Blogs

At the beginning of this class, I did not know what I was expecting. I figured I would show up and see what happens, because I was bound to learn something. And I certainly did. I had no idea how to define feminism but I assumed it was a good thing, and now I have a concrete definition. Well, as concrete as it can be in these circumstances.  Feminism is about equal treatment of men and women, but in order to do that we have to equalize treatment of races, classes, appearances, abilities, etc.  Feminism is really about equality for everybody, and that is something worth fighting for.

I feel like a very different person from the one I was at the beginning of the semester, but I know that is only because I’ve lived longer and experienced more.  My first serendip posts more or less had a distinct point to them—I knew what I thought, whether it was right or not.  They gradually got less and less certain, which reflects my experiences as a person over the last few months.  I questioned everything in the last few months, partially because of this course. Before this semester, I simply accepted that I knew what I knew and that there were always going to be things that I didn’t know.  That never stopped me from trying to find answers, but it was more acceptable to me if I never found them.  After this class, I question everything and I need to have a definite result of my questioning, and be able to defend it.  It is a very defeating kind of feeling.

So EGrumer and I worked with dglasser to help flesh out her idea of Literary Labs a little more!

Some of the things I was responsible for were:

• Finding a decent book list
• Finding a good character profile
• Making a playlist of music (more on this later)

I linked to the websites where I found both the list and character profile in case anyone wants to see them again.  The book list was something dglasser knew she wanted when she originally designed the labs.  The idea, and she can correct me if I'm wrong, was that you would be able to draw inspiration from these various works.  The character profile is something that I (and EGrumer) had used before when acting.  Normally they're used to help people in the chorus or minor roles flesh out a character for themselves so they can put more into their performance on stage.  I liked this one because it was really detailed and I thought it would be useful to help writers develop characters if that's what they wanted to work on in the lab. 

           How can we define genre?  It is a kind of something, a type.  It is a manner we use to categorize information that we come into contact with on a daily basis.  Genres evolve.  This semester we have explored the evolution of various genres; we have seen how the lines between them become blurry.  We have taken the definition of genre and molded it to fit in ways we may not have thought about before.  With this in mind, how has the genre of this class evolved over the course of the semester?  It has evolved.  Everything evolves.  I have evolved, the class has evolved, and this paper will evolve as it is written.  The evolution of the class is important because it helps me to see where my problems were and it helps me to tie everything together and try to make sense of a class that I struggled through. 

My final project is a picture book for adults to inform them on gender and sexuality--what they are, why they are important, and how they work together.  I made this because I have friends and family who don't really understand much of this, and I want to give them a concrete way to get informed. It is an overview of basic concepts to create a vocabulary to help readers communicate their ideas with other people who without having to define every term.

I chose to make this in book form because reading a book is a different experience from surfing websites.  Reading a book is a more personal experience because you can hold it in your hands and turn the pages yourself. On the internet, you can click hyperlinks as much as you want, but you depend on the hardware to obey you. You can change the website, delete your history, and distract yourself with a funny cat video in all of 20 seconds.  A book is different because you make a decision to sit down and read it, understand it, and absorb it.  The stories stay with you.

That being said, I chose to include several resources for readers that go more in-depth than the book because, like I said, this book is just an overview.  I included websites, a film, and a GLBT National Help line.  I chose four websites for information, and seven websites by religion because sometimes people forget that sexuality and religion are not mutually exclusive and a higher power can be tremendously helpful when dealing with issues such as these.

Is life a series of choices or is it predetermined?  How each of us addresses this question is key to our understanding of life, our purpose and our happiness.  If you feel that you have free will, you feel agency and an ability to impact the behavior of yourself and others and to choose a direction for the events in your life.  But is it a binary, are the two possibilities complete free will or complete determinism?  In this paper I would like to investigate how they work together.  I think that many of us believe that we have free will but then make choices based on determinism.  Why do we behave in this way, how can we change it and what would the impact be?

Lit Kinds Song (Tune of Sundown By Gordon Lightfoot)

Chorus:
Lit Kinds, I think it’s a shame if you don’t know fact from fiction how can truth be explained.

Lit Kinds I’m going insane ‘cause I realize our perceptions are never the same.

Verse:

Digital Humanities are moving along now you don’t need a doctorate to survey what’s going on.

Verse:

Then Price came to visit said she’s open to things and if we laid down on the floor it wouldn’t bother a thing.

Chorus

Verse:

When you’re struggling with the difference essay, story or life, start with definitions it might bring it to light.

Verse:

Then we’re talking about breaking and those kind of things but some don’t like when teachers share personal things.

Chorus

Verse:

Now we start with a discussion of a title’s name and if you don’t really get it better read closer in.

Verse:

We’re working on the board, which we don’t really like, let’s just talk in our seats I think that’ll be alright.

Chorus

Verse:

(War of the) Worlds was really different on the radio

Wells tried to trick us, Was that nice? (Yo!)

Verse:

Then we’re filling out our evals, Our letters to Anne

Every question had genre so confusion set in.

I want to explore a text that is considered by mainstream audiences to be a text of female empowerment: Cosmopolitan magazine. I particularly am interested in the way that Cosmopolitan simultaneously instructs/ “empowers” women to reverse the male-female power dynamic through sex and tells them to feel guilty for doing so. The ideal Cosmo girl both objectifies men and feels ashamed of doing so; hence the woman who reverses this dynamic without this requisite guilt is considered shameless and worthy of judgment.

McMahon mentions early on that the magazine rose to prominence as a source of female empowerment (this is not to say it was universally understood as empowering; it was, and is, a controversial text) only after it came under the leadership/editorship of Helen Gurley Brown who at the time (she was editor from 1965-1997) and changed it’s purpose from a periodical of fiction stories to an extended advice column for the single, sexually liberated woman. McMahon does describe Brown as someone considered by Ms and The New York Times (during the 70s and 80s) to be somewhat of a feminist providing “ ‘half a feminist message’ to women who would otherwise have none (New York Times Magazine, 1974)” (McMahon 382): Ms referred to her as “the women’s magazine editor that first admitted that women are sexual too” (July 1985—30th Anniversary Issue). Thus she was considered and for the most-part is considered “somewhat” of a feminist innovator.

when there are no more words

For our final performance, Alexandra and I chose four artifacts which represented the gems of our learning from this semester in Literary Kinds.  The artifacts were:

1. sourdough bread
2. masks
3. twigs from a tree