COMM395/F11/Section

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Contents

August 31

Introductions

  • Name, Year, Major (or what you're thinking about majoring in)
  • Something you are excited about for the coming semester (doesn't have to be 395)

Housekeeping, admin

  • Is everyone on blackboard?
  • Review TA handout
  • Review journal handout

Experience of reading the readings

  • Is it hard, easy?
  • How are you taking notes?
  • Strategies for managing large volume of reading

Note-taking strategies

What is freewriting?

September 7

Housekeeping:

  • Attendance
  • Throw the posterous up on the board
  • 2nd round of journals due Thursday
  • Debrief journals, clarifying questions

Freewrite:

  • Reminder about how it works, no stopping, no editing, no deleting
  • Prompt: Show one of the vids that I ripped.
  • Goal: write about the CONTEXT of the ad. So far, we've been talking mainly about the TEXT. The McClintock article shifts us into talking about the context. How was this ad produced? How did it come to be on my flash drive? What is it's original context? What is the story of this ad?
  • 2 minutes free writing

Goal for today

Be able to answer these 3 questions

  • What are the key terms at play?
  • What kinds of questions can we ask?

Activity

(In the small class, we'll do this as one little group. In the bigger class, we'll break up into groups of 3.)

Authors:

  • Judith Lorber, "Believing is seeing: Biology as ideology"
  • Lise Eliot, "The truth about boys and girls"
  • Michael Messner, “Barbie Girls and Sea Monsters: Children Constructing Gender”
  • Ellen Seiter, “Buying Happiness, Buying Success: Toy Advertising to Parents”
  • Anne McClintock, “Soft-Soaping Empire: Commodity Racism and Imperial Advertising”

Part 1: Generate word bank (10 min)

  • Group members brainstorm a word back for 5 minutes on their own
  • Groups put these terms on the board

= Part 2: Revisiting (10 min)

  • Identify verbs, nouns, adjectives
  • Group members pick a few key terms and link them together into questions
  • Each question should involve a relationship between two or more key terms
  • We'll come back together and share some of these (add them to the word bank doc)

Some key terms and phrases to get things started

  • "Biology as ideology" (Lorber)
  • Genitalia
  • Gender, sex
  • Social construction of gender - what counts as "social"? (Lorber)
  • Gender and media - what counts as "media"?
  • Institutions, institutionalized (Messner)
  • Hegemony, hegemonic, power, domination, subordination
  • Norm, ideal

September 14

Housekeeping

Roll call

  • Double check that everyone is on the spreadsheet

Journals

  • Everyone should have turned in a journal by now
  • If you haven't, see me at the end of section
  • Everyone should also have received a journal with written feedback from me tommorrow

Freewrite

Anderson Cooper goes tanning with Snooki

Spectatorship, Address

"Media produces subjectivity"

What subjectivities are being produced here?

The gaze is "multi-nodal, interactive, relational"

  • What/who are the nodes?
  • What are the relations among them?



Pick up on last week's discussion of ...

Social construction

  • Social, society
  • Institution, institutional

Add to the mix:

  • Subjectivity, subjecthood, subject position
  • Discourse, discursive

What does it mean for these things to be relational?

  • Active relationship
  • Two-way street

Activity

Draw a box on the board, label it "social"

  • Inside three columns:
    • Institution
    • Subject
    • Discourse

If there is time, (depends on length of freewrite discussion) break group into 3 parts

  • If not, go forth as a whole

Part 1.

  • Brainstorm examples of each of the three

Part 2.

  • Construct scenarios that illustrate their relations
    • What are the institutions at play?
    • What are the available subjectivities?
    • Where can we observe discourse?

Example:

  • A blood bank refuses blood donations from any man who has ever had sex with another man.
    • Institution: medical school, NGOs
    • Subjectivity: normal sexuality, deviant sexuality
    • Discourse: journals, doctor's visits, news

Watch 20 minutes of FIT

Sept 21

Reminder: Beauty Culture due next Thursday instead of this Thursday

Freewrite

Repressive hypothesis Something with DADT? Sex/abstinence education?


Foucault

"not that they consigned sex to a shadow existence but that they dedicated themselves to speaking of it ad infinitum while exploiting it as the secret

Repressive hypothesis

Putting sex into discourse (Words)

Institutionalization

Discipline, setting up norms, rules, categories, boundaries

Double impetus: (transgressive) pleasure, (resistance) power

  • Power in circulation, in motion
  • Power is not completely repressive

Confession

Sept 28

Examples of repressive hypothesis, confession

  • Beyond SATC?

Fitness: presidents

  • Clinton jogging, SNL skit
  • Obama basketball
  • Bush clearing brush on the ranch

Sept 29

Freewrite

Extreme Makeover, Michelle from Worcester

  • "Gender identity issue"
  • "Maybe I want a kid, I want a husband"
  • "To show you all that I am"
  • "A sad look to her eyebrows, eyelids"
  • Examining all of the little details
  • Using computer imaging, role of technology
  • "Extra skin"
  • Role of mirrors "Small amount of pain is like a badge of honor ... got through this ... moving on to next phase of life"
  • "The person I believed was underneath"

Listen for 1 or 2 quotes or moments that jump out at you

  • How does this fit with our (emerging) discussion of normalization and disciplinary practice?

Super long clip but people seem really into it. What are the different parts: build up, who she is/why she's there, consultation, computering, actual surgery, recovery, reveal what is missing from this way of telling the story? what happens that we do not see?

Some amount of verbal reaction to the clip, people are having no trouble writing their reactions. It seemed like more people reacted to the "badge of honor" part this time than they have in the past. I wonder if that resonates because her appearance is so striking?

Topics for the day

Bodies have a history and bodies "speak" even when they are silent

  • Female body: constructed historically as sirens/ temptresses
  • Naturalized

Activity

Break class up into 4 parts

  • For 15 minutes, each group discusses the question they are given
  • They need to come up with at least 1 example:
    • From the reading - especially Bordo
    • From discourse
    • In practice

Groups report back

In the larger section, form new groups containing one person from each of the 1st groups

  • Identify areas where these topic areas overlap
  • Are there contradictions?
  • What new questions emerge?

4 groups

What role does race play in normalizing bodies?

  • Construction of normal-abnormal dichotomy
  • Non-European constructed as primitive, savage, sexually available, animalistic
  • More "bodily"
  • Slavery? Colonialism?

How does gender map onto mind-body dualism?

  • Masculine "mind", feminine "body"
  • Menstruation, childbirth
  • Rationality

What is the "feeling" of power and empowerment?

  • Appearance-based attention
  • How is power gendered differently?
  • Top-down v network model of power

What is the relationship of the "gaze" to "disciplining" the body?

  • Surveillance, performance
  • Duty, self-care, discipline
  • Beauty regimines

Lingering thoughts that might come up

How can we say they are feminized?

  • When it is the "hyper-masculine" man who seems to have irrational, violent, brutish character?

Who is left to be cool, rational, of the mind?

  • European, white
  • Not toooo strong?

Class implications?

  • Poor whites?
    • Juggalos: "Wigger" terminology

Sports?

  • What kinds of masculinity are on display in football?
  • Lineman, ends, quarterback, coaches

Oct 5

Defining masculinity

  • Faludi, Davey Crockett/ Daiel Boone
  • Violence, emotions, expresion
  • Consumerism

Freewrite:

  • Dodge response ads
  • "Battle of the sexes"

Woman's Last Stand

Freewrite

Dodge ad:

  • Workplace
  • Home: social obligation, tidiness, shared media experiences

Freewrite:

  • Dodge response ads
  • "Battle of the sexes"

Woman's Last Stand

What is common to both?

  • She talks about
    • Social obligations: your smelly friend
    • Tidiness, self-care: I'll shave ... everywhere
    • Shared media experiences: Rush, Mall Cop
    • Workplace: 75 cents to the dollar for the same job
  • But also some topics that are more explicitly about power
    • Looking at my breasts, talking about menstruation
    • "Raise your children"

What is missing from each of these?

  • Who is not included in this "battle of the sexes"?
  • Is there a right or wrong?
  • When do you feel this way?

"About to snap" -- not an obvious read

  • There's also the sense that the Dodge video is about fun
  • Complaining about the women in the narrator's life but it makes him seem kinda pitiful as well
    • Repeated in the Women's Last Stand video: "feel so fucking sad for you"

I won't tell them about how you cry during Rudy

Discussion

Goals:

  • Recap lecture: post-war disenfranchisement, consumerism, violence
  • Socio-economic class discussion

What is a "real" man? (Find the contradictions)

Activity

With the person sitting near you, locate two images or videos (or other artifacts) online that illustrate the "real" man (max 10 min)

  • In the small class, do this together

Talk about the urban woodsman

(Jeffrey) Costello, (Robert) Tagliapietra

Menswear blogging

Where to buy!



This 2007 Dane Cook comedy show is all about masculinity. And pretty problematic in places too, I think... Here's the link for the full show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-WY9L4UHBg

Louis CK's 2008 comedy show "Chewed Up." Another view of masculinity (and discussions of the body and more). This is broken up in 6 parts:

PART 1: http://www.youtube.com/user/manishslalster#p/u/2/MfXPdJhGelk PART 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-3fcqouq9I PART 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iGeMLZk0Pk&feature=related PART 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSaZlVnPOKw&feature=related PART 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBsDPUMFtkQ&feature=fvwrel PART 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t4KqnhMk4k&feature=related

Louis CK Riff on Cinnabon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp-j72ALHHs

Louis CK Speaking in voice of annoying people sounds effeminate (either a woman or gay man) and then makes offhand remark about going crazy and killing hookers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSbpyxFC24k&feature=related (beginning through :0:59)

Dane Cook on tricking women who are attracted to motorcycles/"bad boys": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G4Y52Z4BDU

Dane Cook - MotorCycle Helmet

Oct 11

Goals:

  • Talking about male sexuality
  • Topics from the midterm: the gaze, discourse, Foucault (repressive hypothesis), normalize, discursive explosion

Freewrite

What are some possible constructions of male sexuality?

DMX - Ruff Ryder's Anthem

D'Angelo - How Does It Feel?

John Mayer - Your Body Is A Wonderland

Mickey Avalon - My Dick

Joe Nichols - Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off

Ne-Yo - Miss Independent


    • "Woman's man"
    • "Man's man", homosocial

Male sexuality in the media:

  • Michael Jordan
  • Queer eye
  • Rock Hudson

Richard Dyer

Race and male sexuality

Oct 19

Freewrite

  • If you had to write your term paper right now, what would you want to write about and what would you need to write it?

My tricky example:

Research Questions:

Something about sexism and comments threads Something about Indian women, gender, the Other Something about protesting and gender, protesting and technology Something about women and technology Something about photography and the gaze, circulation of images online

Keywords:

internet computer-mediated communication forum, messageboard sexism women indian women and technology women and computers photography (gaze) resistance


Activity 0

  • Research Questions
  • What do I want to know? What do I want to say?


Activity 1

  • Generating keywords and phrases. Strategies: being specific versus being general. Synonyms. Disciplinary language (e.g. “discourse”).

Actvity 2

Preliminary search using these keywords. Demo using boolean logic and “advanced search.” Things to watch out for: non-aca sources, aca sources from distant disciplines.

  • Keywords
  • AND, OR, NOT logic
  • Keyphrases

Goal: each student finds at least 1 promising source.

Report back / discussion

Ask a few students to volunteer sources for discussion. How did they get there? Which keywords lead them to that source? What year was it published? In which journal/venue?

http://libguides.usc.edu/communication

Oct 26

Goal for today, read these against each other:

  • Bartky - Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchical Power
  • Kathleen Rowe on Roseanne

Freewrite

Annuale http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x501tn_annuale-commercial_fun



Bartky

"Docile bodies" (26)

  • "Power fragments and partitions the body's time, its space, and its movements" (Foucault 1979, 28)
  • "Body-object articulations", "coercive links" between bodies and the apparatus of production, citizenship (desk, rifle) (26)

"Tyranny of slenderness" (28)

  • Dieting
  • Exercise

Restricted "bodily comportment" (29)

  • "Reluctance to reach, stretch, or extend the body" (29)
  • Constriction + grace + eroticism + modesty (30)

"Practices and subjected" body (33)

  • In need of improvement, otherwise inadequate
  • Almost certain failure (34)
  • Countering the notion that "women dress for other women" (34)

Disciplinary authority?

  • "the disciplinary power that inscribes femininity on the female body is everywhere and it is nowhere" (36)
  • No formal institutional structure, e.g. no cops arrest you for being out of order

Why aren't all women feminists? (37)

  • "System of gender subordination ... illustrates ... the ancient tension between what-is and what-appears" (38)
  • Categories of masculine and feminine critical to "our informal social ontology" (39)
"When the mastery of the disciplines of femininity produces a triumphant result, we are still only women" (44)


"Unruly woman"

  • Female outrageousness and transgression (203)
  • "Semiotics of the unruly" exposes a gap between New Left/Women's movement + realities of working class family life 2 decades later

"the woman on top" (204)

  • "whenever women, especially women's bodies, are considered excessive"
  • "violates the unspoken feminine sanction against 'making a spectacle' of herself"

unruly woman

  • multivalent, her social power unclear (204)
  • making such disobedience thinkable
  • a source of danger for threatening the conceptual categories which organize our lives
  • not only delight but disgust and fear

unruly woman

  • "gossiped and cackled in the margins of history"
  • e.g. Miss Piggy

Introducing Roseanne

Roseanne on Carson, 1985

Roseanne on HBO, 1987

Roseanne Season 1 clips, 1988

More on Roseanne

Authority

  • "Author rather than actor"
  • As author of a self over which she claims control


More on unruly

Making a spectacle of oneself, agency

  • Returning the male gaze (205)
  • Producing a spectacle of and for herself
  • Indifference (207)
  • "Out of control...his control" (207)

Looseness

Grotesque body

  • Maternal, excessive
  • Taking up space

Loose body LANGUAGE

  • Sprawls, flops
  • Sloppy
  • Laughing
  • Screaming

Fat

"Norms of the 'legitimate' body - are accepted across class boundaries while the ability to achieve them is not" (207)

  • Junk food late at night may be a sensible choice for comfort after a day punching out plastic forks (208)

Nov 2

Unruliness/postfeminism (15m)

Brainstorm some key terms from the past few classes:

  • Unruly, taking up space, loose, loud
  • Comportment
  • Containment, proper, controlled
  • Postfeminism, choice

Freewrite (4m)

Report back, discussion

  • Challenge of bringing race into this convo

Workshopping prospectus (10m)

Two weeks ago, we workshopped academic sources

  • Spend couple minutes revisiting this activity
  • Ask students to share sources they've seen, use these examples to discuss
  • Bring in a recent article to share

Talk through prospectus, term paper prompt

Due dates:

  • Prospectus: November 8
  • Term paper: December 1

Prospectus is not essay format, list is fine.

One page is ideal. 2 pages if absolutely necessary.

What's in a (cultural studies style) term paper?

Every paper must have:

  • Media artifact
  • Driving questions (1-3)
  • Thesis, argument, claim
  • Source material (3 scholarly sources)
    • Theory from class
    • Outside source
  • "So what?", stakes

Talk through each of these elements (using examples from article that we read for class?)

Red flags

  • Autobiographical anecdotes
  • "I" statements
  • Effects claims ("this video caused girls to get eating disorders")
  • Grand, sweeping claims ("since the beginning of time")
  • "Human nature"

Starting points?

There are many points of entry. Often a media artifact catches your attention but you're not sure why. Use Trope's list of suggested themes and see if any resonate with your artifact.

Gender as ideology

  • Power, domination
  • Unruliness, resistance and challenging norms
  • Domesticity and containment
  • Disciplinary practices (exercise, diet, beauty, etc.)
  • Feminism/post-feminism
  • Empowerment
  • “Controlling images” and stereotypes
  • Managing difference/diversity, passing

Activity (10m)

Groups of two

  • Share the artifact you have in mind and the theme you're thinking about (2m)
  • Listen to feedback from your partner (2m)
  • Flip roles

Report back (5m)

What do you think your biggest challenge will be?

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