on TEENAGERS.

Thomas Hine maps out some of the ways that we have understood teenagers in American history, and ultimately he challenges the dominant ideas (remember our pictionary drawings of dominant ideas?) about who teenagers are.

So as you read, really work to figure out what his point is. What is he saying about teenagers, and why does it even matter to him?

Check out the syllabus for more specific instructions about how to set up your blog posts.

See you Tue night.

LB :)

Media Literacy

Hi all,

Hope you have had a good weekend. Please make sure to send me a comment with your blog address — several of you do not yet have your blogs up and you should have three posts up (When I Was 13, Christensen and Media Literacy) by class this week.


While posts are not due until Tuesday, several of you have already posted this week.

• Go check out Annie's Blog to see how she uses LINKS throughout her writing to connect to external resources. Do this as often as you can — it is what makes blogging different than just writing a journal off line.

• And don't miss Janet's youtube post of a fabulous spoken word poem, Slip of the Tongue. I think Christensen would approve... what do you think? Leave her a comment with your thoughts.

See you in class on Tuesday for a Media Literacy Day!!

LB :)

Welcome to Teenager in/and the Media!

Welcome to this WMST 350 blogging adventure!

Sometime before Monday, Jan 27, you will set up your own blog to use this semester as a place to process all of your thoughts and questions for Teenagers in/and the Media. You will also use this space to post many of your assignments, and to keep track of how your peers are thinking about the issues we cover in class.

A blog is your very own, personal online journal. It is public, in that I and your classmates can read it and comment on it, but it is your space and you can control most everything about it. (If you want to make it private so that *only* members of this class can read it, you will just need to enter the email addresses of each member of the class).

In the context of this course, your blog has two purposes:

1) Your blog will provide a space for you to keep most of your assignments over the course of our semester together. You will not hand in written assignments to me each week; rather you will post them on your blog. In this sense, your blog is merely your assignment notebook that you will use as you read and prepare for class each week. You will also be posting any additional thoughts you have: responses to class discussion, after thoughts, things you forgot to say in class, relevant experiences you have, etc.

2) In 2009, online spaces are central to any discussion of teenagers and the media. Creating your own blog will also introduce you to the blogisphere if you don't know this place already. I hope that your experience on blogger will inspire you to explore other (teen) blogs as well.

So here's how it works:

You are going to set up your own blog. If you don't think of yourself as very "tech-saavy," don't stress! The site below makes it very easy for you to get your own personal space up and running in no time at all.

Once you get your blogs up and running, I will provide links to each of them on the right of this page (where your names are already listed). You can come here to this page (my blog) if you want to to read what I write, or to link to one another's blogs as well. This site is new and improved so managing, editing, posting, designing and getting creative on your blog is now easier than ever!

To start your own blog, you will go to:

www.blogger.com



The big orange arrow at the bottom right of the page will direct you to creating your own blog on a site called blogspot.com. Follow the instructions to open up a free account. Don't forget your Username and Password!! You will need them to login everytime.

As you fill in the info, you will be asked to name your blog. This title will appear at the top of your blog.

Then, you need to choose an address:

http://_______.blogspot.com

This will be the web address associated with your site. you can call it anything you like. Be clever or simple (or both) -- it is up to you.

You will also need to choose a design template for your blog. Look through the options listed and see what appeals to you. You can change this later and can even find fun, creative templates at sites like PYZAM.

Once you have the account set up, you can start posting. A “posting” is an entry on your blog. (For clarification, you have one blog, but many postings). Give the post a title and then compose as you would any journal entry. When you are finished, hit the button at the bottom that says Publish Post. It will not appear on your blog until you publish it. You can always go back and edit old posts and create new ones.

Your First Post:
Your first post should be a short introduction to you... when you were 13. Start your entry with , "When I was 13..." and write a little bit about yourself through the lens of your memory. Just a short paragraph or two — no big deal. You will post the rest of the entries as they are due (see course syllabus for dates), or whenever you have something to say!

When you are done creating your site and posting your first entry, please come back to this blog and post a comment at the end of my first posting (scroll down) that includes your blog address so that I can post it in the link list to the right.

Some Tips and Helpful Hints:

• Once you are in your blog, look at the top right corner of the screen. If you click on the word CUSTOMIZE, you will be able to make design changes, create new posts, edit old posts, etc. Under the Layout Option,
  
• If you want to make your blog a bit more interesting, poke around online and make a list of websites related to teenagers, popular culture, media literacy or anything else relevant and post them on your blog as a Resource List. To do this, view your blog and click on the CUSTOMIZE link at the top right corner of your screen. Click on ADD A NEW ELEMENT, and then choose Link List. This will allow you to add as many links as you desire. They will show up in a box on your blog!
• Just do the best you can with this. If you get stuck, don't fret... I am happy to help you anytime as you work on getting this started. Send me an email, come see me in office hours, or grab me after class. And remember: you can't break it. It is just a blog. Everything can be changed if need be!

Good luck!!

LB :)