10-15 minute class presentation
Your group will be responsible for giving a 10-15 minute presentation related to a film or prompt provided by the professor. Your presentation should be designed to generate discussion about the themes, concepts, and arguments brought up by the film/prompt as it relates to the assigned readings. If there is more than one reading assigned for the day, you can focus on one text. The goal of this presentation is to demonstrate that you
(1) can understand and synthesize an argument
(2) that you can apply and develop the concepts and/or methods put forth in the reading(s) in relation to the film or prompt
(3) that you can present this to the class in a clear and interesting way that stimulates discussion.
You are welcome to use audiovisual materials to support your presentation. If you choose to do so, you must let me know 48 hours in advance.
Group 1, September 27: Haley Nikodem, Kerrin Haas, Millie Brennan, Kristen Gilmore
Stuffed and Starved: "Introduction," "Rural Autopsy," and "Glycine Rex"
After completing the readings, watch the first 60 minutes of the documentary film "The Future of Food" (available through the library and as an instant view on netflix) as well as a few excerpts of "The Biggest Loser" and "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" on Hulu or Youtube.
For your presentation, give the class what you think Patel's key points are from the reading. Tell us how these key points were supported or challenged by examples from the documentary film, and then try to think about how problems of the global food industry are depicted in the excerpts of the reality shows that you watched. After pulling out the key arguments of the text and the general message of the media examples, try to select a few key moments or themes that you found interesting, surprising, or upsetting and present them to the class in a way that generates discussion.
Group 2, October 13: Samantha Wood, Sarah Markey, Meghan Leary, Nicole Cafazzo, and Riley Dinneen
"Why Clothing Is Not Superficial"
Why, according to Daniel Miller, is clothing not superficial?
Use the cultural examples from the reading (Trinidad, India, Madrid, and London), as well as from the documentary, "Paris Is Burning," to elaborate. In your analysis, draw out the distinction that he (and Sullivan) makes between the structuralist idea of the natural essence of identity and the poststructuralist concept of identity (such as gender) as neither natural nor innate, but as a performative effect of repeated acts, gestures, and identifications that are transient, or given to change. It would be great if you could use particular media clips or other examples to explore how this works and to raise questions for in-class discussion.
Group 3, October 20: Jerry O'Shea, Alison Cutter, Niki Dean, Mallory Brochu
Why the French Don't Like Headscarves: Islam, the State, and Public Space "Introduction," "Scarves and Schools," and "Sexism
In the selected chapters from his book, John Bowen tells a complex story about the law passed in 2004 in France that prohibits students in public schools from wearing clothing that shows their religious affiliation. This law is seen to uphold a commitment to the separation of church and state, yet it singles out one specific kind of clothing worn by young Islamic women - headscarves - above others such as Christian crosses or Jewish yarmalukes. What, according to Bowen, is the cause of this ban on veils? In answering this, think about how Muslim women and the way that they dress become a "problem" for teachers, feminists, and political leaders at particular historical moments in France. What other anxieties or beliefs (about immigration, religion, progress, equality, race, or gender, for example) are being played out in the banning of the veil?
In order to develop a broader and more complex understanding of questions of Islam, veiling, gender, and the state, watch the short film (27 mins) by Diana Ferrero, "They Call Me Muslim: Two Women, Two Choices About Wearing the Hijab" (to be given to you in class on Tuesday, 10/18) and read the short article by NYU anthropologist, Lila Abu-Lughod, "The Muslim Woman: The Power of Images and the Danger of Pity" (attached here). For your presentation, provide some video clips or images of Muslim women (veiled and not-veiled) for the class and try to generate an informed discussion of how these women get represented in Western contexts such as France or the U.S.
Group 4, October 27: Monica Blanco, Rob Chisholm, Kayla McGovern
Fausto-Sterling, "The Five Sexes," (optional: Don Kulick, "Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes")
For your presentation focus on "The Five Sexes." How does Anne Fausto-Sterling understand biological sex (male or female identity based on anatomy)? Does she believe in a two-sex system of biologically distinct males and females or in a system that is more of a continuum of variation between these male and female poles? In answering this question, define intersex for the class. You can use this website as a resource for definitions and experiences of intersexuality. What is her (and the ISNA's, whose link is above) critique of the medical system's approach to assigning sex to an intersexed infant? What are the assumptions behind this wish to surgically and hormonally "normalize" people with ambiguous sexual anatomy? Who and what do these surgeries protect? Is it the intersexed person? The parents? The medical field? Our social system and its forms of classification? (focus on page 24 when answering this last question).
If you like, you can also watch the film Gendernauts. I will give it to you in class two weeks before. If you have a netflix account, it is also available on instant play.
I will cover the Kulick in class.
Group 5, November 3: Nao Tojo, Mike Burlingame, Katie Gibbons, Gina Tortorici
Scott Kiesling. "Dude."
For your presentation, please explain what Kiesling means by the "cool solidarity" that dude indexes (remember - to index means to point to, as in index finger) among young college-aged men in North America. In doing this, focus on gender stances (does it index a type of American masculinity?) and the social expectations and relationships that the use of dude mediates (specifically focus on: 1. solidarity, or nonhierarchical camaraderie; 2. distance, or (heterosexual) nonintimacy; and 3. social or linguistic nonconformity) between speaker and addressee. In doing this, discuss (1) which social groups use dude most frequently in interactions (age, gender, race/ethnicity); and (2) who they are interacting with when they use dude (what is the speaker's relationship to the addressee? friend, co-worker, acquaintance, family member, professor, stranger, boss?)
After explaining who uses dude and how its use relates to social expectations of masculine solidarity, heterosexuality, and noncomformity in the U.S. through the prompt outlined above, give examples of dude's various uses in interactions. Specifically, give the definition and provide and example for each of the five interactional functions of dude provided by Kiesling: (1) marking discourse structure, (2) exclamation, (3) confrontational stance mitigation, (4) marking affiliation and connection, and (4) signaling agreement (see the section entitled "Dude in Interaction" p. 290-298).
You can demonstrate these interactional functions by having your classmates act out the example conversations given in the article and/or by providing video clips for each example from the film, Dude, Where's My Car?, from the Bud Light commercial series with dude, or from a more recent film in which dude is frequently used (perhaps Superbad, but I think that man is used more than dude in that film, which is interesting in and of itself). I would encourage you to do both the class demonstrations and video clips to fully demonstrate each different interactional function. If you need help with understanding these different terms and uses, please feel free to ask me for help.
Group 6, November 15: Morgan Clark, Jesse Golding
Representing the 'Other'
Stuart Hall, "The Spectacle of the Other," Part II
Watch film (available through course e-reserves): "Born Into Brothels"
Explain the difference between typing and stereotyping that Hall lays out in the beginning of part 4 (Stereotyping as a Signifying Practice, pages 257-259). Give the class clear examples of these two practices of meaning production. Also, be sure to explain the three main aspects of stereotyping that Hall lays out: (1) reducing, naturalizing, and fixing difference; (2) splitting, or exclusion through fixing boundaries; and (3) ethnocentrism, or applying the norms of one's own culture to that of others.
Now, watch "Born into Brothels" and think about how these three aspects of stereotyping are at play in the documentary. Who has the power to represent the Indian "Others"? Are the filmmakers and the subjects of the film on equal footing? Do the children's identities or that of their mothers get "fixed" by the filmmakers? Do you see a boundary being drawn in the film between the "us" of the Western filmmakers and audience who are viewing the film and the "them" of the Indian children and prostitutes whose lives are being depicted? Is there a way in which the Western filmmakers are using this humanitarian intervention to "show ourselves to ourselves" as Geertz would say? That is, how might this film be more about Western values and beliefs regarding poverty, prostitution, and childhood in the Global South than about Indian beliefs, values, and experiences? How might we be showing ourselves how "right" our own beliefs are and how we can "save" these "Others" from themselves? In line with this, how do you see ethnocentrism operating in the film?
After you have outlined the aspects of stereotyping listed above, give some background on the film - its premise, its popular reception, etc. Then use clips from the film and draw on critical reviews of it (like this) to examine the questions above as they relate to the three main aspects of stereotyping and generate a class discussion about the "humanitarian" documentary and the politics of representing the 'Other.'
Group 7, November 17: Kelsey Knight, Patrick Sainsurin, Ryan McCarthy
Re-presenting the 'Other'
Stuart Hall, "The Spectacle of the Other," Part II
While Morgan and Jesse will be outlining and examining the three main aspects of stereotyping at play in dominant representations of the 'Other' in the first presentation, you will be focusing on the circulation of power and strategies of re-presentation and resistance among those marked as different or "Other" by dominant groups.
Remember from part I of the reading where Hall shows how practices of "signifying" (or producing social meaning through signs and representations) racial difference during the years of slavery attempted to naturalize the subordinate status, servitude, and primitivity of blacks in order to deny them them rights and humanity and to suggest that they lacked the ability to have "culture" like the "civilized whites." Hall details how "Whites took inordinate amusement from the slaves' efforts to imitate the manners and customs of so-called 'civilized' white folks" (244). Yet, interestingly, he goes on to say that slaves did not only imitate these white customs because they wanted to emulate whites. Often, while the masters laughed at the slaves for their comical attempts to "be white," the slaves were in fact making fun of the whites, deliberately parodying the masters' behavior through "exaggerated imitations, laughing at white folks behind their backs and 'sending them up'" (ibid). This strategy of "signifyin'"is one that has become a subtle device for African Americans to play on double meanings and challenge forms of white dominance, representation, and racialization. It is famously derived from the story of the "Signifying Monkey," a clever monkey that tricked a cruel Lion into getting its ass kicked. Please listen the whole story as told by a 1970's comic, Rudy Ray Moore. It is quite vulgar, but fun, and it gives you a great sense of the play of double meanings that the subordinate monkey uses to trick the powerful lion:
Now, for your presentation, focus on how "everyone - the powerful and the powerless - is caught up, though not on equal terms, in power's circulation" (261) by describing and giving examples of the three main counter-strategies of subordinate groups who attempt to challenge dominant representations of race through forms of trans-coding, or taking an existing meaning and re-appropriating (reusing) it for new or alternate meanings (270): (1) "Reversing the stereotypes"; (2) "Positive and negative images"; and (3) Contesting forms of racial representation from within through practices of defamiliarization or parody, that acknowlege, caricature, or subvert dominant representations of racial difference -- signifyin' falls within this category (it can also be partly #2 as well), so does work of comics like Richard Pryor and Dave Chapelle who parody stereotypes of blackness and mock whiteness. In explaining these three modes of resistance, provide image and video footage to illustrate them. You can draw on Hall's examples from the text or you can find more current examples of this in films, images, television, or ad campaigns. If you would like suggestions, email me.
