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Saturday, April 17, 2010

Readings on "good girls'

I sent you an email today (Saturday) with the reading for this week, an article by Deborah Tolman titled "Object Lessons: Romance, Violation, and Female Adolescent Sexual Desire" from
Journal of Sex Education & Therapy, 2000, Vol. 25, Issue 1.

We will use this text to explore how media culture helps to teach young women liessons about female (hetero)sexuality and how these lessons impact the lives of girls and women.

See you on Tuesday!

LB :)

Monday, April 12, 2010

Guest Speaker


Hey all,

Don't forget we have a guest speaker tomorrow in class. We will be joined by Dr. Josh Stenger from Wheaton College. He will have lots to share with us and I am sure you will be as witty and insightful as you always are!

See you Tuesday!

LB :)

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Photo Projects

I am really looking forward to seeing your photo projects on Tuesday, April 6th. Just remember to be very clear and direct about naming an ARGUMENT and using your photos to support it. The rubric I handed out in class should help guide you as you put together your 5-minute digital presentation.

Be as creative as you can be!!

Stretch the boundaries!!

Go above and beyond!!

You can draw on music, other media, images from the web, texts outside of our class, websites, video, art, etc --- as long as your photos are still at the center of your evidence.

Have fun with this!!

LB :)

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Representing Teenagers


Hope that SPRING BREAK is treating you well! I am writing from California where I spent the weekend visiting with my mom in Palm Desert. Sunny and beautiful!!!

The reading for next week is both visual and textual...

I want you to explore the work of Lauren Greenfield, particularly her book,
Fast Forward.

Read the introduction and pay attention to how she frames the project — she uses the photos to tell a particular story about young people in Los Angeles. You will be doing the same thing with your photos, so study her writing as a model. Then look through the full series of photos that are in the her book.

Use your blog to sort out your thoughts about Greenfield’s project. As you do in all of your blogs, make connections to other texts we have read in class. Do you think that Greenfield would agree with Raby’s five discourses? How would McMillian and Morrison respond to Greenfield’s book? Who is present in her book? Who is absent?

And don't forget to take 20-30 pictures of teenagers this week... you will be bringing in 10-20 of them on Tuesday, March 23rd so that we can look them over together.

See you next week!!

LB :)

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Glee-ful Teenagers


It's Glee Week in Teenagers in/and the Media!

For this week, you need to watch the Pilot Episode of the television series GLEE. You can find that episode in a number of places:


1) You can download itunes if you don't already have it on your computer. Then you can purchase the first episode of GLEE for $2.99

2) You can watch it online at AMAZON for $1.99.

3) You can go to NETFLIX and start a Free Trial which will give you two weeks of free viewing. You should get Season I: Volume 1 for the Pilot episode.

If you want to "watch ahead" for class, we will be viewing episode 9 ("wheels") in class. It is available for free on hulu.com or on the FoxTV website.

For your blog post this week, I want you to think about how this show represents teenagers. What is the "secret education" that this show offers? Remember the work we did in class around Beauty and the Beast using Linda Christiansen:

“I ask students to watch for who plays the lead. Who plays the baffoon? Who plays the servant? I encourage them to look at the race, station in life, body type of each character. What motivates the character? What do they want out of life? What’s their mission? If there are people of color (in the cartoon), what do they look like? How are they portrayed? How does the film portray overweight people? What about women other than the main character? What jobs do you see them doing? What do they talk about? What are their main concerns? What would young children learn about women’s roles in society if they watched this film and believed it? What roles do money, possessions, and power play in the film? What has it? Who wants it? How important is it to the story? What would children learn about what’s important in society?” (Christiansen, 129-130)

Use this, along with any other tools we have been developing in class, to guide your analysis.

Here are a few brief and random articles about the show that may help you to do some analysis on your blog:

Is GLEE anti-Christian?

Glee and Gay Identity

More Gay Commentary

Glee and Images of Disability

Brief comments on Gender and Race

Songs in the Key of Racism

Have fun with this!! See you on Tuesday!

LB :)

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Readings for Tue 3/4

Hi folks,

The readings for this week are two very short, but very dense, excerpts from Dr. Jared Ball. Please read both of them very carefully and use your blog to make sense of them.

Reading #1

Reading #2

Scholar and Activist Marco McWilliams will be with us on Tuesday as a fabulous guest lecturer. I know you will enjoy his work.

See you on Tuesday!

LB :)

Monday, February 15, 2010

Spoof as a form of Resistance

Given all that we talked about last week, around Media Literacy, I thought you would appreciate this Superbowl commercial and its follow up spoof... comments welcome.

What does this ad say about the state of men and masculinity in 2010?


And what does this ad say about women and femininity in response?


It's not about teenagers, but reading ads like these is good practice in honing our analytical skills!

See you tomorrow!

LB :)