Weekly Writing Assignments:
Once per week, you will be assigned a 200-300 word writing assignment. It will be listed on this page one week before the assignment is due. Assignment #1
Due by 2pm on Thursday September 15, 2011
Email to alice.nye@salve.edu
In the selections from Watching the English that we read, anthropologist, Kate Fox shows how to test the unwritten or taken-for-granted rules of a society by breaking them (cutting in line, for example), and that the surprise or outrage inspired by breaking such rules can register how important or ingrained that rule is within the given context. For today's assignment, observe general patterns of behavior in one specific area (the rules around proper food etiquette, the guidelines on how to behave in the elevator, rules around speaking on public transportation or in the library, or anything else that may come to mind that is not illegal -- I am not bailing you out of jail). Do an experiment where you break this unspoken pattern or rule that you have just observed without explaining the reasons for your behavior (eat spagetti with your hands, sit down or stand too close to someone in the elevator, start singing in the library, etc.). In your 200 word reading response, reflect on what pattern/rule you observed, and why you chose this one to break. What were people's responses to your errant behavior? Did you experience any discomfort in trying to break this rule? What do you think this experiment might tell you about something like "American-ness"?
Please email this response to me as a word attachment no later than 2pm on Thursday, September 15th.
Assignment #2
Due by 2pm on Thursday September 22, 2011
Email to alice.nye@salve.edu
Choose ONE of the following options and write a 200-300 word response on it:
1) The status of women in society is closely related to their role in the economy. By interpreting the meaning and function of artifacts such as the venus figurines, woven textiles, or plant and animal remains near hearth sites, archaeologists can try to reconstruct social and economic systems. Such interpretations, however, may be influenced by archaeologists' own biases such as their culture's understandings of gender roles. How might the archaeologists in Heather Pringle's article, "New Women of the Ice Age," been influenced by their own cultural understandings of gender when they interpreted the gender roles of men and women of the prehistoric past? Do you think that interpretations of gender roles, particularly in relation to the economy ("man the hunter," for example) may have also shaped our cultural understandings of masculinity and feminity?
2) Paleopathology is a field of physical anthropology and archaeology in which bones from the fossil record are examined in order to reconstruct patterns of diet, illness, and disease in the past. What do the findings in "Disease and Death at Dr. Dickson's Mounds" tell us about the effects of the rise of agriculture on (a) health and (b) changes in the organization of social life?
1) The status of women in society is closely related to their role in the economy. By interpreting the meaning and function of artifacts such as the venus figurines, woven textiles, or plant and animal remains near hearth sites, archaeologists can try to reconstruct social and economic systems. Such interpretations, however, may be influenced by archaeologists' own biases such as their culture's understandings of gender roles. How might the archaeologists in Heather Pringle's article, "New Women of the Ice Age," been influenced by their own cultural understandings of gender when they interpreted the gender roles of men and women of the prehistoric past? Do you think that interpretations of gender roles, particularly in relation to the economy ("man the hunter," for example) may have also shaped our cultural understandings of masculinity and feminity?
2) Paleopathology is a field of physical anthropology and archaeology in which bones from the fossil record are examined in order to reconstruct patterns of diet, illness, and disease in the past. What do the findings in "Disease and Death at Dr. Dickson's Mounds" tell us about the effects of the rise of agriculture on (a) health and (b) changes in the organization of social life?
Assignment #3
Due by 2pm on Thursday September 29, 2011
Email to alice.nye@salve.edu
Summarize the key points of both "The Archaeology of Us" and "Your Trash Is Someone's Treasure." Be sure to inlclude what methods or approaches to studying trash each author uses and what both articles tell us about our cultural beliefs and practices through examining the use, disposal, and reuse of things.
Tuesday October 3 and Thursday October 6
No writing assignment this week! Please spend this week working on your midterm paper. I encourage you to make use of the Writing Center. It is an excellent resource and can really strengthen your work.
Assignment #4
Due by 2pm on Tuesday October 18, 2011
Email to alice.nye@salve.edu
In her chapter, "Performance, Performativity, Parody, and Politics," Nikki Sullivan writes:
"Butler claims that gender is a tenuous identity constituted in and through the 'stylized repetition of acts' (1999: 140). It is tenuous beucase gender is not an expression of a seamless internal identity, the essential ground of action. Rather, the gendered self is 'structured by repeated acts that seek to appropriate the ideal of a substantial ground of identity, but which, in their occasional discontinuity, reveal the groundlessness of this 'ground'' (141). In other words, it is not in a single act of constitution or invention that that the subject is brought into being, but through [the] re-citation and repetition of actions that are always public or shared" (Sullivan 2003: 85).
This passage suggests that, against essentialist claims that gender is natural and innate, Judith Butler (a post-structuralist) asserts that gender is, in fact neither natural nor innate. Instead of being something innate to a person from birth, gender is constructed over time through the repetition of gestures, tastes, actions, and desires that attempt to imitate the current, shared social ideal of gender identity, and this shared social ideal itself changes over time and across cultures. In "Paris Is Burning," we see that the social ideal to which many african-american and latina drag queens in the late 1980's U.S. aspire is based on upper class white forms of identity like supermodels or businessmen.
In your writing assignment, give some examples from the film of how these drag queens construct their gender identity by drawing on and performing a set of culturally shared actions, gestures, modes of dress, speech, etc. How do you see these different performances as illuminating the constructedness (instead of the innateness) of gender? Can you think of examples from your daily life of how you draw on a culturally shared set of actions, gestures, modes of dress, speech, etc. to perform your own gender?
Assignment #5
Thursday October 27, 2011
Please print out written response and bring it to class.
Watch the film, "Race: The Power of an Illusion" which is available through McKillop library's e-reserves. Here is the link: http://library.uri.edu/search/r?SEARCH=soa130. (It is also at the top of the page). The password is "SOA130."
Write a short essay (300 words) on this film and relate it to the AAA Statement on Race that you read. Specifically, I would like for you to summarize the assertions made in episode 3 of the series and at the end of the AAA piece that suggest that inequalities that exist between different "racial" groups are not a reflection of natural biological difference in capability or behavior, but are rather the effects of economic, educational, and political circumstances that create and reinforce social inequalities.
Assignment #6
Thursday November 3, 2011
Read Scott Kiesling's article, "Dude." If you have trouble with terminology, refer to the slides from the lecture on linguistics and sociolinguistics. The term most used is "index." Remember that, in semiotics (the study of signs), an index is a sign that points to something else (like an index, or pointer finger). Examples of indices are footprints or weathervanes or smoke. In this article, dude is used in social interactions to index a certain kind of social identity and relationship between speaker and addressee that Kiesling refers to as "cool solidarity." In addition to having the social meaning that indexes a laidback, friendly, non-intimate (often) masculine stance between the speaker and the addressee, dude serves other interactional functions (see pages 290-298).
A. Dave, Pete, and Boisson are fraternity members playing monopoly. Dez has a property that Pete wants, and it happens to be red. The following exchange takes place:
Gimme the red Dave, dude. (1.0)
Dave: No.
Pete: Dave dude, dude Dave hm hm hm h
B. Pete and Dan are sitting in a bar drinking beer, talking about the party taking place later at Pete's house:
Dan: (You got) a keg?
(?)
BYOB?
IS it really?
Pete: That's what it always is at our place man
except for once in a whi:le.
An' everybody just comes over there gets wasted.
fuckin' sits around,
plays caps or whatever.
Dan: I love playin' caps.
That's what did me in last-|| last week.
Pete: |that's-|
Everybody plays that damn game, dude.
Tuesday October 3 and Thursday October 6
No writing assignment this week! Please spend this week working on your midterm paper. I encourage you to make use of the Writing Center. It is an excellent resource and can really strengthen your work.
Assignment #4
Due by 2pm on Tuesday October 18, 2011
Email to alice.nye@salve.edu
In her chapter, "Performance, Performativity, Parody, and Politics," Nikki Sullivan writes:
"Butler claims that gender is a tenuous identity constituted in and through the 'stylized repetition of acts' (1999: 140). It is tenuous beucase gender is not an expression of a seamless internal identity, the essential ground of action. Rather, the gendered self is 'structured by repeated acts that seek to appropriate the ideal of a substantial ground of identity, but which, in their occasional discontinuity, reveal the groundlessness of this 'ground'' (141). In other words, it is not in a single act of constitution or invention that that the subject is brought into being, but through [the] re-citation and repetition of actions that are always public or shared" (Sullivan 2003: 85).
This passage suggests that, against essentialist claims that gender is natural and innate, Judith Butler (a post-structuralist) asserts that gender is, in fact neither natural nor innate. Instead of being something innate to a person from birth, gender is constructed over time through the repetition of gestures, tastes, actions, and desires that attempt to imitate the current, shared social ideal of gender identity, and this shared social ideal itself changes over time and across cultures. In "Paris Is Burning," we see that the social ideal to which many african-american and latina drag queens in the late 1980's U.S. aspire is based on upper class white forms of identity like supermodels or businessmen.
In your writing assignment, give some examples from the film of how these drag queens construct their gender identity by drawing on and performing a set of culturally shared actions, gestures, modes of dress, speech, etc. How do you see these different performances as illuminating the constructedness (instead of the innateness) of gender? Can you think of examples from your daily life of how you draw on a culturally shared set of actions, gestures, modes of dress, speech, etc. to perform your own gender?
Assignment #5
Thursday October 27, 2011
Please print out written response and bring it to class.
Watch the film, "Race: The Power of an Illusion" which is available through McKillop library's e-reserves. Here is the link: http://library.uri.edu/search/r?SEARCH=soa130. (It is also at the top of the page). The password is "SOA130."
Write a short essay (300 words) on this film and relate it to the AAA Statement on Race that you read. Specifically, I would like for you to summarize the assertions made in episode 3 of the series and at the end of the AAA piece that suggest that inequalities that exist between different "racial" groups are not a reflection of natural biological difference in capability or behavior, but are rather the effects of economic, educational, and political circumstances that create and reinforce social inequalities.
Assignment #6
Thursday November 3, 2011
Read Scott Kiesling's article, "Dude." If you have trouble with terminology, refer to the slides from the lecture on linguistics and sociolinguistics. The term most used is "index." Remember that, in semiotics (the study of signs), an index is a sign that points to something else (like an index, or pointer finger). Examples of indices are footprints or weathervanes or smoke. In this article, dude is used in social interactions to index a certain kind of social identity and relationship between speaker and addressee that Kiesling refers to as "cool solidarity." In addition to having the social meaning that indexes a laidback, friendly, non-intimate (often) masculine stance between the speaker and the addressee, dude serves other interactional functions (see pages 290-298).
The following are some examples from the article's author of the use of dude in conversation:
A. Dave, Pete, and Boisson are fraternity members playing monopoly. Dez has a property that Pete wants, and it happens to be red. The following exchange takes place:
Pete: Fuckin' ay man.
Gimme the red Dave, dude. (1.0)
Dave: No.
Pete: Dave dude, dude Dave hm hm hm h
B. Pete and Dan are sitting in a bar drinking beer, talking about the party taking place later at Pete's house:
Pete: I- I eat eat it dude
Dan: (You got) a keg?
(?)
BYOB?
IS it really?
Pete: That's what it always is at our place man
except for once in a whi:le.
An' everybody just comes over there gets wasted.
fuckin' sits around,
plays caps or whatever.
Dan: I love playin' caps.
That's what did me in last-|| last week.
Pete: |that's-|
Everybody plays that damn game, dude.
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
Based on the data you collect in Part I, I would like you to describe the possible social meanings for the address term, dude, in your analysis by looking for patterns and answering the questions in Part II. Part I: Data collection
Collect 10 instances of dude when used naturally in conversation as an address term. Do not collect any instances of dude that are simply used as a noun in a sentence (e.g., that dude is crazy). The instances you collect may come in part from a film or TV show, but try to get at least 4 instances that are 'natural.' You may not use the title of the film, Dude, where's my car? as one of your instances. You may, however, use instances in conversations from the film. For each instance of dude, write down the following:
- Sex, age, ethnicity of the speaker and the addressee(s)
- The situation, including the topic of conversation.
- The relationship between the speaker and addressee(s) if known (friend, roommate, family, acquaintance, work colleague, stranger)
- The utterance in which dude appears.
Part II: Analysis
Find patterns in this data and explain them by thinking about the following questions and drawing on Kiesling's analysis in his article:
- What social group is most identified with the use of this term?
- With whom do they use it the most?
- In what situation is the term most likely to be used?
- What is the range of social meanings for this term (i.e. what kinds of identities and relationships does the term index; what are its various meanings in different contexts)?
Write up the findings and the analysis and bring them to class as a hard copy on Thursday November 3.
Assignment #7
Due Thursday November 10, 2011
Please print out your response and bring it to class.
As we have already learned, race is not natural or essential, but socially constructed. We have also seen how this social construction gets reproduced through "racializing" linguistic practices such as "Mock Spanish" and "SuperStandard" English. This week, we look at how popular representations in films, magazines, and advertisements also racialize certain groups often by focusing on physical traits that mark them as "Other" or different (i.e. not part of the dominant group in a culture/"not us").
In the first 33 pages "The Spectacle of the 'Other'"(pages 225-257), Stuart Hall looks at visual representations, or images, of difference that circulate in popular culture today. By examining representations of elite black athletes and film actors of color in contemporary society as well as advertizing campaigns for soap in nineteenth century Europe and twentieth century film characters such as "Mammie" in "Gone with the Wind" or Buckwheat in the "Little Rascals," Hall suggests that we can see how racial or ethnic difference gets imagined as natural through practices of stereotyping, which "reduce people to a few simple, essential characteristics which are represented as fixed by Nature" (257). Such a practice of stereotyping marks difference; it produces a group as "Other" and often does so in a way that is discriminatory and degrading for the group that is marked as different, while at the same time it is usually valorizing or elevating for the group that is unmarked, or dominant -- the not-Other.
For your assignment this week, I would like for you to find an image of a non-white athlete, actor, or model in a film, magazine, or ad that marks racial difference through stereotyping, or focusing on a few characteristics (physical, such as body type or dress, or behavioral, such as attitude or aptitude) that are commonly associated with the person's racial background. Ideally, this image will also have a caption or title detailing its "preferred meaning," or the meaning of the image that gets privileged and anchored through the words that accompany it (Hall 228). Please include this image in your paper or email it to me because we will be discussing it in class. After you have found the photo, discuss what you think the "myth" or underlying message, of the image might be. Remember that it can carry more than one meaning than the one privileged by the title or caption. In developing your analysis of the underlying message of racial difference or "otherness," try to draw on the (unequal) binary oppositions that get reproduced in racial stereotyping such as black/white, emotion/intellect, nature/culture.
EXAMPLE: Below is an award-winning ad promoting "racial equality" from clothing company, United Colors of Benetton. This campaign provoked enormous negative response from the black community regarding the depiction of a black woman's breast nursing a white baby. What might the social meanings of this be that it would provoke such outrage? Is this ad really about equality as stated or are there other underlying messages? Does it relate to stereotypes of topless African women from National Geographic? Does it indirectly index historical mammie "types" or women of color who are paid to be domestic laborers and caretakers for white women's children? Does it depict black women as more maternal or "closer to nature"? Does it sexualize or mark as different the nude black female body? What do you think the response would be if the races were reversed and a bare breasted white woman were nursing a black infant?
Assignment #8
Due Friday November 25, 2011
Please email to me by 7pm
In the introduction to his book Infections and Inequalities, Paul Farmer forcefully argues that "social forces and processes come to be embodied as biological events" (1999: 14). Drawing on examples from the chapter, such as higher disease and mortality rates among poor and marginalized populations, explain what he means by this. In other words, how explicitly are biological events such as the distribution of disease and death largely not just caused by pathogens, but by social factors such as inequality?
Assignment #9
Due Thursday December 1, 2011
Please print and bring to class
For this week's writing assignment, I would like you to write your own response or reflection on what you have read of Righteous Dopefiend (so, pages 1-207). Be sure to make your reflection as anthropological as possible - avoid using strong or valuative language, back up your claims with data and concepts from the reading, be sure not to fall into patterns of victim blame and instead account for the larger social, historical, and economic forces that shape individual choices and actions, and be descriptive, not prescriptive (that is, focus on describing the situations depicted in the ethnography instead of judging them or suggesting how to fix them). Your critical reflection on the ethnography should be no less than 500 words (roughly two pages, double spaced, Times 12pt font). We will be discussing these reflections in class on Thursday in small groups.
This is your last response, so make it good!
