Serendip Studio

Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Disruption in the Interpretation of Embodied Symbols

Submitted by lgleysteen on Fri, 12/16/2011 - 12:12pm

Precarious and Performative Play Web Paper 4

Disruption in the Interpretation of Embodied Symbols

Final Web Event

Assumptions are made about individuals through the expression and interpretation of embodied acts and body language is the conduit for social meaning. The social meaning behind bodily acts are disrupted when the movement itself is not completely controlled by the individual. Disability, gender, and communication are all entangled in a web of perception, symbolism, and agency. This web of entanglement causes people to not see an action for as it was intended and make assumptions about a person on their limited controls on bodily action. Interpretations of bodily actions are often misunderstood when an individual is not completely able bodied.

At Bryn Mawr: Exploring Transgender Further

Submitted by aybala50 on Fri, 12/16/2011 - 11:57am

Precarious and Performative Play Web Paper 4

In my second web event I questioned Bryn Mawr Colleges admission policy regarding transgender students. I wrote a mock scenario in which a prospective transwoman has a discussion with her mother about wanting to attend Bryn Mawr. In preparation for this project I talked to a few people in administrative positions at the College and was faced with requests at remaining anonymous in their answers. Because of the lack of receiving answers to my questions, I posed my web event as a question. Are transwoman allowed to apply to and attend Bryn Mawr College?

In my third web event, I traced the history of the College in regards to its mission and history of transgender topics. There have been several web events posted by Bryn Mawr students on Serendip, which were very informative and useful in my own movement towards gaining more knowledge of how to build a right relationship between Bryn Mawr College and transgender students. In this web event my focus switched from not only transwomen, but also transmen. I also used information on the Transgender Task Force, which was created in 2007. I noted that President McAuliffe approved the recommendations made by the task force in 2009.

Now, where do I go next? I’ve noted what I believe is Bryn Mawr’s role in the 21st century regarding transgender students. However, I don’t have enough facts. I lack information…knowledge…

Identifying Similarities and Differences

Submitted by rachelr on Fri, 12/16/2011 - 11:31am

Precarious and Performative Play Web Paper 4

One thing that really stuck with me all semester is my memory of out class discussion about testosterone and estradiol; how similar their chemical formulas are, how they can be converted back and forth between each other, and how men and women have both of these sex hormones in their bodies. In our culture however, we tend to categorize testosterone with men and estrogen with females, and never the twain shall meet. I decided to get to know these two molecules by building models using different sized styrofoam balls, wire, and hot glue. My organic chemistry training and model kit helped me get the stereochemistry down (although I must admit not all of my bond angles are completely true to form). This process was fairly straight forward after I drew myself a few copies of the structures. What surprised me about this process was how I began to see the differences between estradiol and testosterone. Estradiol, with the double bonded oxygen to the benzene ring was much more linear than testosterone, composed of cyclohexanes that have more 3D characteristics. At first I was worried that I was building estradiol wrong (I did testosterone first) or that I had built testosterone incorrectly, but examining the structures I saw where the differences began.

Semester of Diffraction

Submitted by Katie Randall on Fri, 12/16/2011 - 11:29am

For me one of the most important parts of this class was the discussion, though it sometimes left me frustrated. I found I tended to either really enjoy and learn from a discussion-- as with the ones on Little Bee, Exile & Pride, and Margaret Price-- or be completely unmoved, confused and unsatisfied. Interestingly, this happened to me when we discussed Paul Farmer's work, which I'd reacted to very emotionally when reading it. Luckily, the productive and interesting discussions really outweighed the empty ones. I'm just not sure why each class fell firmly on one side or the other. Somehow the way we approached each text either really clicked for me or it didn't.

When it clicked I had a lot to say. I think I did a good job of bringing my ideas to the classromm and really listening to others as well. Sometimes I wish the class size had been a bit smaller-- I'm not sure that everyone was heard. But in general I think there was a good back-and-forth of ideas, wth the occasional going in circles.

Mapping Entanglement: Witnessing and Acting in our Built and Natural Environments

Submitted by chelseam on Fri, 12/16/2011 - 11:27am

When I began to formulate this fourth and final webevent, my intention was to continue searching for connections that could be formed between environmental health organizations and food justice groups. My plan was to think “group to group,” make official organizations talk to each other. But, then I began thinking about the individuals for who these organizations act and thinking about ways to connect individuals rather than exclusively the entities that seek to represent them. Kaye reminded me of Witnesses to Hunger, a project by Drexel Univiersity’s Center for Hunger-Free Communities. Witnesses to Hunger began in Philadelphia in 2008 and asks women caring for young children who have experienced hunger and poverty, witnesses, to document their experiences. The project was created because “too often, policies and programs are created without the participation of the people who are most affected,” Witnesses to Hunger seeks to include the voices of those women who’s lives are directly affected by welfare related policies in the dialogue surrounding these issues. Here is a video from the project website:

The Groundings of a Commonwealth: Workshop on Forging Environmental Ethics Through Reading and Telling Stories

Submitted by Gavi on Fri, 12/16/2011 - 11:08am

Precarious and Performative Play Web Paper 4

I created my third web event with every intention of deriving from it a workshop meant to bring together Israeli and Palestinian young adults over shared literatures. Literature was a medium through which, I had argued, right relationships had the space and time to emerge, and was a form particularly suited toward broader socio-political change. While I was excited about this final web event and its possibilities, I was also somewhat daunted by my own distance from the site of relationship building. I was also concerned by the spatial impracticalities of actually translating this workshop into action. I have become, through the course of the semester, very interested in how academic conversation can be used as groundwork for activity and doing; it seemed duplicitous to consider in my postings how “a group of listeners becomes a group of actors,” and even create frameworks for such a transition, but have no intention of taking this kind of action myself.

Self Evaluation

Submitted by Kammy on Fri, 12/16/2011 - 10:10am

This class has definitely been a love hate class that I've had issues with. I certainly wasn't a great student - but at the same time, I wasn't a student who “struggled” with the material. Rather, I was a student who made the decision to selectively engage with the class and its material...and it is from this “diffractive” position that I want to write. To begin with, this was definitely a class that was different from the others that I have taken – it was a class that required engagement, an active as opposed to a passive approach. It was thus that I engage at moments where I understood it to be absolutely necessary. I find it interesting to note my attitude towards this class: whereas I saw the work for all my other classes as mandatory, I somehow saw certain aspects of this class as less than mandatory. The readings were a given...like any other class. I can't say that I disliked any of the readings. I had difficulties with the biology text, but otherwise felt as if I very much enjoyed and engaged with the other texts. This semester in particular, I've been taking “history of anthropological theory”, as well as “anthropology of the body” - in light of this, I was really able to see how the texts for this class connected to everything else. It seemed as if all my classes stressed a postmodern and phenomenological analysis, while also providing different theoretical backgrounds to compare with - which was definitely the case with Barad and the concept of diffraction.

Final Performance

Submitted by melal on Fri, 12/16/2011 - 10:04am

For our final performance, Sam and I organized two games that inspired by two articles that we felt impressed: Pedagody of the Opressed by Paulo Freire and The Achivement of Desire by Richard Rodriquez. We hope it would make our performance more interactive and try to cover some of the main themes we talked about in class, including: social mobility and education, interactive education and generally, the affects on class on people's behaviors in and approaches to their education. Here I attached our script used for the performance:

21 QUESTIONS

Occupations will be posted on the backs of each participant.

Have sections of the room help people guess who they are by answering their questions.

Rule is that you can only ask yes or no questions.

First Round: Basic (doctor, lawyer, Michael Jordan)
Second (more difficult) Round Use money to signify the amount of questions that can be allotted to each participant (a quarter for 25 questions, dime for 10 questions, a nickel for 5 questions)

ROUND 1 EXPLANATION:

evaluation...

Submitted by Kim K on Fri, 12/16/2011 - 9:53am

In reflecting on my experiences in this course throughout the semester, I realized that I had many “entangled” thoughts regarding our course topics, class dynamics and my own personal growth. I also realized that I am a bit overwhelmed with the amount of information and various topics we covered in our 15 weeks together. However, after spending some time revaluating and reprocessing the course and my understanding of the topics and readings, I have this to say…

Sex and Gender Flowchart

Submitted by Kammy on Fri, 12/16/2011 - 9:17am

Precarious and Performative Play Web Paper 4

The following is a satirical piece assembled for an audience of youth and peers. It is meant to illustrate the importance of biology and scientific studies with regards to their influence upon dominant discourse within our culture – regardless of whether those findings are conceptually relevant, methodologically rigid, or statistically significant. Scientific studies are often grasped and cited in the process of forming policy and promoting social agendas. Such use of scientific data is theoretically ideal, so that policies might be informed by factual understanding and thus work towards aiding populations to which they apply. Unfortunately however, data is often misinterpreted and reinterpreted. The practice of drawing upon “scientific studies” in order to bolster an argument is common and widespread. This practice hinges upon a Western epistemology that privileges science and rationality, thereby conflating it with authoritative power. It is therefore no surprise when a politician throws in a statistical figure, or when a scientific study is cited by legislators. The use of such scientific data is a means by which authority is gained, as it (authority) is conferred upon the subject by an unquestioned body of knowledge that is called upon.