Artifact & Artifice: Cultural Studies of the Textual City

Ave Artwork from Above

2008-06-08T14:41:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone...I don't know if you guys are still looking at this, but I found this interesting article in the Seattle PI this morning. You should read it.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/366183_art07.html

Anita

Starbucks on the Ave

2008-06-04T15:24:00.000-07:00

Starbucks on 4147 University Way is sitting at a crossroad between 42nd and the Ave. Standing with the back to the main entrance, one can find Café on the Ave right on the other side of 42nd that serves coffee and similar beverages as well. At the remaining two corners of the University Way a copy centre and an Indian restaurant are located. Compared to the surrounding buildings, Starbucks from the outside is notably much more clean and well-kept.

Although from the outside it seems to be made of bricks and cement, once inside, the walls sound as if they were made of a thick kind of plastic and wood.
The outside dominant colour is the well-known forest-emerald green of the logo and the overhangs.

Most of the people who go to Starbucks don’t just go there by chance; they seem to know exactly why they went there, what to order, who to meet, where to seat and what to do. Starbucks on the Ave is never empty, even though it’s also never overly busy. Almost no one goes there just for a cup of caffeine but instead customers seem to look for the whole Starbucks experience. Whether it’s grabbing a cup of coffee or frappuccino, preparing an exam while munching on a low-fat blueberry muffin or having a chat with a friend, Starbucks seems to win over the many coffee stands of the U-District thanks to its comfortable atmosphere.

Starbucks on the Ave has a special role within the U-District. Its proximity to the University of Washington campus makes the coffeehouse one of the favourite spots for students and staff to go and have a cup of coffee or also to chill out after a busy day. The employees affirm that circa the 70% of the customers are UW related, especially students.

Portage Bay Cafe

2008-06-04T14:16:00.000-07:00

Portage Bay Café is located on 41st and Roosevelt in the University District in Seattle, Washington. It’s a family owned breakfast and lunch place with American style cuisine. Portage Bay Café is open 7 days a week. On weekdays it’s open from 7:30 til 3:00 and during the weekends it’s open from 8:00 til 3:00. Portage Bay Café is a gathering spot for college students, locals, and business people taking a break for lunch. During the weekends it attracts the families. But if you are looking to go there on a weekend, expect a wait because everyone loves this place and will probably have the same idea as you. Portage Bay is known for its organic cuisine and vast choices for meateaters, vegetarians and vegans. Make sure when you visit that you ask about what Organic means. On one wall a breakfast bar is placed. On top of it glass bowls are filled to the brim with delicious extra add ons such as berries, syrup, whipped cream, nuts, and raisins. Most customers you will see in Portage Bay are families. This gives the restaurant a family oriented feel and makes you feel warm and welcomed. Back in the main area of the restaurant the first thing a customer may notice is the high ceilings. Raised above everyone’s heads is a racing shell. It extends the distance of the whole restaurant and is held by thick cords. If you watch customers you can see them glancing up at the boat from time to time. This especially attracts young kids because of its length and spot in the restaurant.

Portage Bay Café was started about 10 years ago by John and Amy Gunnar. It was the first restaurant they opened and is still family owned today. Until 4 weeks ago it was the only location. Now there is the second Portage Bay located in Eastlake. In 2001 Portage Bay began using organic products in their menu. It was so successful that they added more and their menu grew. Today they “offer a menu consisting of more than 80 percent organic, local or sustainable items”(John Gunnar).

Portage Bay is not only a local eating spot but also a hang out and a workspace. Depending on the day and the time you come you will see many different types of people. The weekends attract the families and the groups of college students. On weekdays it’s normally smaller groups of people and always business types. Business workers like the free wireless they can get and the space they can have to do a little extra work after their meal. When college students come in you know they have been saving up all week for this meal, because why the food is delicious it isn’t cheap. Families are attracted due to the large tables you can get and the big portions which you can share.

--Jen

The Wall of Death

2008-06-04T11:41:00.000-07:00

The Wall of Death is a large structure, featuring twelve pointed metal cylinders leading up to a light red, circular marquee featuring the words "THE WALL OF DEATH". It is located underneath the University Bridge just off of 40th street.

There are many socio-cultural uses for the Wall of Death. Its primary function, as the artist Mowry Baden desired, is as a work of public art for all to enjoy. People who bike, run, or walk along the Burke-Gilman Trail pass the Wall of Death. It can function as a place for people to sleep, sit, skateboard, take pictures, etc.

The Wall of Death has a definite role within the U-District. It is connected with the University because of its close proximity to campus and its location along the popular Burke-Gilman Trail. It is also pictured in Art Department slides available through the UW library system, which signifies that the university recognizes its contribution to public art.

Ruzhen Mongolian Grill

2008-06-04T11:13:00.000-07:00

Excerpt describing the restaurant's role within the U-District:

Disregarding the restaurant’s obvious geographical ties to the U-District, one will immediately observe this connection. Like many Applebee’s which gather local artifacts to give each store a local feel, Ruzhen contains artifacts connected to the UW. On the wall above each table in the private room they have placed old black-and-white photographs that vary in subject matter but all revolve around the university; from the old football team, a sorority, and the graduating class. The left wall of the viewing room is completely covered with flyers and posters of recent or upcoming events sponsored by the UW or taking place within the U-District. There must be close to a hundred posters up at any given time and it seems they feel it is important enough to keep up to date.

This close tie to the university and the interests of its population leaves a good impression with those who visit Ruzhen. Many are attracted to come in for the first time by the unique operations of the restaurant as a Chinese grill. These people are easily distinguishable from the regulars, newcomers often are unsure about what they’d like to toss in their bowl and by the time they are done they’ve only just barely filled it. Those that are familiar with the restaurant tend to know the exact contents of what they plan to put together all the way to 5/8 spoonful of vinegar. These people can be most easily spotted by the carefully constructed tower of food protruding from the tops of their bowls. These people can easily squeeze out two full dinners from these bowls and at $8 a bowl; this fits a college student’s budget quite nicely.

UWMC Entrance Area

2008-06-04T09:50:00.001-07:00

The University of Washington Medical Center lobby and pick-up and drop-off area is located just north of the Montlake Cut and along Pacific.

The lobby is brightly lit by natural sunlight and artificial lights. It has a white linoleum hallway with several carpeted seating areas with colorful and cushioned chairs, as well as tables. The space also has artistic and practical objects that add color and contribute to the vibrant atmosphere. The pick-up and drop-off area is made primarily of brick. There are planters with ledges that are just the right height for leaning on, as well as a few benches that are used by a limited number of people. Cars, taxis, vans, Access Metro buses travel through this area.

The UWMC entrance area is a place that helps patients, visitors, employees, and volunteers feel comfortable. There is much action walking along the hallway of the lobby, but the seating areas are rather quiet and relaxed. In the pick-up and drop-off area, people sit or stand around waiting for rides, and vehicles remain idle as their drivers help passengers in. In any of these spaces, people are free to read, stare, and watch other people without feeling awkward.

This entrance area brings together people from many different backgrounds from all over the U-District and Greater Seattle area. It is a diverse community in itself that is constantly changing but never seems to be particularly rushed. People are free to enter in and become part of this dynamic culture, and are just as free to come and go. This UWMC entrance area provides a site for cultural interactions between people who would otherwise never cross paths.

Cafe Solstice

2008-06-04T09:24:00.000-07:00

Cafe Solstice is located in the heart of the University District on the Ave. It provides its visitors with both indoor and outdoor seating. You can find patios both out front of the cafe and in the back. There is also a wide variety of seating found in the cafe with bar seating, round tables, long tables and couches. No matter your reason for the visit, your seating desires will be acoomodated.
The cafe makes efforts to connect to the neighborhood by featuring local art from the University District Art Walk on their walls every month. They also feature local music talent on their stage on week nights. It has tables featuring flyers that locals leave behind, displaying upcoming concerts, films etc...going on around the University. It's wide open windows and patio features allow for its visitors to people watch from their seats while sipping their beverages from their wide mugs.
Solstice appeals to everyone from the students of the University to the locals who want a relaxing place to read or catch up with friends. You will find young people, old people, business people and even dogs. It is the closest coffee shop to south campus, but attracts people from every corner. Time and precision is given to their beverages and food. You will find artful designs in your lattes and hot pressed paninis on your plate. It affords the walk for anyone who has been there.

Anita

The College Inn

2008-06-04T09:08:00.001-07:00

The College Inn stands on the corner of University Way NE and NE 40^th St. Built and opened in 1909 during the Alaska Pacific Yukon Exposition the Inn captures the excitement and internationalism of the Expo through its rustic aura and architecture. Constructed in a Tudorbethan style, the Inn is characterized by its use of half-timbering, dormer windows and high pitched roofs resembling a cozy European cottage.

Currently the College Inn building houses the Café Allegro, Easy Shoppe, College Inn Pub and the Bean and Bagel coffee shop.

The majority and more apparent of its socio-cultural uses tend to surround the variety of components to the building. The Inn itself, however, plays its role as a hotel quite strictly. This is due to its detachment from public accessibility, the Inn occupies the upper three floors of the building and is accessible only to its residents and employees.

Patronage at the Inn includes three types of individuals. They include prospective college students who are attracted by the Inn’s cheap rates. Older individuals are drawn by its separation from the urban environment, creating a haven of quiet and serenity. Finally, those who are looking for a unique hotel experience, something that is atypical from standardized hotel chains.

2008-06-04T08:24:00.001-07:00

The Wayward Cafe is a collectively run vegan restaurant located on the corner of 9th and 55th street, near Roosevelt. Open six days a week from 9am to 4pm, their main dishes are breakfast and lunch. There is no hassle of waiting on someone to bring your food or check, you pay up front at the cash register and grab your meal once it is prepared.
Bookshelves, posters, zines, xeroxed flyers, and other artifacts line the walls that create a very artsy environment, which also coincide with the occasional art galleries held at the Cafe. Since it is not located directly on the ave, it can be overlooked completely, blending into its residential background.
Positioned in the UDistrict, there are a variety of people to come and go in the cafe, some university of Washington students, but mostly not.
The Wayward Cafe is part of a larger organization called the Seattle DIY movement which is focused on creating a more diverse, close community rather than the consumer culture. This community and other similar individually run projects stand for and support environmental justice, animal rights, egalitarianism, and human rights as well as fighting against institutionalized oppression (racism, sexism, ageism/adultism, and homophobia). Even though you may not be vegan or politically influenced toward any means, the wayward cafe is still a good place to just hang out and have a bite to eat.

The University Branch Library

2008-06-04T07:53:00.000-07:00

After watching the library users for a few hours, it became clear that a certain trend was occurring. The men, ranging from 19-60 would enter the library, and surf the internet for the given hour and then read the newspaper, or do homework. Younger women also did this, perhaps 19-23, but the older the women got the less time they spent inside. They would peruse the new fiction, perhaps pick up a hold, and then leave. Their average time spent could be no longer than half an hour. This positive correlation dwindled as the age of the women entered the 60’s range, and then their attributes mimicked the men, spending more time sitting and reading. This idea of the library as a place of extended time holds some problems though.
When I first entered the library I desperately had to pee. I searched out the washroom and quickly found it. My hands found the knob and turned, but to no avail. In my hurry, I completely missed the sign reading “Ask for key at circulation desk”. I returned to the desk and grabbed the oversized key chain and made a mental note to investigate the matter. While talking with the children’s librarian, I brought up the locked bathroom issue. I work at the North East Branch, and our bathrooms are only locked during the final closing minutes. She explained that because of the location of the branch, they were frequented by transients and vagrants. Being a public institution, and a haven from the elements, it came as no surprise. The bathrooms were constantly locked to prevent misuse that had happened before. She also noted that they were constantly occupied, and sometimes had to be cleared of over users.

Bus route 880: Mukilteo to University District and back.

2008-06-04T07:13:00.000-07:00

The 880 is a blue-and-white-colored commuter bus that belongs to the Community Transit bus system, which travels to areas in King County from Snohomish County. Route 880 in particular, serves as a connection between Mukilteo and the U-District. Commuter buses are roughly twice as long as their local counterparts, and has accordion-like material insert in the middle to make the bus more flexible in turning around corners.

The trip to University District and back approximately takes 45-minutes to one hour. The long duration of the trip affects the activities conducted on the bus, and the most popular activity by far for passengers to do on the bus is to simply sleep. Commuter buses boast features such as cushiony seats, overhead compartments, reading lights, leg rests to make the long ride to the U-District more tolerable. People will generally avoid sitting next to each other, if possible. Each bus passenger like to occupy his/her own pair of seats.

The 880 is serves an important role to those who must commute to U-District frequently by providing an accessible, inexpensive form of transportation, without having to experience the inconvenience of paying for parking fees, gas, car maintenance, and insurance. For students commuting to UW, the 880 helps cut down the cost of college by living at home. For people who commute to the U-District for their jobs, the 880 expands their employment options beyond areas close to home in Snohomish County, changing the landscape by enabling people freedom to live and work where they want.

College Inn Pub

2008-06-04T05:35:00.000-07:00

College Inn Pub is part of a historic building tied with the University of Washington's Origins as part of the 1909 Alaska-Yukon Exposition Worlds Fair. The Pub is hidden along down in the basement of the inn and features lots of various table space for many uses, it features antiques, historical artifacts, paintings, photographs, art, pool, darts, pinball machines, etc.

It's a friendly, relaxed, bar and great place to socialize with friends and colleagues, and even your TA's and professors too! It's also a great place to read the paper, eat food, watch the game, and even study. This is unique pub because you wont find many "people watching people", but it's know to be a place that catalyzes profound conversations, intellectual discourse, heated political debate with people you know and people you don't.

As a geographic landscape, there is not much to say about a pretty good pub underneath an inn, but the social role among the University community is quite significant. While most undergraduate students find their place to imbibe alcohol on The Ave or at large parties, The College Inn Pub provides a service to upperclassmen, and professors to relax, hangout, converse and unwind. Lots of ties with UW community through sponsorships, clientèle are mainy UW attendies/alumni, relies heavily by word of mouth.

The U-District Farmers' Market

2008-06-04T03:11:00.000-07:00

The University District Farmers’ Market was first established in in June of 1993 and is often described as “Seattle’s oldest and largest farmers’ market” (uhcca.org). It is currently held year-round on every Saturday from 9am to 2pm at the corner of University Way and NE 50th in the University Heights Center parking lot. This year marks its 15th anniversary, and has always been what’s called a “farmers only” market, meaning that only produce and agricultural goods are sold here. On its opening day in 1993, the U District Farmers’ Market included 17 farmers and brought in 800 shoppers. Currently, it includes 60 farmers and attracts between 4,000 and 5,000 shoppers each Saturday (Baker 28). The U-District market is one of 7 in the Seattle area, all of which are a part of the Seattle Neighborhood Farmers’ Market Alliance (NFMA), a 501 © 3 non-profit organization. This area market provides U District residents a place to meet, exchange, and share a weekly ritual that is more of an experience than a shopping venture.

The phenomenon of farmers’ markets can be witnessed within the familiar neighborhood of the U District, in the rather ordinary parking lot of the University Heights Community Center. Farmers’ markets exist in an interesting sphere, both in the literal environment and in the consciousness of the consumer. First, the temporary modification of ordinary space shows a creative and collective effort by a community. Because of this, the farmers’ market is a place where these bonds can only be strengthened, extending them past the immediate community and as far as urban-rural resident, buyer-seller, and friend-stranger. The farmers’ market simply brings people together, and can help characterize a region. This is also in part due to the larger social context; history has shown that markets such as ours occur at times of social change and reconsideration. The seemingly simple and nostalgic farmers’ market is actually a product of larger and very complex social and economic processes. This end product is therefore imbued with numerous cultural meanings, and can provide am experience that cannot be replicated.

21st Avenue N.E.

2008-06-04T01:19:00.000-07:00

North campus of the U of Washington resides some of the finest mansions that have become antiques to the streets of Seattle. On 21st Avenue, alone, holds more than eight fraternity or sorority houses and other living areas for college students; including, but not limited to, Sigma Phi Epsilon, Tau Kappa Epsilon, Delta Delta Delta, Alpha Gamma Delta, Delta Gamma, Pi Kappa Alpha and Husky Court Apartments. This means that there are approximately 800 people who live on and are temporary residents of 21st Avenue.

Three story buildings, French doors, outside pillars -- all of which create a dazzling impression. Even though there are basically parties every weekend, the fraternities and sororities concern for their houses appearance is perceived extremely well through the beautiful exterior of their houses. Similar to the fraternities and sororities on 21st Avenue, Husky Court Apartments is also located on this street but mainly house those who are not affiliated or a member of the fraternity or sorority. These apartments have maintenance people who keep the general area of the apartments clean; entailing groomed garden work, nicely painted building, no trash, unmarked sidewalks, and no graffiti. The road is dirty from the seasonal changes, leaving wet and dirty leaves along side of the street where the cars are parked. The sidewalk is exceptionally clean due to the vast amount of partying that takes place on the street and the role nature takes on the street.

On any given weekday, the traffic flow through the road is very consistent from the morning time to the night. Thursday nights especially bring people out on the road because Thursday nights have been declared to be the most popular and regular party night for the Greek system. Social-culturally, 21st Avenue supplies over eight different fraternity or sorority houses to intermingle with each other. Each of these homes carries different traditions, which adds to the social-cultural mixture that occurs within the block. The street has a shared appreciation for each student because their goals are relatively similar to each other.

21st Avenue, in its entirety, stands as a home to the students of the U of Washington. Its place and role within the U-District allows people from various backgrounds, ideals and morals to meet and acknowledge something other than their own particular background. Aside from the partying, the socializing, the different fraternity and sorority houses, the scarce parking, dirty roads, beautiful and impressing buildings; 21st Avenue has generated a home away from home for students to live, enjoy, and learn for four years. The role of the Avenue is truly vital within the area for the simple reason that it can create such an environment with the little space provided.

The Burke Gilman Trail - south campus, Brooklyn/Pacific St.

2008-06-04T00:57:00.000-07:00

Excerpt describing physical characteristics: "...Today, the Burke Gilman Trail consists of a paved surface with a soft surface shoulder. It is characterized by a combination of native and non-native vegetation. Non-native plants along the trail include, but are not limited to, black cottonwoods, Himalayan blackberries, and invasive groundcovers. These plants are dominating native plants and contributing to soil erosion around certain sections of the trail..."
Excerpt describing socio-cultural uses: "...Many cyclists, walker, and joggers use the trail as a place to exercise, even without having a particular destination in mind. For this reason, the Burke Gilman trail is also a great place for photographers, bird watchers, or writers that simply need a little inspiration..."
Excerpt describing place and role within U-District: "...For the general public, the trail is a way to reach distant areas around Seattle while either walking, jogging, or cycling. For the University of Washington, the Burke Gilman trail has become a feature that the school often cites on its list of amenities due to its proximity to campus and ease of accessibility for students. Because this section of the trail is so heavily used by students, it inadvertently becomes a part of the campus in a way that other sections of the trail do not..."

*Note: Picture courtesy of Cliff Despeaux, The Daily. 13 February 2008.

Cafe Allegro

2008-06-04T00:40:00.000-07:00

Cafe Allegro is a small espresso bar located in an alleyway of The Ave behind Magus Books. It consists of three different rooms or sections: a front room, a back room, and an second story room with outside deck seating. It creates a calm, artsy atmosphere with relaxing music, dim lighting, and a rustic design.

Besides the obvious function of providing coffee, Cafe Allegro also provides a meeting or study place for groups of people. It also serves as an art display and a host for just-beginning musical groups as a place to get started.

The role of the University District community is obvious within the business. There are countless numbers of ads for community events and services. There are a number of fliers and such addressing political issues and movements known to be associated with the liberal arts and progressive movements dear to the UW. It also draws upon the unified international feel of The Ave through its support of ethnic events and display of multicutural artifacts.

The Blue Moon Tavern

2008-06-04T00:28:00.000-07:00

There are two ways to tell you’ve arrived at the Blue Moon Tavern, located at 712 NE 45th St. in the University District. The first indicator is the signature blue neon sign hanging over the sidewalk that features a nude woman sitting on a crescent moon. The second is the animated sculpture on sentry duty outside the door, known as “The Hammered Man,” by artist Jim St. John (a video is available below). According to Gus Hellthaler, the owner, the physical space is approximately 45 feet wide by 40 feet deep and occupies about 1800 square feet. The space is visually and physically divided by the bar, which creates a narrow row of booths along the west side of the tavern, and a larger space on the east side which has an open area and also is lined with booths along the eastern perimeter.   

Who goes there: The age of the customers varies from University of Washington student types around the age of 21, to “hippie”-type people in their 50s (or maybe older). An employee, Bill H. says the average number of customers ranges from a dozen to 99, but is more often around a dozen. Both men and women go to the Blue Moon. Because of its fame/notoriety, I think some people go there out of curiosity (like me), and some expect to undergo some sort of illuminating or cathartic experience (because of the legendary notables who once hung out there). In order for humanity to survive, people need places where they can gather, talk, meet, be creative, and express themselves. Humans are social animals with the desire to be among other people. The Blue Moon Tavern is a place where people can do these things.

The Blue Moon is a historic site in the U-District where people today mostly go to hang out, drink beer, talk and listen to music, but some of its former customers, who went there for the same reasons, went on to be culturally and historically important.

Glory days: In the 1950s some of the Blue Moon regulars included National Book Award-winner Richard Hugo; future Pulitzer Prize-winning poets Carolyn Kizer, Stanely Kunitz and James Wright; and it attracted notables Dylan Thomas, poet and James Farrell, author, who would stop in whenever they passed through Seattle. (P. 12, Crowley) Other highly esteemed literary figures who made pilgrimages to the Blue Moon included writer Jack Kerouac, and poets Allen Ginsberg, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. (P. 15, Crowley). Historian and writer Walt Crowley reported Theodore Roethke regularly conducted gatherings of budding poets and writers in the Blue Moon’s back booths, and [U.W.] campus lore, “maintains Roethke celebrated receiving the Pulitzer Prize at the Blue Moon in 1954.” (P. 12, Crowley). There’s an overwhelming sense that this space had seen the presence of greatness, even though today it could be easily seen as a dive.

2008-06-04T00:24:00.000-07:00

Brief Introduction: Husky Stadium is mainly known for the place where the University of Washington’s Football team plays. It is located at the edge of the UW campus right next to the Intramural Activities building and the Bank of America Arena. Behind it lurks Lake Washington. The address is 3800 Montlake Blvd NE.

Husky Stadium History:
This stadium was built in 1920, so of course it has quite a bit of history behind it. This first version of the stadium only had a capacity of 30,000. In building the Stadium, architects took many factors in place. They wanted a location that would provide all the good views Seattle has to offer, and they also wanted to make it to eliminate sun glare. To do this they made it into a longitudinal axis, which also helped giving everyone the view of Lake Washington. After it was built in 1920, it has gone through several remodeling to make it what it is today. The construction in 1920 cost $600,000 a student fund drive providing a lot of its resources. The opening of the stadium was on November 27th, a football game between Dartmouth and University of Washington. Final work for this stadium actually was only completed 12 hours before the games kickoff. The first was in 1936, adding 10,000 seats. In 1950, another remodel was made adding 15,000 seats to the south side. (GoHuskies.com) This also provided a press box. In 1968, a few thousand more seats were added along the rim. This was the year that they installed astro-turf, the first major stadium to do so in the country. Along with this, they installed an “all-weather” track which replaced the existing one. 1987 provided an addition 13,000 seats to the North Side. During this final remodel a collapse killed one of the workers. With it they added glass-enclosed reception area with a field view of both sides. Called the Don James Center, is not only used for games, but many banquets and social events are also held here.
One of the interesting things about Husky Stadium that makes it stand out from the rest is the myth of “The Wave.” The Wave, as you probably already know, is when fans at stadium games from football to baseball all stand up at the same time as the people in front of them and the people behind them, but right after the people to the left and before the people to the right. This creates a “wave” motion that goes across the stadium. It is rumored to have started at the Husky Stadium on October 31st, 1981. (ESPN) The creator was the Yell-King at the game, Robb Weller. From here, it is believed ot have carried over to University of Michigan when they visited Husky Stadium and saw the wave, and also to the nearby Seattle Seahawks. It is now common of many sporting events to participate in “The Wave.”

The Corbet Building

2008-06-03T23:46:00.000-07:00

The Corbet Building, whose original name is the Ives building is located on the corner of NE 45th Street and University Way. Built in 1923, the two-story structure is made out of concrete, and features a Classical design. The revival of this Classical design features columns and pilasters that are located on the South and East sides of the building on the second story. The Ives or Corbet building has decorative terra cotta and a simple cornice encircle on the ground floor. The original windows on the second story have been replaced and the transom windows have been either covered or removed completely. The storefront of the Ives and or Corbet building has undergone much altercations in order to keep its Classical design.

The socio-cultural uses of this building are quite vast. On the main floor of the building there is a authentic Mexican restaurant as well as an Teriyaki house. These restaurants serve as a place where many students, and the rest of the public are able to come together to enjoy good food, for an inexpensive price. On the very corner of the Corbet Building is the Twice Sold Tales, where the public as well as students are able to buy books from all genres that are sometimes new, but mostly used copies that have been sold back to the store. Twice Sold Tales serves as a place of comfort for the customers, and also a place where they can find a lot of books that are not mainstream any longer, or that are unique and original. Also, considering the owners bring their cat to work with them, who mostly just lounges on the books near the front window, brings the customers to feel safe and at home. Next to Twice Sold Tales is the cafe SureShot, that has quite the quirky personality, and also serving dishes that sometimes include vegetarian and vegan dishes. SureShot provides a place for the "Ave Rats" [People who hang out in front of Sureshot, dressed in grungy clothes, and often seem to be under the influence of some substance] to congregate, and it serves as a local hangout for students to study. Finally, on the main floor is the Hair.Comb people who provide expensive haircuts, styling and waxing to a wide variety of customers. On the upper level are the University of Washington Office of Annual Giving, including the Student Calling Program, which solicits alumni for donations in order to help insure the University's future as well as providing funds for students and individual academic departments. These offices serve as a great job locations for student only, who get to interact and work with alumni, also this office provides a laid back and fun atmosphere often involving games including pictionary, catchphrase, bowling etc.

The Corbet Building is located right at the heart of "The Ave" and therefore plays a vital role in the identity of the U-District as a geographic and social landscape. The Classical style of this building provides many with the aesthetically pleasing view of a historical building, one that serves many customers and clients daily in a number of services. The role that the Corbet Building plays is one of historical structure and is used as a hub that brings many types of people together for a common purpose, whether that be food, books, calling alumni or a haircut this building causes people to interact with one another. Overall, the Corbet Building provides the U-District with a place where people are able to congregate, and enjoy themselves.

University Heights Center parking lot

2008-06-03T23:16:00.000-07:00

The parking lot is located on 50th between Brooklyn Ave. and University Way. The parking lot is used mostly by the restaurant across the street called, Cedars on Brooklyn. The parking lot has a fence around it with lots of colorful fliers to advertise the Farmers Market, a basketball hoop, a grassy area, and a playground.

People park their cars their on this parking lot and then cross the street to eat at the Middle Eastern, Indian and Continental restaurant. The parking lot has many socio-cultural uses because it has many different physical features. It has a basketball hoop, children's play area and even some grassy areas next to the community center. It also is host to the Farmers Market on Saturdays from 9:00am to 2:00pm. People go there to play basketball, lay in the grass and relax in the sun, or let their children play on the playground area. During these times people converse and interact in many different social ways.

The role of this parking lot in the U-District is fairly simple and very similar to the socio-cultural role. It allows people to park their cars to go eat and serves as a recreational area for people to enjoy the outdoor activities.

Metro Transit bus route 67

2008-06-03T21:02:00.000-07:00

Bus 67 begins its route at the Northgate park-and-ride, but its route through the U-district begins once it reaches Roosevelt Way NE and Ravenna Blvd. Bus 67 is a blue and yellow metro bus with about 60 seats. Along its course down Roosevelt Way, popular locations bus 67 passes are the Trading Musician, Giggles Comedy Nite Club, Scarecrow Video, and Hardwick's Swap Shop.

This bus is used daily by many University of Washington students and staff coming from areas north of the U-District. Many UW students and staff living in these northern areas find it very convenient to ride the bus to and from campus instead instead of driving to UW and having to find and pay for expensive parking. Bus 67 is not strictly intended for the use of UW students and staff. All are welcome to ride the bus, and many others do, daily. The route travels by several restaurants, shops, theaters, and hospitals, whcih are the destinations of many of bus 67's passengers.

Bus route 67 has an important place and role within the U-District. It serves as a direct route to the Universtiy District from Northgate. There are other buses that have similar routes, like the 66, but the 66 doesn't make any stops on the UW campus. Metro Transit chose to use one of the largest buses available for the 67 route. By using the largest bus possible, many UW students and staff are able to fit in one bus heading toward campus. It is very common to see a large amount of UW students and staff compacted into this one artifact.

University Heights Center

2008-06-03T20:59:00.000-07:00

University Heights Center is a two-story wooden structure designed by architects Bebb and Mendel in the Mission-Revival style. Aside from two vending machines and few metal chairs, the main hallway contains little evidence that the building was renovated to allow it to operate as a community center. From the hallway, the doorways of each of the classrooms are non-distinct. Yet upon entering individual rooms, it is clear that each classroom has undergone its own unique transformation.

University of Washington students and members of the University District community use University Heights Center as a venue to pursue their interests. The Center houses a wide variety of programs, classes, and offices, allowing it to accommodate a variety of needs. Most notably, University of Washington’s Experimental College holds many classes at UHC. University Height’s southern parking lot is also the site of the University District Farmer’s Market, which is held every Saturday, year round, from 9:00 am- 2:00 pm.

Geographically, University Heights is located about five blocks northwest of UW’s campus. Because of this distance, UHC is not located in an area that is frequently travelled by UW students. However, the center is situated in a transitional area between the commercial area of the U-District and the more residential portion. Since the population of this residential area is not restricted to those associated with the University, UHC is very accessible to the entire community.University Heights serves as a bridge between UW-affiliated residents and non-UW-affiliated residents of the University District.

Starbucks - University Ave

2008-06-03T20:46:00.000-07:00

This Starbucks is located at 4147 University Way NE. It is a small store on one of the corners on University Ave. When you see this Starbucks, the first thing you see is a traditional, round, green Starbucks coffee sign above the doorway with white writing, and with a green overhang. There are also two green overhangs on the right and one green overhang on the left. The overhangs are there to protect potential customers from the rain. There are four round tables, with two chairs each outside of the coffeeshop. Inside the coffee shop are square, wood tables, with two chairs each. There are four tables on the left when you walk in and 6 tables on the right. There ia also a bartop area where people can sit on stools, which face the baristas.
This Starbucks serves many purposes. People go to Starbucks for the obvious things, such as coffee, food, and other beverages, however there are also other reasons people visit. A lot of people go there to purchase merchandise. Starbucks sells everything from coffee beans to music and people make special trips in order to get these items. Starbucks is also used as a meeting place. People very commonly choose Starbucks as there meeting place because they have stores everywhere and are usually well known. It is also a place where they can sit for hours and not have employees or anyone else bothering them.
This particular Starbucks has a distinct role in the U-District that makes it different from other Starbucks. While it is still common for people to do those things I mentioned above at this store, it is most commonly used for studying and student meetings. When you visit this store, the first thing you will notice is the plethora of students sitting down with books or notes open studying. It may just be only one person, but groups also come here to study. Students also tend to use this Starbucks as a meeting place. this can be for social reasons or class related. Students very commonly want a caffeine boost to help get them through there day so it is the perfect place to meet by a college campus.

The Ave/"The Ave"

2008-06-03T19:42:00.000-07:00

The Ave, like all streets, is characterized by street signs. At each cross road, there are signs designating the precise location, for example, NE 47th St and University Way NE. However, like many people believing University Way is University Ave, even city signs can misrepresent the name as University Ave NE. The Ave generally begins at NE Campus Parkway, and for this tour, concludes at NE 47th St. Many businesses reside along The Ave. Common sights are coffee shops, fast food establishments, cafes, copy shops, and bookstores. The Ave is often misrepresented by being only the sidewalks and storefronts that surround the actual road. By looking up one may see additional housing or business space above businesses at ground level, and by looking behind, one sees the refuse generated by The Ave. Oftentimes these areas are not as well maintained as what is “seen” by the general public. The Ave is truly not complete without these components and cannot be fully understood by only looking at what is at the “surface level.”

When walking on The Ave, it is noticeable that not much window shopping is done. The people frequenting The Ave tend to have a reason for being there. However, the other aspect of frequenting The Ave is for social needs. The Ave seems to attract a specific type of regulars that are seen socializing in groups. These are mostly students at hangout spots (i.e. bars or coffee shops), the homeless, and addicts. The Ave’s visitors offer an array of personalities; as the Blue Scholars mention in their song, “The Ave,” it truly is “one of the few places that they coexist on the planet” (“The Ave”). Despite the extreme differences between the inhabitants on the street, a type of harmony and understanding is achieved, resulting in a sense of acceptance. The Ave offers a neutral space where interaction can occur; it is likely that while on The Ave one will be asked to spare some change by a transient or will see people from opposite social groups nodding hellos. As a common street, The Ave also serves to provide a common ground.

Because of the diversity found on The Ave, the street acts as a refuge to those who are deemed different. Within the U-District, people of all types are drawn to The Ave because of this. It is almost as if a miniature city lives within the street—many reside on the sidewalk and sleep under sheets of newspaper. To describe the homeless and addicts that roam The Ave, the term “Ave Rats” has even been coined, giving the street’s residing population a name, just like those who live in Seattle are thought of as Seattleites. By categorizing the people of The Ave, they have thus been given an identity and a home they belong to. The Ave also provides an educational experience, one that cannot be gained by attending a conventional school. The Ave teaches diversity, tolerance, and interaction skills to those who frequent the strip. The knowledge comes through viewing the scenes that unfold on the street and interacting with those who inhabit The Ave. As the Blue Scholars say in their song “The Ave,” it may be better to “F--- class, get your education on The Ave!” (“The Ave”).

Cafe Allegro

2008-06-03T18:53:00.000-07:00

Cafe Allegro is a coffee shop stuffed into the back of a parking lot just off the corner of 42nd and University way. Inside the main entrance there are tables and chairs, much like any other coffee shop. The espresso bar lines the back wall; above the bar hangs the menu of Café Allegro. To the right of the main entrance is an open door that leads to a narrow staircase. These steps lead to the roof of Cafe Allegro. The roof is set up much like the downstairs (minus the espresso bar and with the addition of a terrace).
Cafe Allegro is not only a coffee shop for picking up coffee on the way to work, it is also a meeting place for a variety of people. Parents bring their children, peers come to discuss topics and sometimes people just want to be alone. People who sit alone usually have laptops for writing or doing schoolwork.
Café Allego can be seen as a time capsule... back to the late 1970s. Even though thirty years may not seem like a great deal of time, in today’s ever changing environment short times contain very big changes. Café Allegro is a reminder of the days when espresso was not available on every street corner.

THE WALL OF DEATH

2008-06-03T17:13:00.001-07:00

Physical Description (and location): The Wall of Death can be found under the University Bridge (in the Southwest corner of the U District on the map). It is visible from the street as you drive under the bridge, but the most common access comes from traffic along the Burke Gilman Trail, which passes literally right by it. The Wall of Death is, perplexingly enough, not actually a wall at all, but rather a pair of large, thick orangey-red bands that overlap about fourteen feet above the ground – it looks a bit like a gigantic mobius strip. The orange bands are supported at eleven points along the circle by tall pale purple spikes positioned alone or in pairs. Emblazoned in capital cutaway letters across the edge facing the trail and the road are the words THE WALL OF DEATH.

Socio-Cultural Uses: The Wall of Death is, somewhat surprisingly, quite a multi-tasker. In just the time I spent observing, visiting, and passing by the structure, I saw it in use as a shelter (for a pair of sleeping forms huddled in dingy sleeping bags against the two back spikes), practice space (for a young man and his saxophone), skatepark (a boy and his girlfriend in Hot Topic hoodies attempting tricks on the ramp opposite), and meeting place (various solitary figures or groups who’d circle aimlessly or stand off to the side until others arrived and they went off to wherever). It’s also a major landmark and talking piece – more than one jogger arrived, took a breather, and then turned around, showing that this was a barometer of distance and a destination.

Place/Role within U-District: The Wall of Death’s location right on the Burke Gilman Trail situates it along one of the major arteries of the U District. The U District itself gets a lot of traffic, since the University has so many students, staff, and visitors. The Wall is visible from bus, car, bike, skateboard, scooter, what-have-you on two paths – the street and the trail. Tons of people pass by it every day on their way to the UW campus, apartments, or Gasworks Park. On a physical level, its location under the bridge gives it a roof and enables it to be a shelter for homeless people or students escaping sudden Seattle showers. Its existence sets the area apart from a normal underpass – it has a specific and unforgettable name, giving the area a unique identity.

Burke-Gilman Trail--IMA Bridge

2008-06-03T15:28:00.001-07:00

The Burke-Gilman Trail is a 12 mile stretch of pavement that outskirts of the U-district. It is encompassed with green trees overlining the path. The part of the trail adjacent to the IMA footpath is marked with a YIELD sign and a crosswalk, indicating heavy usage. To the right is Montlake Boulevard, and to the left is stairs to campus. The trail is peaceful, weaving its way alongside the burr of the busy traffic.

The trail here serves as a connecting site. More often then not, you will see people walking across it to get to something else in this area rather than continuing onwards. It's socio cultural uses are mainly made up students traveling to and from class, or recreational goers out for a little exercise. The trail encourages use by being clean and relatively safe in the day time. The trail as a connection is not meant to foster any sort of particular interactions with people, maybe a quick hello while on the go.

The Burke is an essential element of the U-District. It attracts people of all different cultural backgrounds and brings them together in one place. Within the U-district, it serves, as afore mentioned, as a connection between sites. The Burke increases the property value of houses and apartments next to it. As busy traffic is avoided, it aids to the flow of all elements in the District.

The Burke-Gilman Trail- from the intersection of Pend Orielle Road and 30 yards South

2008-06-03T15:10:00.001-07:00

This section of the asphault trail, besides the intersection, is about 15 wide and is covered in a blanket of trees. At the intersection the road is sandwiched by two stop signs and thee waist high posts. The stops have blinking red lights, which is powered by what looks to be like a solar panel.

The social-cultural uses of my artifact are jogging, walking or strolling, commuting, berry picking, and more. The most popular use of the trail is biking. Some like to bike for pleasure and some use the trail to get from one place to another. Within these uses, the trail offers a social space in which people can converse and interact. Since the trail is 15 ft wide there can be many different uses occuring at the same time.

The place and role that the trail serves is one that is unique. It not only offers a social space in which to carry out sportlike activities, but it represents something more to the community. The trail gives the community an opportunity to stay healthy and contribute to the environment in a good way by not driving a car for their comute. My specific part of the trail also allows cars and the users of the trail to interact, although there is some tension at the interesection.

Scanner Darkly

2008-06-03T00:34:00.000-07:00

A Scanner Darkly, like most science fiction, is a projection of the future. Its setting portrays a society that is rampant with drugs, boasting high levels of addiction, paranoia and corruption. The main protagonist, a character named Bob Arctor, plays a drug enforcement agent attempting to correct and rehabilitate a misguided population. His aim is to eradicate a narcotic called Substance D, a hallucinogen that, after extensive use, destroys the functioning capability of the brain by splitting it into two competing hemispheres. Within Arctor’s society, the government had begun a wide range monitoring program in an attempt to identify drug dealers by use of a machine called a Scanner. Arctor is assigned to monitor the activities of specific suspects on the Scanners, also to live amongst them as an undercover agent, endeavoring to discover the origins of Substance D. In this atmosphere Arctor eventually becomes addicted to the narcotic and slowly deteriorates in his mental capacities, ultimately suffering the consequences of Substance D. Another device that is important to note is a scramble suit. The scramble suit is used by drug enforcement officers to protect their true identity from outsiders as well as from inside the agency. The suit becomes a central element in the theme of personal identity and self.
Another character that is important to the story is one by the name of Donna. Donna is a drug dealer that Arctor is dating in an attempt to discover her sources of Substance D. Later in the story you find that Donna is also an undercover agent who ultimately has been using Arctor as a pawn. In the end of the story Arctor loses his mind and enters a drug rehabilitation program and unwittingly discovers that the leaders of the rehab program have been cultivating and trafficking the drug Substance D.

The Alley

2008-06-02T22:56:00.000-07:00

“The Alley” cuts through the block on 47th and 18th NE connecting 47th to 50th. It is a one lane road that was intended to provide garbage storage and pick up space. Its’ “walls” are lined with cars, dumpsters, and the occasional tree. The main entrance, and only entrance for cars, is the south side of the alley. The majority of activity done in the alley is accomplished at this side as the majority of pedestrians are going to and from the University. When walking through “The Alley” it is obvious that the residents have taken over this garbage truck pathway. Cars line the edges. With this in mind the most numerous sites are the various parking lots. They range from simple open spaces to covered garages, from capacities of 2-3 cars to one that can fit 7-8 cars. An interesting and unique to the North side feature is the intricate back entry stairs. These stairs weave back-and-forth serving as both fire escapes and as an alternative entryway.

At the very end of the North side, the exit of “The Alley,” the “One Way” sign shows the intended flow of the alleyway. This aspect of the alley, that traffic is legally forced to go north and leave the Greek system and the UW campus, has altered the way the alley is used. People don’t often use the alley as a pathway to go to school, but often use it to return home.

A very interesting series of events is directly connected with the Greek lifestyle. Fraternities tend to drink a heavy amount of alcohol, typically in cans, which they throw away by the bag full on a weekly basis. There is a homeless couple that searches through the garbage dumpsters and collects the cans, crushes them, and takes them to sell back to the state for a nickel a can. It is interesting how the party oriented life of the Greek system helps a couple put food on the table.

Seattle U District: City Artifacts Map

2008-05-28T15:13:00.000-07:00

Here is a map of the U District marked with the locations of the city artifacts you are researching. We may put photos and Wikipedia entries on this map, or add links to the marked locations.

This set of artifacts includes...

coffee shops, from Seattle institutions like Allegro Expresso to regular old Starbucks, a different kind of Seattle institution;
bars, like the historic Blue Moon Tavern and College Inn Pub;
a community center, its parking lot and the farmer's market that is held there;
a public library;
eating establishments that indicate U District tastes, from a vegan cafe to a Chinese grill to a restaurant known for Northwest cuisine;
recreational trails and sites, like the Burke Gilman Trail, University Playground and Husky Stadium;
a mysterious public art work;
a hotel, a multi-use commercial building and the UW Medical Center, all important to the university's and the city's economies;
streets and other byways that are central to the neighborhood's identity, including one commemorated in a popular song;
bus routes that connect the U District to other parts of the city and region.

While these artifacts certainly reflect your interests in and experiences of the U District, they also, as a "collection," create a remarkably accurate socio-cultural portrait of this urban community: closely linked to the university at its heart, but at the same time a distinctively Seattle neighborhood.

City Artifacts: What and Where?

2008-05-20T10:29:00.001-07:00

For your proposals due Thursday, you need to designate the artifact in the U-District that will be the subject of your study. This artifact can be:

a public part of the built environment, like a bridge or intersection;
a privately-owned location in the neighborhood, like a garage or building or commercial establishment within a building;
a monument or landmark, like a statue or mural;
an open space, like a park or construction site or vacant lot;
a "vector of connection" to or within the neighborhood, like a bus-route or bike trail;
a text that marks the neighborhood, like a set of posters or graffiti.

Obviously there is a lot of overlap among these options--and the artifact can be something else entirely, if you check with me first. Please choose something that's interesting to you. And remember to think about the pros and cons of working as an "insider" (on an artifact that you already know and use) or "outsider" (on an artifact that is new to you).

So where is the U-District? For the purposes of this project, it's the area east of I-5, west of Montlake Boulevard/25th Ave NE, south of Ravenna Park, and north of the Montlake Cut. Here's a map:

University District.
From http://www.historylink.org/I-map/NErav.htm.

You'll want to explore the neighborhood on foot or on bike before choosing an artifact. You'll also want to think about the history of your artifact; a good place to start is with the history of the U-District itself, which you can read about in more detail here. (But don't forget about the other internet sources I provided in the assignment guidelines.)

And please... check with Gabrielle if you have questions!

Researching History and its Representations...

2008-05-15T08:21:00.000-07:00

Now that you're writing an essay about your graphic novel and its representational techniques, you may be curious to find out more about the real-world events depicted in it. Please remember that this kind of research is NOT required for the essay, since the essay's focus is on the image-text relationships in your panels. But if you feel that a brief discussion of this event could help your argument or just your understanding of the graphic novel, then go ahead and investigate.

Where can you go for this kind of information? In an email posing this question, Elena mentioned good ole Wikipedia, a clear choice given our involvement with that source so far. But our recent investigations into the generation of Wikipedia articles might be relevant here... for example, in the graphic "novel" Elena is working on, Palestine, the real-world event in question is the First Intifada. Here is Wikipedia's entry for that topic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Intifada

Note the warning label at the top that says, "The neutrality of this article is disputed." The discussion and history tabs indicate that the article is edited quite often. Well, given the nature of the conflict and its ongoing presence as a political issue in the Middle East, that's really not surprising! (By the way, you may have noticed yesterday on the HUB lawn the Jewish and Palestinian student booths on either side of the central path... even at this basic geographic level, there is division.)

You can also look into more traditional encyclopedias, written and edited by experts, like the Encyclopedia Britannica--which you can access through the library portal:

http://www.lib.washington.edu/research/

But this approach may not be totally satisfactory, either. For instance, when I searched for "intifada" in Encyclopedia Britannica, the closest match was a very long article on the Middle East. The intifada is mentioned, but as an event it's woven into a much bigger topic, so it is hard to figure out precisely when it began, how it began, what constituted it, how it ended, and so on. Perhaps that's a better way to represent the intifada--as one piece in a puzzle--but it sure does make it hard to grasp what it IS. (I also noticed that Encyclopedia Britannica has a new feature: you can send suggestions to its editors. Hmmm, following the example of Wikipedia, perhaps?)

My goal here is to remind you of something we have encountered before in our readings: hard facts can be elusive and transitory! Paul Auster makes this point in City of Glass, of course, but we've also seen it in theory--for example, in Foucault's analysis of power, in Said's description of Orientalism--and in our own discussions about mass media and popular culture. In short, "knowledge" is always under construction, always conditional, always "ideologically situated."

Does this mean that the representations of real-world events in our graphic novels are as reliable and secure as the representations in, say, the Encyclopedia Britannica? Probably not. But it does indicate that both are representations.

Palestine

2008-05-13T20:45:00.000-07:00

Joe Sacco's Palestine is the result of the author's personal journey to Palestine and Israel in 1991/1992. The graphic novel collects different publications chronologically organized into nine chapters with a foreword by Edward Said. The first eight chapters are primarily based on the author's dialogues with Palestinians, for the author is at the same time a character in the story.
The last chapter instead sees Joe Sacco in Jerusalem escorting and escorted by two Israeli women. The narration of the events is therefore unevenly balanced in favour of the Palestinians' point of view. However, I believe that the author is not trying to manipulate the reader or propagandize a determined ideological standing point as He makes his choice clear from the beginning and even dedicates the entire ending chapter to convey that there is a counter side of the story. The novel, seen from this point of view, is actually a work of journalism since Joe Sacco is giving voice -and shape too- to a displaced and often silenced minority of the Middle East.

The main theme of the novel is perhaps the fact that there's one land for two peoples, together with all the cultural and non-cultural implications that come with this. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict seriously makes an issue in itself and can be seen from many points of view: the author's main concern is to tell their stories (not his), to portray the everyday life of the Palestinians and its many, unquestionable difficulties. The city also plays a role throughout the novel: Jerusalem is indeed the city par excellence, the prize of the conflict. Moreover, the lack of a city can be seen as a theme too. The Palestinians in fact don't really have a city but rather 'curfewed' villages. No such things as Benjamin's arcades or post-modern metropolis are present in the graphic novel, but a supportive community inhabiting occupied territories.

The visual style of the graphic novel is pretty much straightforward. The focus is mostly on the written text and the panels don't require a particular interpretative approach to be fully understood. The layout of the pages, however, is influenced by the content of the story: mainly geometrical when the author is in inner spaces, chaotic during the outdoors, messy when violence breaks out. Nevertheless there are also symbols that visually corroborate the written story, e.g. the mud that's all over the streets of Palestine or the walls that clearly define portions of space.

Persepolis 1 & 2

2008-05-12T22:33:00.001-07:00

Plot-
This graphic novel is more of a memoir than a fictitious story. Marjane “Marji” Satrapi is a young Iranian girl at the beginning of this tale. She is parented by two avant-garde parents, liberal and perspective to their daughter’s unique situation. The fundamentalist party of Iran has just overthrown the existing government, enforcing a strict regime of Islamic practices on the whole nation. Marji is an adept school child with a hunger for knowledge. She reads, listens to her parents’ conversations, and even sneaks into a protest in hopes that she can gleam some information about her fold in history. This first-hand education is made real and dangerous when her beloved uncle is arrested and killed.
In order to escape the persistent situation, Marji’s parents send her to Belgium, to continue her education and live in a peaceful environment. If only it could be that simple. Once in Europe, Marji finds it hard to assimilate and find friends. Not only is she restricted through language, but her culture is discriminated by some very interesting folk, like her boyfriend’s mother. The very thing she was fleeing from is being projected onto her, because of her skin. She eventually makes friends with the marginalized, and experiments with drugs and ideology. After finishing secondary school, Marji feels lost and pulled between her Iranian roots and her present Western environment. She decides to return to Iran, in a burst of homesickness, but her ideal dream is flattened upon arrival. Iran is in much the same state as when she left, with the only major difference being that the streets have been renamed after martyrs. She tries to adjust, but finds it very difficult until she enrolls in art school and marries. This interim doesn’t last long and soon she finds herself wishing for Europe. In the end she returns to her foreign home.

Themes-
Identity crisis, xenophobia
Fundamentalism- assimilation
Knowledge=power
Class struggles (maid’s love, dad’s car)
The Marginalized people
War/ Society against individual

Drawing Style-
Marjane uses wide, rounded images—very soft in nature. Setting the story in the perspective of a nine year old, some of the pictures are very childlike and endearing. As the novels progress, a certain attention to detail grows with Marji. The panels do not have a specific formula such as nine to a page, and often there are full page drawings. Using only black and white, Marjane shows the stark difference in Iran during that time period. Many of the fundamentalists have beards covering their entire mouths and have uni-brows. The dialogue bubbles are much the same throughout the characters, but become jagged when someone screams. Implementing her Islamic background, there are many beautiful patterns and geometric images to structure her panels.

Shutterbug Follies

2008-05-09T22:44:00.000-07:00

Plot
Shutterbug Follies is a story of a young girl who, working at a photo shop, happens upon some photographic evidence of murder. She begins tracking the suspect, despite all odds, becomes determined to solve the crime.

Themes
Feminism is a major theme that runs throughout the story of the little, teenage girl who unveils the evil works of a dangerous man. While she enlists the help of other men to solve the crime, she is always the gutsy one who drags them along.
Another theme is the role of the city as a dangerous place and a blanket for high crime. Also the diversity in the city is commonly depicted throughout the panels.
Art, you could also say is a recurring theme. There is a play on the definition of art, what is accepted as art, and the many forms it can take.

Visual Style
The visual style of this graphic novel is distinct in its use of color, lack of narrative, and the unique panel adaptations from a typical form.
The pictures themselves are very vibrantly colored and styled in a manner typically associated with regular comic books in appearing cartoon-like. They also include little sounds like a comic book would (clack when a phone is slammed down). Furthermore, the entire text appears in dialogue with almost no narrative with the exception of such phrases as "later that day." Where any narrative could exist there are series of pictures demonstrating the progression.
Also, another visual technique employed in this graphic novel is the manipulation of the panels. Certain panels appear through the lenses of binoculars or cameras and others exist as photos or negative film slides.

A Scanner Darkly

2008-05-09T21:32:00.000-07:00

Summary:

A Scanner Darkly is a novel written by Philip K. Dick, which eventually turns into a film and then back into a graphic novel. Using still shots from the film, the graphic novel is created with actual scenes from the movie. The graphic novel is essentially about a character who is an undercover cop, by the name of Bob Arctor. Bob gets caught up in drug usage and an identity crisis while trying to investigate on the drug known as Substance D. Substance D is a highly addictive drug which is known to cause the two halves of the brain to work independently. Bob plays the role of "Fred", the undercover drug addict investigating Substance D, which he eventually becomes an actual addict and confuses himself; leaving Bob to spy on himself as "Fred". Ultimately, Bob is checked into a rehab center called New Path and takes on a different identity, Bruce. Bruce finds outs that New Path is actually the supplier and distributor of Substance D -- ending the novel with a sort of twist on the drug issue occurring in the community.

Main Issues, Themes or ideas:

- Identity crisis

- Drug addition and persecution

- Morality

Visual Style:

The visual style was definitely unique in the sense of using still shots from the movie created out of the novel and developing a graphic novel from the actual scenes in the film. A program, rotoscope, was used to create this sort of animated look that made the style even more riveting and distinctive.

Maus I & II

2008-05-09T16:43:00.000-07:00

Summary:The novels cover two story arks:It details Art Spiegelman recording his father’s, Vladek’s, account of the Holocaust.This task spans over quite some time and during this the novel paints a picture of Vladek what has become. He is in poor health, his behavior is erratic, compulsive, and has an unhealthy relationship is his second-wife, Mala.He novel ends with Vladek’s death.As his father recounts his life leading up to and during the Holocaust, the book retreats from the present and becomes a narrative told from Vladek’s perspective.He married Art’s mother, Anja, who was a member of a prosperous family in Poland.When the Nazis came to power things were difficult for them and all other Jewish families.Their condition got worst and worst and their attempts to survive were made all the more difficult because of rampant deception.Eventually they were split up and sent to Auschwitz.With cleverness, conservation, and a whole lot of luck, the two survived the war and moved to America where Art was born.After a few years Anja committed suicide.

Main issues, themes, ideas:
Racism/Diaspora
Value
Father-son relationship
Power
Collections
Self-reliance/Trust
Survival

Visual Style: Art Spiegelmans is pretty consistent with his visual style.There is little detail in most of his drawings and they can seem to take a backseat to the novel’s text.There are occasions that the visual style dramatically changes which can be quite jarring and punctuating.These sweeping alterations create a foreign atmosphere and give insight to the different aspects of the characters and author (who is a character in the book).Throughout the novel Art represents groups with certain animals.The Jews are mice, the Germans cats, the Polish pigs, the American dogs.The symbolism is apparent and its consistent use begins to meld the relationships between these groups with our perception of the relationships between the animals they are being represented as.

The novel jumps between the present day and WWII, but as Art becomes engrossed in his father’s tale of the Holocaust, aspects of the story seep into the drawing of the present day.For example, while conducting an interview during a drive, the silhouette of lynched Jews can be seen in the forest beyond the road they’re driving on.The bridging of these two worlds is a powerful visual technique that demonstrates how Art has been affected by constructing the novel.

A Scanner Darkly

2008-05-09T16:18:00.000-07:00

Plot
The graphic novel "A Scanner Darkly," is based on the movie adaptation of the novel by Philip K. Dick. Set in a dystopian Orange County not too far in the future, protagonist Bob Arctor is an undercover cop who goes by "Fred" while investigating the drug scene of the highly addictive Substance D. Substance D is known for its potent psychoactive effects; continued use of it will eventually lead to the user's brain splitting into two competing halves. With the majority of the population addicted, Arctor goes undercover as a junkie and becomes addicted himself. Amongst the police force, Arctor's identity and others' is concealed by a "scramble suit." This measure actually leads to Arctor having to spy on himself; that is, officer Fred has to spy on Substance D junkie Bob Arctor. This crisis is amplified by the effects of addiction on Arctor's cognitive ability. Finally, Arctor is admitted to New Path (a rehabilitation center guarded from government surveillance) and discovers the source of Substance D within New Path's garden-commune. Arctor was chosen by the police force to enter New Path as an actual addict in order to confirm it as the distributor of Substance D.

Main Issues:

Drug addiction and paranoia
Identity; the psychological, physical, and emotional aspects of it-performative identity
Government surveillance and conspiracy
Criminal - Cop relationship

Visual Style:
The graphic novel images for "A Scanner Darkly" were stills taken from the film version that was released in 2006. The film was done in a unique style known as rotoscope, which includes the preliminary digital filming of real actors (you might recognize Keanu Reeves, Winona Rider, and Robert Downey Jr.) followed by animating over. This produces an interesting effect; here's a link to view the movie trailer if you're curious as to what it looks like.

Maus I & II

2008-05-09T13:38:00.000-07:00

1. Maus, by Art Spiegelman is a story about Art's father, Vladek, who survives the Holocaust. The story starts in the beginning of WWII, and continues on until the end of the war. Vladek's struggles during the war are described by his son. Everything from having to hide himslef and his wife, Anja, in bunkers to escape the Germans, to actually being prisoners in Aushwitz. During the book, Vladek tells his story to his son, yet at the same time we are shown the troubled relationship Art has with his father because of the war. Maus shows not only how WWII affected Vladek during the war, but also how it continued to affect him the rest of his life, especially his relationships with people.

2.
Identity
Gender
Race
Religion
Mental illness/Effects after War
Father/ son relationships
mother/son relationships
Class separation

3. The characters in the novel are presented as animals. The animals seem to have a hierarchy consistent with the nations/religions of the time. The Germans are cats and the Jews are mice. During this time the Germans deinitely were more powerful than the jews and did trap them just like cats trap mice. They kept them confined to small towns and did not let them no what was going on until it was too late and they were in the concentration camps. Also, once in the camps, they were trapped everywhere they went and would eventually be killed. The Americans were represented as dogs. The US won the war and did defeat the Germans, so it would only be appropriate that they would be dogs, since obviously dogs eat cats. This kind of hierarchy is shown across all nations/religions.
Also, the cartoons are all shown in black and white. When the father is telling his story, in the beginning of each part, they show him and his son. This way we see the interaction between Art and Vladek, and can see how their relationship has been affected. Once Vladek is deep into his story, the cartoons then switch to images of the past. These images give us a better understanding of the kind of things he went through and how he felt. Art goes out of his way to point out certain things. These things are usually separate images from the line of the story. Art likes to put important things in boxes separate from the other images. He does this alot with drawings of places, such as bunkers or camps. These are important images because otherwise these places would be very hard to describe with just words. Art also tries to draw the reader in by putting signs in separate boxes as well. Signs that were posted or letters that were sent are shown separate so that the reader is reading them, the same as Vladek would have.
Lastly, there is narraration at the top of most of the images, which is coming from Vladek as he decribes the events to his son, or Art as he describes his father. The author also shows dialogue between people in the images, giving the reader more insight on how it was during the time. Doing this makes the story more complete and easier to follow especially since we are constantly going between present day, with Vladek and his son, to the past and the war.

Shutterbug Follies

2008-05-09T12:30:00.000-07:00

Shutterbug Follies is about an 18 year old girl named Bee who solves a murder mystery where the Killer takes photos of the victims right after their graphic death posing as news photographers and artists. The killer took the photos to be developed at the Photo shop that Bee worked at. During this story she puts herself in danger to uncover the truth about the murders.

One of the main themes in this story is feminism as Bee is an independent (though she lives with her mom), young woman who convinces men to help her and defeats a male enemy. Another is the City life and how diverse it can be/is. The city also provides a good cover up for the criminals. Also, Bee is an “ordinary” person who goes on to be the hero of the story and there is even a little romance.

Some of the theories embedded in this story are Marxism, Orientalism, a little Queer theory, the Other, and feminism.

Some of the major visual aspects are that the book is in color, that there are many different points of view, ex. a undeveloped picture or looking through binoculars, and there are virtually no narration throughout the entire book as the picture tend to tell all that is needed.

Persepolis 1 and 2

2008-05-09T11:28:00.000-07:00

1). Persepolis wasnt so much a story with a plot as it was a memoir of Marjane Satrapi and her life growing up in Iran during the revolution. As the graphic novel progresses, you can tell that her understanding of the real world does as well. In the beginning, she believes what she is taught in school and is conflicted when her parents try to explain otherwise and what is happening with their government. The story is a good narrative to get a sense of how a child views war and what is "morally" right. The war causes her family to split up, while she goes to live and attend school in Europe where she experiences typical adolescent trivialites: sex, drugs, rebellion, love, etc. She goes through an identity crisis when she visits Iran and she feels like she doesnt belong here, as well as not belonging in Europe.

2). Themes/Main Issues:
- Identity Crisis; Marjane trying to be true to herself and her heritage while finding an identity for herself.
- Marxism, materialism, and class order
- Family Relations
- Power
- Self awarness and education

3). Marjane Satrapi creates visual pictures that are often dark, black in background, and with a lot of shadow. This emphasizes the dreary times of the war and how she is feeling (lost or all alone). The panels are often mixed up, averaging about 9 panels per page. But when she feels something is especially important, she will dedicated a whole page to the illustration. Her visual arts are very well put together and it correlates better with the story.

Postcards: True Stories that Never Happened

2008-05-08T22:43:00.000-07:00

A Joyous Eastertide
Story and Illustration by Phillip Hester

The Plot: In "A Joyous Eastertide," a man tells his 25 -year -old daughter about his childhood. When he was a young boy, his mother committed suicide, leaving him all alone with his father. The boy’s father marries a woman with Tourette’s Syndrome. When the father dies from the influenza, the boy is left in the care of his new stepmother. During this time, the boy has terrible nightmares and would sleep in the same bed with his stepmother. Over the years, the stepmother takes very good care of the boy. He would grow up to be an assistant medical examiner. One day, he realizes that woman he is examining had neatly trimmed her pubic hair into a heart. Instead of finding this situation amusing, he begins to remember his stepmother. This woman on the examining table had chosen to ignore the embarrassment and had given this simple gift to someone. This reminds him of his stepmother who had taken care of him, even though he wasn't even her real son.

The themes and ideas of “A Joyous Eastertide” include family, sacrifice, love, acceptance, and death. The stepmother took care of this boy who wasn't even her own son. She chose to love him and treat him as if he were her own child. Similarly, the woman on the examining table sacrificed her embarrassment and made the heart in her pubic hair.

The visual style: There is a recurring theme of lines in this story. On the legs of the Jesus statue, there are cracks in the feet that the boy thought was the blood from Jesus’ wounds. Again, we see lines when the boy is lying in bed with his stepmother and he is examining her hands. He saw those lines as a “net of her abiding kindness.” Lastly, we see lines in the feet of the woman being examined. These lines reminded the man of the lines in his stepmother's hands. Another visual technique that this story has is the three panels showing the face of the stepmother as she scrunches up her face. Each time, the first panel has the drawing of the woman with a soft face, and the second is always the scrunched face. The last of the three panels always has the same soft face seen in the first panel.

Maus I & II

2008-05-08T22:28:00.000-07:00

Maus by Art Spiegelman is about the life and death of Vladek Spiegelman, Art Spiegelman’s father. Vladek’s memories center on his struggle and will to keep himself and his wife, Anja, alive while hiding in bunkers, dealing on the black market, sneaking out for food, being sent to Auschwitz, and finally being reunited at the end of the Holocaust. Vladek also often remembers Art’s deceased brother, Richieu, whose life was taken when he was very young. As Vladek recounts the story of his close encounters with death as a Jew during the Nazi occupation of Poland and much of Europe, another story comes to light—that of Art and his relationship with his father.

The main issues, themes or ideas raised in these two graphic novels include:
Father-son relationships
Racism
Classism
Sexism
Survival
Power
Identity
Humanity

Art Spiegelman uses a visual style that is both modest and complex. For the majority of the novel, he uses bold outlines of characters with simple cross-sections and lines for textures. As such, the several portions that do not follow this visual style seem like interruptions. These “interruptions” include more detailed images, images of characters as humans, maps or diagrams, and photographs. Spiegelman also uses much visual symbolism which reflects and emphasizes the issues raised by Maus, for example, the depiction of Jews as mice and Germans as cats.

Postcards: True Stories that Never Happened

2008-05-08T20:39:00.000-07:00

Homesick by Joshua Hale Fialkov, illustrated by Micah Farritor
From Postcards: True Stories that Never Happened

Plot: Based on a postcard written by an American in France at the start of the Great Depression, this story shows a snapshot of life for Marj and Frank, two Americans in 1930s Paris. While Frank is thrilled with Paris and happy they scrimped and saved for this, their shared dream, Marj hasn’t adjusted well to the weather, people, or attitudes of Paris and wants to go home. This drives a quiet, awkward wedge between the couple as we see Frank somewhat pretentiously becoming “Francois” leaving “Marjorie” floundering, alienated in the big city.

Main issues, themes, ideas: Like a lot of the short stories present in this collection (if not all of them), Homesick revolves around the feelings of loss and loneliness. Marj yearns to go back to her American home, feeling out of place in the foreign city. Her husband is sort of leaving her as well, by trying to turn himself into someone else and assimilate into this place that Marj doesn’t like. This story also invokes the idea of the city, since it is set in Paris and location is a focal point in the story – Marj wants to go home, Frank admires the skyline and calls it “paradise”, and the large last panel is Marj left alone, dwarfed under the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Once again, here the city is an imposing, important ‘character’ in the story, where people can lose themselves or take on new identities.

Visual style: The style used in Homesick is unique amongst the stories in Postcards. Unlike a lot of graphic novels illustrated with harsh shadows and a very two-dimensional feel to them, the images in Homesick have a melting, smudgy, feel to them, almost like watercolors. While some of the other stories are visually more dramatic or noir-ish (Quarantine) or look like a comic out of the Sunday newspaper (Time), these illustrations are very muted, cloudy, and gray. The watery, runny grays help communicate to the reader the experience of the dreary weather that the protagonist is so depressed by, and the muted style further reinforces Marj’s impression of the pretty but bleak setting. The portrayal of the setting itself provides a large, empty, space that emphasize the long, awkward silences in the story, echoing the quiet displeasure and soft anguish of the characters.

Persepolis 1 & 2

2008-05-08T18:07:00.000-07:00

Persepolis chronicles the young life of Marjane Satrapi, the author, growing up in Tehran, Iran during the Islamic Revolution. Satrapi not only describes the political and social events that occured during her time there, but she adds her own flair to the graphic novel through comedy and her interesting graphic style. Satrapi was raised in a progressive environment; her parents were Marxists, and many of her family members have been jailed or executed due to their political views. She grows up wanting to protest the war just like her parents, and she does this in her own way as she grows up. Eventually, after their neighborhood is bombed, Satrapi's parents decide that it is best for her to move to Vienna, Austria to continue her schooling away from turmoil. She does this, sad that her parents will not come to live with her.

Persepolis 2 begins with Satrapi's life in Austria. Although she makes friends there, she still feels like an outsider and misses her family and homeland. After she graduates from high school in Vienna, she returns to Iran. She gets married, begins to study art at a university, and divorces. She decides that Iran is not where she should be either, so she departs again.

Some important themes present in both Persepolis books are class conflict, power and political struggles, and the search for one's identity.

The visual style of these graphic novels includes deviation from the standard 9 panel layout, long and ominous shadows, and the frequent use of black background for panels instead of white.

Mail Order Bride

2008-05-08T15:39:00.000-07:00

Mail Order Bride is a story of a young Korean girl name Kyung who is sent to America as a mail order bride. She is wed to Monty, a 30 something year old virgin who works and owns a comic and toy store. At first everything was fine, Monty had everything he had always wanted, but as things develop, Kyung's identity is developed and revealed as she explores artistic endeavors, the progression of her character through radical changes challenges the typical domestic female and Asian stereotype. The story proceeds to change both Monty and Kyung's and leads a disastrous clash.

The novel addresses so many topics; Identity, Innocence, Stereotypes, Gender & Race, and Sexuality. To describe and provide examples to these topics without writing pages and pages would be impossible. All of these topics are dealt with at many at a time.

I can generalize and say that there are two or three different styles used in the book. One style, which takes up the majority of the book, is the artist's style to portray the story; Cleanly drawn characters, few facial details, nothing elaborate so to say. The second style is drawn in a realistic manner, drawn like fine detailed pencil art, the kind you'd find in art galleries. These pictures are all of Asian women drawn in a very sensuous, seductive tone. The third style is much like first, but all of them are of the same Caucasian woman in two different forms, one represent as naked, spirited, freckled and “free” while many others are represented as clothed, uniform, cheerleaders.

Mail Order Bride: Mark Kalesniko

2008-05-08T14:49:00.000-07:00

1.) Monty, a 39 year old virgin, orders a bride from Korea, Kyung, a woman with almost no accent. They live in a tiny town, Bandini, where Monty, overgrown man-child, runs a comic and toy shop, even though he keeps his most prized collections in his home. With little time getting to know one another, Monty and Kyung get married, in hopes that they will bond after the ceremony. The night of the wedding, Kyung consummate their marriage, with little or no help from Monty who is too awkward to make the first move. Kyung does this out of boredom and obligation to her new husband who paid her way from another country. From this moment everything goes downhill from there.
Monty has always wanted a beautiful Oriental woman to wait on him hand and foot in a traditional manner, fulfilling all the lustful fantasies of a stereotypical Asian wife. At first Kyung, is not sure of herself and she's not even sure what she wanted to get out of the marriage.
As time passes, the more Kyung learns about her husband Monty, the less she likes him. Kyung's life consists of wifely duties and listening to Monty's older companions complain about her health problems.
Later on Kyung tries to have her own life, and after meeting Eve, who's half-Chinese as quite outspoken, takes some classes at a local art school. In art, she discovers her own beauty and ability to express herself. Eve does not repress a single thought especially when it comes to Kyung's husband. Kyung finds herself with a new role model, and a friend. Monty is beside himself with the idea of losing his wife, and all of his stereotypical ideas of Asian women. Kyung tires to explain her interests, and her new found passions trying to involve Monty, but he wants to live his life on his terms. He doesn't want a better life; he wants his toys, his comics and his mail order bride.
Kyung realizes that her life with him will never improve. She responds by treating her husband with cruelty, and she does not pretend that she likes him or that she will tolerate Monty and his childish behavior. When Kyung and Eve decide to take a road trip, Kyung was going to run away from home, but when she is betrayed by Eve she returns back to her home. Upon arrival she destroys the toy shop, and as Monty returns home and discovers the damage, they fight while yelling profanities at each other. The story ends with a miserable Kyung, trapped in the life of a mail order bride, fulfilling all of her husband's wishes.

2.) Some main issues, themes or ideas addressed in Mail Order Bride are dealing with the stereotype of Asian women being submissive and obedient. Kalesniko dealt with many stereotypes, also including the geek which challenges the image of the successful business man, which Monty is, but does not illustrate many professional, business like qualities. The author deals with peoples insecurities and how they play out in real life. I think one of the central ideas in this graphic novel is the lack of communication between Kyung and Monty. There are many other themes and ideas, but these are the ones that stood out.

3.) The visual style used within the Mail Order Bride novel includes the use of simple drawings of the characters, in contrast his detailed surroundings gives a clear idea of the tone set and how important the complex details of the background play into the graphic novel. Also, Kalesniko uses two methods of his drawings, very thin delicate lines with detailed precision, and dark thick lines that make the images more abstract.

Persepolis 1 & 2

2008-05-08T11:22:00.000-07:00

1. Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis 1 and 2, tells her story of growing up during the Cultural Revolution in Iran during the 1980’s. Throughout Persepolis 1, we learn and experience the history and background of the revolution through Marjane’s childlike viewpoint. At the beginning of the story, the Iranians successfully protest against the shah’s rule, but their newfound freedom doesn’t last for long. They soon find themselves rebelling and having to deal with the new, restrictive lifestyle changes imposed by the Islamic fundamentalist regime that soon takes over the country after the downfall of the shah. Marjane’s story is one of bittersweet memories. The readers share her feelings of sorrow and horror when her beloved uncle gets executed and her close friend dies in a bombing but we also celebrate with her when she finds creative ways to rebel against the regime. At the end of Persepolis 1, however, her parents decide it would be better to send Marjane to a French school in Austria. Marjane leaves Iran, and spends most of her teenage years in Europe experimenting with drugs and learning about love in Persepolis 2. Marjane appreciates her individual and social liberties in her new environment, but nevertheless experiences an identity crisis as she struggles to fit in with her peers. When she returns back to Iran as an adult, she finds some happiness, but ultimately decides that the “Iran of today” is not right for her. At the end of Persepolis 2, she leaves Iran for good.

2. Some themes, main ideas, and issues in Perspolis 1 and 2:

Finding and defining one’s identity.

East and West (cultural differences)

Class differences

Political conscienceness

Importance of education/self-education

Anti-war themes

3. Satrapi often uses black backgrounds and outlines her characters and objects in white, effectively creating a dark atmosphere that is appropriate for a war-time story. Occasionally she would break up the traditional structure of the 9 squares per page and insert in larger and longer panels that lean towards a more interpretive understanding of an idea or an event. In these panels, Satrapi often uses geometric patterns and fluid lines to emphasize the emotions and feelings of her childhood. In addition, Satrapi uses symbolic images, such as stairs or slap hand marks to further assist our understanding of a theme or main idea in her graphic novel.

Shutterbug Follies

2008-05-08T10:13:00.000-07:00

This graphic novel follows a young girl names Bee, who works with photo development in the city of New York. While developing pictures for a "crime scene investigator" she becomes suspicious of the graphic pictures. She decides to investigate on her own. Using the help of a taxi cab driver and a few friends she scurries around New York following the man, Oleg, in his Russian Mafia type adventures, eventually getting a little too close for comfort. She finds herself in the house of Oleg as he catches on her to spying and after an intense action scene manages to get herself out of the sticky situation and Oleg into jail.

Some themes and ideas, I would have to agree with Lori, is defenetly the city experience and atmosphere which allows Bee to investigate. Like in the City of Glass, the city creates a setting in which Bee can follow Oleg without being completely obvious. Another theme was the detective style and action.

Another theme I saw, which ties into his visual techniques, was the theme of photograhy. Many of the frames were creatively drawn in a fish eye lens or in a photo negative. Also the shape of the book itself was inventive, a long horzontal frame with a hardback.

The visual style was like a cartoon comic book with lots of bright colors and the use of creative frames. There were also many pages that did use words, so on the picture did the talking.

Maus I and II

2008-05-08T03:02:00.001-07:00

1) Art Spiegelman’s Maus I and II is about a Jewish Auschwitz survivor named Vladek, recounting the horror of WWII for his son Art Spielgelman, who uses his father’s history and experiences by creating a powerful adaptation of his story through the medium of comics (graphic novels). Vladek’s story for his son spans his life before the war (though just before the German invasion of Poland), and continues throughout the war – he tells of how he was drafted into the Polish Reserves, becomes a Nazi POW, then escapes and spends much time running and hiding, ends up in Auschwitz, and is eventually freed and reunited with his love Anja.

2) The main issues in Maus I and II concern the experiences of the Nazi concentration camps for Jews and other POWs in WWII, the after effects of war – not only for the survivors but future generations – as well as father/son relations, Jewish cultural issues, religious issues, and history.

3) Maus I and II use a very gritty, simplistic, yet highly expressive art style. Characters backgrounds are drawn with heavy contour lines. Lighting and shading is applied through cross-hatching techniques and heavy outlining. There are many scenes with stark contrasts between white and black, with some characters presented as black silhouettes. On a final note, characters in Maus I and II are not presented as humans, but rather animals. Art Spiegelman decided to assign certain animals to certain people, for instance; Jews are drawn as mice, Germans are cats, and Americans are shown as dogs.

On a final note, there is a hierarchy among the characterizations of the various groups of animals, i.e., cats are more powerful than mice, and dogs are more powerful than cats. This is symbolic of the animal kingdom, but relates to the positions of power certain groups of people held during WWII.

Palestine

2008-05-07T22:19:00.000-07:00

1.) Joe Sacco's Palestine is about his travels in Israel. He travels all over to see the oppression that is put on the Palestinians by the Jews. On his travels he interviewed many people that had been displaced by the occupation of the Jews and their experiences with the Jewish military, while making friends as well with some of the people he met. Some of the people were very reluctant to give him any information for fear of him being a Jewish spy instead of a real American Journalist. Throughout the graphic novel Sacco also experienced some of the fear that the Palestinians felt when the Jewish military would go by because he felt he may be struck by a stray rock or bullet in the cross fire.

2.) The main issue of the graphic novel is the misunderstanding of two different "cultures". Issues include, faith in ones own religion/culture, oppression by others and identity. The ideas the novel creates is that there are always two sides to a story, people will always talk about something but not many will actually follow through, and that many people will treat others how they were treated once.

3.) The visual style of the graphic novel is simple but very effective. Sacco uses enough words to tell us what is happening in the pictures, but also not enough so that we must pay attention to the visual pictures as well to get the full story. In his visuals he has many people doing many things. His pictures seem to be very complex. This helps by showing the emotions of the Jews and Palestinians and they treated each other, and because we see something we can believe it is more real than if we just read it, whether it be a drawing or a photograph. Also Sacco makes the panels of the novel more scattered and speech bubbles more confusing and harder to read in a certain order when violence seems to take place, just like how the streets would be when violence breaks out and there are people running and fighting in all different directions, chaos.

Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened

2008-05-07T21:49:00.000-07:00

“Time,” my short story from Postcards, tells the story of an old man and his true love. The postcard that this story is written about reads “Dear Myrtle, now don’t get brain fever trying to figure out who this is from. Just think apple cake + lemon slice & you got it.” This postcard represents an important turning point in the old man’s life. He had fallen in love with one of the waitresses, Myrtle, and he used the postcard as a valentine to tell her how he felt. While their love story had a happy ending, the old man’s story is not as uplifting. He claims that he no longer has anything to live for, and has a feeling that he is about to die. Instead of being upset about the situation, the old man passively accepts his situation and welcomes the idea of being with Myrtle again.

This short story addresses themes of love, age & youth, satisfaction, and change. Visually, it is generally solemn in mood, with the old man’s character rarely smiling. The author is constantly changing the scope of the panel, zooming in on certain aspects and panning out on others to emphasize times that the old man is the center of the idea and other times when he is observing the situation. The number of panels used varies throughout the story, but there are typically three rows of panels on each page. The fragmentation of Dialogue and thoughts are represented in a few ways, with dialogue in bubbles and thoughts generally in rectangular boxes. Thoughts are also frequently fragmented by the panels and boxes, which helps to isolate certain ideas and organize the general flow of the story.

PALESTINE

2008-05-07T17:21:00.000-07:00

1) Joe Sacco's Palestine is a graphic novel depicting his travels through Israel---the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and his chats with displaced Palestinians along the way. This graphic novel didn't really have one story to follow...sure the overflowing story was his trip and his travels, but the main bulk of the novel was broken down into other people telling the stories. As in City of Glass, authorship is played with, but knowingly so. Sacco goes the whole book "narrating" the stories of the Israel occupation of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, focusing on individual Palestinians' accounts of terror or militant run ins.

2) Main theme, Issues, or Ideas: I think that one of the main themes or ideas to recognize is, of course, the play with authorship. Sacco is using other people's stories, in effect, to create his own. The role of the city is apparent in the fact that these people (the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, or anywhere for that matter) are confined to the "city" or lack thereof because of these miltary occupations not letting them out for education or hospitals or anything. In this case, the Palestinians are establishing their cultures within the confines of the city, the kids are growing up and have no opportunities to expand their minds.

Another theme, to me, is the conveyance of expressions and emotions through the visuals. Which i will go into in the next section.

To my group: Please expand more on the themes issues and ideas and help me out. :)

3) Description of Visual Style: The visual style in this graphic novel is not highly interpretive as in Paul Auster's. Mainly, the pictures convey what exactly the speech bubble is talking about. No hidden meanings as far as I could see. However, if you look closely, you notice the expressions on everyone's faces as clearly establishing some message. As for our "narrator", Joe, you may have noticed that his eyes (and his main expressions) are hidden behind his glasses, his real eyes are never shown.

I also noted that during extremely chaotic moments, as in a fight breaking out, the panels become scattered and confused, mirroring the emotions, or they just disappear entirely and its a mass of pictures to interpret.

If someone is telling an important story, or it is extremely graphic or painful, there are more panels to a page. Say, 12 instead of 5. It progresses us panel by panel so that it soaks in to us more immediately as a reader and we can be more involved.

To me this graphic novel is all about emotions. A picture is worth a thousand words, and things such as the ones that Sacco speaks of are more impactive with the aid of a picture.

Postcards: True Stores That Never Happened

2008-05-07T10:44:00.000-07:00

Postcards is really a collection of short stories done in graphic novel format (more or less it's a collection of short comics). The stories were all inspired by real antique postcards collected by the book's editor Jason Rodriguez. As the plot and visual style of each short is entirely different from the next, our group has decided to have each person post about one story that they truly enjoyed.

My short story was entitled "Quarantined". The story was developed by Jason and RJ Rodriguez and the illustrations were done by Seamus Heffernan. The postcard that this story is based off of is difficult to read, but to the best of my knowledge it reads, "... freind, I received your card this morning and will say that I am not afraid of the quarantine. If you can come when you said on Sat... " This somewhat mysterious letter is turned into a plot about a doctor caring for the people of his town that have contracted a horrible disease. At the beginning of the story the doctor's wife dies of the disease and it seems that he and his young daughter are some of the only people around without the illness. After the daughter wanders into the tents where the doctor is treating his patients he realizes that it is unsafe to keep her with him any more. He writes to his brother who lives in a nearby town and arranges to meet him on the edge of the woods where the quarantine isn't guarded. There, the doctor says goodbye to his daughter and gives her to his evil-looking brother who obviously does not like the doctor. Here the story ends.
The themes in this story are that of loss, hopeless despair and immense self-sacrifice. The doctor's world falls apart at the seems as he loses all that he ever cared for. He cannot save his wife from her crushing illness anymore than he can save his daughter from the clutches of his wicked brother.The doctor must give his daughter up in order for her to be safe; yet in doing so he loses his one last love.
The visual style in this comic captures the atmosphere produced by the morbid subject matter. Faces near melt off the character's portraits, making it difficult to discern whether the person is crying, or just weighed down my the overwhelming circumstances that surround them. The lighting is dim no matter the scene. The characters are illuminated by eerie glows that enable the reader to think of them as ghosts rather than living creatures. The story and visual style work together to create the horrible world that this short takes place in.

Shutterbug Follies

2008-05-06T22:28:00.000-07:00

Shutterbug Follies, written and illustrated by Jason Little, follows Bee, an 18 year old film developer living in New York. Her interesting days of film developing become even more interesting when Oleg Khatchatourian drops off film to be developed. Although used to being exposed to somewhat graphic pictures, Bee is horrified at the images she develops of murder victims for Oleg. Bee becomes suspicious that Oleg is not only photographing the murder scenes but causing them as well. She embarks upon her own private investigation, being aided with help from a girlfriend, a taxi driver, and an assistant of Oleg. Bee puts herself in danger by proving that Oleg indeed is a murderer only to find herself in a tight spot (in a file cabinet actually). With the help from her taxi driver friend, Bee manages to escape danger and Oleg is caught.
Because the storyline takes place in New York, the city and its inhabitants play a key role in the plot. The characters all seem to be somewhat stereotypic of those found in a city of New York. Taxi drivers, tattooed friends, immigrants in crime circles, and even ethnic cuisines are all typecasts of a cultural smattering in the city.
Shutterbug Follies is (from what I saw in Odegaard) one of the few graphic novels that uses color. The colors seem to parallel scenes—the dark room is red (danger), the store is green (perhaps mellow), and the night scenes/chase scenes are in muted tones. The book also presents film to look like film, pictures to appear as Polaroids or other styles of prints, and video surveillance shots to look like monitor screens.

Identity in City of Glass

2008-04-28T09:59:00.000-07:00

One of the definining characteristics of City of Glass is the way it engages "identity games": it questions our basic assumptions about the singular, static "self" who goes around in the world with a secure, consistent "personality." These "identity games" in the novel often have to do with authorship, language, word-play and temporal and spatial mobility. Please find a short passage (a sentence or two, at most a paragraph) in your reading so far where such "identity games" are exemplified and record the passage as a COMMENT to this post. Don't forget to include the page number. We can then use our collection of passages to examine "identity" in class tomorrow...

History of Origins: Race Studies

2008-04-21T10:34:00.000-07:00

1. In both texts, it is apparent that race is central to cultural studies and according to Sardar and Van Loon, "is a socially constructed concept" and Munns and Rajan state "race pervades every aspect of culture" (Munns & Rajan 385). They state how the term "Race" developed primarily after the Renaissance and "after the industrialization of Europe and the process of colonization" (Sardar and Van Loon 122). Both texts state that the discourse on race has to do with politics and power: "post-colonial critics to challenge power relationships between the colonized and the colonizer" (383), many times including the works of the oppressed like Frederick Douglass.

In Introducing Cultural Studies, they introduce terms like multiculuralism, describing different races living in peace as one. The problem that both texts face in analyzing race and racism is that it views other cultures from a western tradition. According to the texts, the most important humanistic strategy is to view the "'other's' voice on co-equal terms" (385). It emphasizes the "civilized" as western culture. Sardar and van loon talk about Diaspora and how minority communities live in exile because of economic and politic reasons, in particular the jews or the native americans in America.

2. Keywords: "Other"
The "Other" in New keywords is "integrally related to that of identity" (249) and is the "non-self and non-us". It is associated with racist and xenophobic reactions. It has been a main issue in postcolonial studies in which "The West" is in composition with an imaginary "the East".

3. In the wikipedia article Race (classification of human beings) it talks about the history of the idea of race, the debate on whether or not it is a scientific or socially constructed ideal, how it is used in politics and census, and how it varies from country to country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_%28classification_of_human_beings%29

Another article I wanted to look into was the Thomas Carlyle "Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question" in which the author opposes the idea of aboloshing slavery and is one of the well-known works showing early racism and discrimination.
http://mac110.assumption.edu/aas/Manuscripts/carlyle.html

History of Origins: Gender Studies

2008-04-17T23:56:00.000-07:00

· Gender Studies often tends to be associated with the field of Women’s Studies and the Feminist movement. However, while an important aspect of Gender Studies, this field is not the singular focus. According to Munns and Rajan, “Gender Studies looks at [the] processes of categorization and the ways in which societies construct, articulate and police sexuality.” (Munns and Rajan 485) Therefore, the horizon of inclusive facets is broadened to include gay and lesbian studies and the study of women of multiple races.
The many different factions of Feminism and Women’s Studies are commonly in conflict. Some stress female equality while others celebrate the differences. Post-modernist feminists stress that “social construction of gender involves power relations.” (Sardar and Loon 144) The so called “Third World” feminists criticize their western counterparts for focusing attention only on how the western woman is oppressed in a multi-cultural world. They claim that “white feminist theories fail ‘to take into account the complexity of life—that women are of many races and ethnic backgrounds with different histories and cultures.’” (Munns and Rajan 486)
Gay and Lesbian Studies have become increasingly prominent areas of study over the last few decades and focuses attention on the “Queer Theory” and the “constructed formation of gender and sexual orientation…” (Munns and Rajan 487)
New Keywords- Gender
I think the first paragraph sums it up nicely saying “Gender operates as an analytic concept in a wider field of study denoted by related concepts such as women and men, male and female, masculinity and femininity, sex and sexuality. It usually denotes the social, cultural, and historical distinctions between men and women, and is sometimes described as the study of masculinity and femininity.” (Bennett 140)
Wikipedia-Feminism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism
Feminism is usually associated with the western movement during the 1960’s and 1970’s that spoke out against male power. However there is more to this critical movement in history and multiple opinions on which issues to address. “Throughout much of its history, most of the leaders of feminist social and political movements, as well as many feminist theorists, have been predominantly middle-class white women from western Europe and North America. However, at least since Sojourner Truth's 1851 speech to US Feminists, women of other races have proposed alternative feminisms.”
Other Source- Queer Theory
http://www.sou.edu/English/Hedges/Sodashop/RCenter/Theory/Explaind/queer.htm
Branching from gender identity issues initiated by feminist and early gay and lesbian studies, the “Queer Theory assumes that sexual identities are a function of representations. It assumes that representations preexist and define, as well as complicate and disrupt, sexual identities.”

History of Origins: Gender Studies

2008-04-17T20:21:00.000-07:00

In all cultures people are placed into categories based on their gender and are expected to have certain values and social roles according to which category they are put in. Gender studies "looks at these processes of categorization and at the ways in which societies construct, articulate, and police sexuality" (485, Munns and Rajan). The examination of culture studies became a major feature of cultural studies via the women's liberation movements. They believe that women's gender roles are culturally rather than biologically formed. "The body was viewed as a common rack upon which different societies could inflict different norms of behaviour or personality" (140, Sardar and Van Loon). People were viewed as being created by their societies and their gender being created as well. Gender studies is often considered feminist, however, it is concerned with the cultural significance of all formations in gender and sexuality. The gay liberation movement, however, did shift the discourse of sexuality and reopened the issue of gender definition. The "Queer Theory," tries to analyze texts and social practices to expose and replace them with a new sexual and social condition that goes beyond the "hetero/homo duality" (147).
Lastly, discussions over nature vs. nurture are central to most gender studies. Psychology and Anthropology have been significant in generating materials relevant to the nature/nurture debate. It is constantly debated whether , it is nature or nurture that affects gender and identity. According to Munns and Rajan, "Nature and culture, as socially and politically loaded concepts placed in a bi-polar opposition and constantly capable of appropriating to themselves whatever are, the current 'moral panics' over gender, remain important topics of theoretical and empirical investigation" (488). Saying that the debate will only continue and will constantly be used to discuss the current issues in that particular society.

New Key Words: "Nature"
Nature is very complex and had alot of history. In C13, "nature" was referred to as "an inherent or essential quality or character of something" (235). Natural is also considered to be "appropriate" or "fitting." Suggesting that something that is not natural is inappropriate. Also, in C14 in Europe, nature was considered "the inherent force which directs..the world."

Link to Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_movement

I thought it was important to know more about the Women's liberation Movement, in order to understand more about how gender studies has changed. "The feminist movement (also known as the Women's Movement or Women's Liberation) is a series of campaigns on issues such as reproductive rights (including abortion), domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, sexual harassment, and sexual violence. The goals of the movement vary from country to country, e.g. opposition to female genital cutting in Sudan, or to the glass ceiling in Western countries."

Other Link:

Explains how the term "Queer Theory," came to be. It also talks about what "Queer Theorists" do and how they are different than the people in the Gay Liberation Movement.

http://www.gayhistory.com/rev2/words/queertheory.htm

"Queer theorists are more ambitious than their "Gay Lib" forebears. The Gay Liberation Movement of the 1970s fought to create a place for sexual minorities in Europe and the U. S., but Queer theorists want more than liberation. Their aim is to destabilize cultural ideas of normality and sexuality and terms like hetero- and homosexual which have been used to oppress people who don't conform to the Western ideal of monogamous heterosexual marriage. Many theorists hope that this strategy will undermine the status quo and foster the freedom people need to create their own sexualities."

History of Origins: America

2008-04-17T19:08:00.001-07:00

A comparison between the two texts Introducing Cultural Studies and A Cultural Studies Reader on the development of cultural studies in America provides some discrepancies. The first disagreement comes from the time frame of when cultural studies first appeared in the United States. Sardar and Van Loon in Introducing Cultural Studies aver that cultural studies began to appear in the mid 1980s (Sardar and Van Loon 57). Much of their history surrounding this date is given in reference to the university and academic disciplines as they were “moving toward a more active engagement with the politics of social identity and an examination of the representations of cultural forms” (Sardar and Van Loon 57). They further claim that American studies singularly focused on the critique of media and “did not consider the link between cultural studies and political action as important of even desirable” (58).

This tendentious account of cultural studies becomes less representative when compared to the treatment of Munns and Rajan in A Cultural Studies Reader. Initially they agree with Sardar and Van Loon that there is a lack of concreteness and certainty in the origin of cultural studies, however, their historical narrative traces its evolution back to the early 1900s. Their account provides numerous examples of likely beginnings such as books, academic programs and political movements (Munns and Rajan 209). Another major event that was pivotal in cultural studies conception was the ending of World War Two in 1945. Following the war an increase of college attendance provided a more ethnically diverse and socially varied student body. This body of students, as a whole, became a politically involved group comparable to the British New Left (Wikipedia-New Left). Their aim was to create a counter culture that was in defiance of established authority as a hope to inspire social reform. A reform that was very similar in its ideals to the earlier Progressives (Wikipedia - Progressive), wanting social equality and justice. It was in the ideals of the new left that civil rights and the women’s movement flourished proving that American cultural studies held an “active engagement” in politics and was not wholly centered on the media.

Links to Wikipedia

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_left)

This entry posits the similarities in leftist movements between the Britain and the United States.

"The New Left is a term used in different countries to describe left wing movements that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. They differed from earlier leftist movements that had been more oriented towards labour activism, and instead adopted a broader definition of political activism commonly called social activism. The U.S. "New Left" is associated with college campus mass protest movements and radical leftist movements. The British "New Left" was an intellectually driven movement which attempted to correct the perceived errors of "Old Left" parties in the post-WWII period."

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_era)

Explains the political movement in the United States beginning around 1890 and extending into the 1920s. New Left ideals and social aims were very much similar to those of this era. Also, it was a major political movement that encompassed the entire country, exhibiting that social critique was a part of American history far before the 1980s.

New Key Word - Liberalism
"By the 1840s, "liberalism" had become popular, along with "socialism" and "communism," and came to refer to a more or less coherent vision of man and society characterized by the wish to free all individuals arbitrarily and unnecessary constraint."

History of Origins: Race Studies

2008-04-17T18:10:00.000-07:00

According to Sardar and Van Loon, race is, “...central to cultural studies.” (Sardar and Van Loon 122). The articles imply that if there were no diverse cultures there would be no need for cultural studies. The only problem with having diverse cultures are that, “Non-Western cultures are often seen as obstacles to development, and this leads to racism against the seen as ‘outside mondernity’ or anti-modern.” (Sardar and Van Loon 122) The articles explain about how the Western world was racist against all other cultures. The Western world viewed, “different cultures in terms of how ‘different’ they are from English culture, not on their own terms.” (Sardar and Van Loon 123). This led to racism, which in turn helped to create Diaspora. These articles explain how even today there are many countries in exile from their homelands due to racism or war, which in return create, “tensions of power, of old (local) and new (often global) identities.” (Sardar and Van Loon 134).

Keywords: Race

Keywords defines race as, “a politically charged and ambivalent word that has evaded precise definition.” (290). Race can be associated with many things. It can be associated with crime (racial profiling), nationality, stereotypes, and riots to name a few. Throughout history many people have been worried about racial mixing, so in order to stop it, people would only let same race adoptions and degenerate nicknames for those who are of a mixed heritage. In the use of the word, race has been mixed up with ethnicity, nationality, citizenship, religion, history, language, culture, and identity.

Wikipedia: Diaspora

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora

Diaspora refers to anyone or group of people forced to leave their native homeland. The most famous group is the Jews during WWII when Hitler persecuted them. Diaspora has happened all throughout history and even now; the struggles in Africa going on now, all of the civil wars that happened in South America which forced many to flee to Europe, when Japan had major influences over China and Korea, or even Hurricane Katrina, which displaces the entire city of New Orleans.

Another Source: Diaspora Space

http://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/0472113607-ch5.pdf

History of Origins: Gender Studies

2008-04-17T17:13:00.000-07:00

Although feminism is a major development of Gender Studies, there is a fine difference between Women's Studies and Gender Studies. Gender studies "looks at the ways in which societies construct, articulate, and police sexuality" (Munns and Rajan 485). There is more of an emphasis on gender identity and its role in culture as opposed to the biological meaning of gender. And in our culture, women were concerned with shifting the dominance away from men. According to Intro to Cultural Studies, there are five different categories of feminism relating to political powers. "Post-modern feminists are not interested in creating or rediscovering "authentic" female expression, but in showing that social construction of gender involves power relations" (Sardar and Van Loon 144).

The rise of gay and lesbian studies were also prominent in the 19th century, being instituted in education. The Queer Theory is a field of work that "articulates the complex, shifting contemporary alignments of class, race, gender, age, and sexuality in the lives of individuals who frequently face multiple oppression" (Munns and Rajan 467), in which social differences should also be celebrated between social and sexual conditions (Sardar and Van Loon 147).

As time progresses, cultural studies are constantly being integrated in educational systems as well as including difference in gender and how they identify with society.

New Keywords: "Gender"
Because there are still many subcategories of Gender, like gender relations, gender identity, and gender studies, an overall concept is that "it usually denotes the social, cultural, and historical distinctions between men and women..." (p. 140)

Wikipedia: "Gender Studies"
Although this is a rather large yet brief article, it covers a lot of basic and important points about pyschoanalyic theory, theorists, and criticism.
"...Is a field of interdisciplinary study which analyzes the phenomenon of gender. It examines both cultural representations of gender and people's lived experience."

Other- "Gender roles"
This website gives an overview of gender roles in society, about the history, some important people involved in gender roles, etc.
http://www.faqs.org/health/topics/8/Gender-roles.html

History of Origins: Race Studies

2008-04-17T16:17:00.000-07:00

When comparing the “Introduction to Racial Studies” of Munns and Rjan to the reading of Sardar and Van Loon, they both have a similar view on how racism was created. Both talked about how during the renaissance and the colonization period the Europeans created their own identity. In doing this, the identity of the people that weren’t European came into view, and were then seen as inferior. A good passage that helps develop this is from Introduction to Cultural Studies “Non-European peoples were despised as inferior and seen as material ripe for exploitation.” (122) This was spawned in Europe and then spread across the world and turned into what is now considered to be racism. Although the two readings had similar theories on the origin of race studies, they both approached it from different angles. Sardar and Van Loon, for example, focused on African American Racism mainly, while citing a lot of African-American cultural theorists, such as Cornel West, bell hooks, and Gates. These theorists talked of such subjects as identity and its relation to political struggles and the “longing to belong.” The Introduction of Race Studies by Munns and Rajan took on a larger variety of races, including Native Americans.

The term that I saw kept coming up and viewed as essential in understanding these readings were identy. The New Keywords described identity as:
“Identity is to do with the imagined sameness of a person or of a social group at all times in all circumstances; about a person or a group being, and being able to continue to be, itself and not someone or something else. Identity may be regarded as a fiction, intend to put an orderly pattern and narrative on the actual complexity and multitudinous nature of both psychological and social worlds.”

The following is an intriguing article I found on black identity. http://www.blackcommentator.com/116/116_black_identity.html

This wikipedia article I also found relevant, that helped clear up some questions about identity regarding the social aspects that the “New Keywords” may have left out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_%28social_science%29

History of Origins: Race Studies

2008-04-17T15:41:00.000-07:00

Gita and Rajan’s “Introduction to Race Studies” and Sardar and Van Loon’s section on Race and Identity in Introducing Cultural Studies both provide details on what cultural studies theorists focus on when studying the concept of race. Both of these texts state that raced is a socially constructed concept, created by Western culture. In “Introduction to Race Studies”, Gita and Rajan state that the derogatory idea of the “other” which is created by racial bias is “founded on a European tradition of classical beauty which systematically relegates all other forms of beauty and pleasure in the world to the margins” (383). This idea developed with the Enlightenment and the industrialization of Europe and its subsequent colonization of other countries. Western cultures see non-Western cultures as “outside modernity” (Sardar and Van Loon 122) and therefore place different cultures below themselves. It is here that the concept of power enters race studies, in that Western cultures are once again utilizing their political power to dominate. One thing that Sardar and Van Loon’s text mentions that “Introduction to Race Studies” does not is the concept of multiculturalism and its negative aspects. They state that multiculturalism makes cultures only so “different” from Western culture and does not see them for what they truly are; this creates the notion of the “other”. They then go on to discuss the idea of diaspora and the idea of “home” for cultures that aren’t as accepted as Western cultures. This creates a sense of belongingness to a certain area and an “us” versus “them” mentality, which is an idea that parallels this concept of the “other”. The basis of studying the notion of race through a cultural studies lens is to create a challenge to Euro-American domination.

The New Keywords term that I found helpful to develop the topic of race studies is “identity”. It is mentioned on page 127 of Introducing Cultural Studies. The notion of collective identity as “particular ways of imagining and instituting social groups and group belonging” (173) is applicable to the notion of belongingness mentioned in Sardar and Van Loon’s text. Also, ascribed identity as mentioned on page 175 of New Keywords relates to the societal “other” created by race.

This interview entitled “Race- The Power of an Illusion” further explains how race is a socially constructed idea and explains specifically about race relations having to do with American Indians.

http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-02-07.htm

This Wikipedia article, “Cultural Identity” is a short but informative article explaining questions of identity. It links cultural identity to identity politics, which is another interesting article on Wikipedia relating to this topic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_identity

History of Origins: Media and Science

2008-04-16T23:41:00.000-07:00

Celebrity is a term that is commonly associated with the media today. Therefore, I thought it would be helpful to look up the word.

1) Term from New Keywords, "celebrity" (pages 27-28, paraphrased):

A particular kind of cultural figure - usually emerging from the sports or entertainment industries.

Celebrities:
• Their private lives are more interesting than their professional lives
• May be "famous for being famous", (Boorstin, 1973) i.e., no talent
• May receive more attention than appropriate
• Epitome of of "inauthenticity" of mass-media culture
• The product of the mass media
• May erupt into mass culture and disappear as quickly
• May be objects of scorn as easily as good fortune or abilities
Timeline
• 17C - "celebrity" referred to observance of rites and ceremonies
• 19C - newspapers cultivated conditions for celebrity
• 20C - "celebrity" refers to someone "much talked about" - where fame is of questionable legitimacy, spawned by the advent of movies and television
• 20C - mostly referred to as "stars" -- famous for achievements that were deserved and appropriate

The shift from "star" to "celebrity" sheds the appropriate significance; they are created/produced.

Celebrity is now so pervasive that it raises questions about its cultural function, and is a highly ambiguous concept.

2) Link to Wikipedia, Laura Mulvey:

http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Mulvey

3) Link to The UNC Press, Janice Radway:

http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-782.html

History of Origins: Media and Science

2008-04-16T21:00:00.000-07:00

Because this section is entitled "media studies" I thought I'd start with a definition of "MEDIA" from new keywords
1."The contemporary idea of a medium "or, in the plural, of media) is closely linked to that of the process of dissemination, or circulation, of information by means of some particular channel of communication. Central here is the process of sending signals or signs of some kind... Nowadays the term 'media' is most commonly used to refer to the institutions of electronic broadcasting, printed magazines, and newspapers which address mass audiences"(Bennet, 214).
2.I thought an interesting part of the essay was about how semiotics has entered media studies, and the essay breifly mentioned Roland Barthe, as an author/thinker on this subject(page 299), so I thought I'd look him up...(LONG ONE,sorry)

"Roland Barthes (November 12, 1915 – March 25, 1980) (pronounced [ʀɔlɑ̃ baʀt]) was a French literary critic, literary and social theorist, philosopher, and semiotician. Barthes' work extended over many fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, Marxism and post-structuralism... He would often interrogate pieces of cultural material to expose how bourgeois society used them to assert its values upon others. For instance, portrayal of wine in French society as a robust and healthy habit would be a bourgeois ideal perception contradicted by certain realities (i.e. that wine can be unhealthy and inebriating). He found semiotics, the study of signs, useful in these interrogations. Barthes explained that these bourgeois cultural myths were second-order signs, or significations. A picture of a full, dark bottle is a signifier relating to a signified: a fermented, alcoholic beverage - wine. However, the bourgeois take this signified and apply their own emphasis to it, making ‘wine’ a new signifier, this time relating to a new signified: the idea of healthy, robust, relaxing wine. Motivations for such manipulations vary from a desire to sell products to a simple desire to maintain the status quo." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Barthes#Semiotics_and_myth

I didn't know what "lacanian theories" was (on page 300) so this last one is a definition
lancanian is from...
"Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan (French ) (April 13, 1901 – September 9, 1981) was a French psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, and doctor, who made prominent contributions to the psychoanalytic movement. His yearly seminars, conducted in Paris from 1953 until his death in 1981, were a major influence in the French intellectual milieu of the 1960s and '70s, particularly among post-structuralist thinkers.
Lacan's ideas centered on Freudian concepts such as the unconscious, the castration complex, the ego, focusing on identifications, and the centrality of language to subjectivity. His work was interdisciplinary, drawing on linguistics, philosophy, mathematics, amongst others. Although a controversial and divisive figure, Lacan is widely read in critical theory, literary studies, and Twentieth-Century French Philosophy, as well as in the living practice of clinical psychoanalysis."http://www.reference.com/search?r=13&q=Lacanian

History of Origins: Gender Studies

2008-04-16T10:39:00.000-07:00

Gender Studies is often thought to be interchangeable with Feminist Studies. This assumption is wrong. While Feminist Studies falls into the category of Gender Studies, the latter study is based on how "gender identity and sexual object choice are acquired and given normative status" (Muns and Rajan 485). Introducing Cultural Studies dually defines gender. "'Gender' has two meanings. The first is a contrast word to 'sex' which depicts social construction as opposed to biological determination. The other meaning is any social construction involving the male/female distinction" (Sadar and Van Loon 138). During the women's liberation movement, closely related with the civil rights movement, scholars looked into the culture of women's gender roles, and more specifically that those roles are not biologically formed. Heidi Hartman examined the word "patriarchy" to explain the male domination over women (1979), which led to further discussion of women within/out a gender hierarchy. But these discourses where mostly restricted to white-heterosexual women. Race, ethnicity, and sexual preference where later included. Looking closer at sexual preference, Queer Theory came into the cannon of Gender Studies explicitly directed at defining anything "related to any expression that can be marked as contra-, non-, or anti-straight" (Sadar and Van Loon 146).

Sexuality theories started to focus on the dominance of nature or culture. Especially in the nature/culture feud, Freud had much to say. "His studies...assume a connection between genital identity and the acquisition of gender identity, and privilege the psychosexual experience of the male-child, seen as endowing men with stronger ego boundaries than women" (Munns and Rajan 488). This perspective is very fixed and Alice Jardine goes on to argue the fluid essence of sexuality through a study of language. This example of Gender studies should be seen as an example of how eclectic and varied and pan-discipline the study actually is.

New Keywords: "Gender"
An older meaning was used in reference to grammar dealing with classifications. Now, it is used to differentiate concepts "such as women and men, male and female, masculinity and femininity, sex and sexuality" (140) This can be further divided into gender roles, gender identity, gender inequality, gendering, etc. Gender is a fickle term, but discussion on gender stay within topics dealing with the social/biological construction, societies value/organization with gender, and of course power.

Wikipedia-"Queer Theory"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_theory
Begun in the 1990's by Foucault and Derrida, Queer Theory builds on earlier feminist studies of the separation of biological gender and one's personal gender identity. Also using previous works of gay/and lesbian studies, "queer theory expands its focus to encompass any kind of sexual activity or identity that falls into normative and deviant categories".

Other- "Alice Jardine"
http://fas.harvard.edu/~rll/people/faculty/jardine.html
Professor Jardine teaches Romance Languages and Literatures and the Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard. She has written many books on gender interactions, and feminist literature and is interested in "20th and 21st century French and Francophone Literature; Feminist Theory; Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Culture, Arts, and Politics; Postmodern and Transmodern Theories of Culture and Society; The American 1950's".

History of Origins: Media and Science

2008-04-16T09:59:00.000-07:00

Our two sources were almost opposite. While our reader packet only covered American Cultural Studies and Media studies in depth the book covered American, Canadian, French, and technology C.S. a little, and south Asian C.S. and Orientalism a ton. Our packet talked about numerous people of influence on American C.S. including, but not limited to, Fredierick Jackson Turner, Gene Wise, Henry Nash Smith, Leo Marx, Hannah Arendt, Marshal McLuhan, and Roland Barthes. The book didn’t focus as much on individuals, but overcastting movements for example Post modernist in America, Canada’s identity struggle (between English, French, and native languages), Australia’s effort to be more British, the French’s identity struggle, and the South Asian CSDS. In America several events, the GI bill and American’s growth in power, jump started the American Cultural Studies. Once the US became the Worlds sole super power American’s view of themselves changed again.

1) Keywords: Education:
Higher education what some claim jump started cultural studies in Britain. It also helped further the movement in America. “Few would deny that education is both an individual and a social good.” By reaching higher academically new thoughts and disciplines are created, a big reason American cultural studies got under way. Also, education helps define cultures for the individual and the community. “It can lead us forth into the relatively homogeneous cultural values and expectations of a traditional community, or into the complexities of hybrid identities and conflicted values of a culturally diverse society.”

2) Wikipedia: Hegemony: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony
Hegemony is a word used to describe the dominance of one social group over another. The ruling class obtains “some degree of consent from the subordinate, as opposed to dominance purely by force. It is used broadly to mean any kind of dominance, and narrowly to refer to specifically cultural and non-military dominance, as opposed to the related notions of empire and suzerainty.” Antonio Gramsci created the more widely known accounts of Hegemony. “According to Gramsci, hegemony consists of socio-political power that flows from enabling the "spontaneous consent" of the populace through intellectual and moral leadership or authority as employed by the subalterns of the State.”

3) Leo Marx: http://web.mit.edu/sts/faculty/info/Marx_Leo-css.html
Leo Marx was/is not a decendant of the famous Carl Marx but he too had an impact on Cultural Studies. “His work examines the relationship between technology and culture in 19th and 20th century America.”

--Clayton

History of Origins: European Theory

2008-04-15T22:23:00.000-07:00

Both texts relate the important contributions to the loosely defined field of "Cultural studies" by European activists, theorists, philosophers and such. These texts explains a lot of the conflicting arguments and statements between different people's theories as well as the shared derived traits people have "borrowed" or built upon. Gramsci's hegemony theory was an example of non-British influences to cultural studies and as an example where his ideas were extended beyond it's original boundaries to include other perspectives, this methodology is now incorporated into a wide variety of cultural subjects to reveal hegemonic tendencies(Introducing Cultural Studies p.51).

New Keyword: Intellectuals. I found the term “Intellectuals” difficult to grasp until I read this entry and read more about the psuedo-collective group of individuals. "...all work involves some degree of intellectual creativity, and thus "all men are intellectuals, one could say: but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals" and "They can be divided between the organic intellectuals who arise within every social class except the peasantry, and the traditional intellectuals, the priests, administrators, scholars, scientists, and so on, who claim a certain autonomy of the social field, and who thereby betray their lack of it." (New Keywords pp.189-190)

2. Antonio Gramsci's Wikipedia article; (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci);
nuff said.

3. I found this essay and find it interesting from the historical point of view, It talks about the comparative features of the former British imperialism and the current American cultural hegemony. (http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20030901fareviewessay82512/niall-ferguson/hegemony-or-empire.html)

History of Origins: European Theory

2008-04-15T21:50:00.000-07:00

In "The Impact of European theory" from A Cultural Studies Reader, the authors start by discussing the importance of Europe in the rise and development of Cultural Studies. Throughout the articles, Munns and Rajan, and Sardar and Van Loon, reiterate that Britain in particular had a fascination with its own culture, and they believed that above all they had set a "prototype for the world to follow," (52, Introducing Cultural Studies). This self-obsession, creates a biased toward other countries that do not hold the same values as the British, and therefore other "locations where the concerns and perspectives of the margins are seldom considered," (52, Introducing Cultural Studies). Overall, Munns and Rajan discuss many types of theories that originated in Europe that helped shaped the parameters of cultural studies, focusing on "structuralism, hegemony, semiotics (the system of signs), post-structuralism and deconstructionism." The impact that European theory had on the beginning of cultural studies despite being subjective, created a discipline that gave meaning to values, issues, and ideas pertaining to society.

1) Term from New Keywords, "Deconstruction"
New Keywords did not have the word form structuralism, so I looked up another common theory mentioned in the articles, and the most standard meaning of deconstruction is, "a movement of overturning or reversal of the asymmetrical binary hierarchies of metaphysical though, in such a way as to register the constitutive dependence of the major on the minor term; on the other, a movement beyond the framework delimited by these terms to an always provisional suspension of their force." (pg. 71)

2) Link to Wikipedia, Structuralism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism
"Structuralism consist of analyzing social events to discover the structures that both underlie them and make them possible, which are then typically broken down into units, codes, rules of combination." Wikipedia provides further information about the history of structuralism and common uses throughout multiple disciplines.

3) Link to other source, Semiotics:
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem01.html
Even though I did not discuss this to the fullest extent, the study of semiotics is a key theory present throughout cultural studies.

History of Origins: European Theory

2008-04-15T20:57:00.000-07:00

Today’s readings dealt with the historical contribution of Europe and Europeans (especially the British, who as was mentioned in class sort of saw themselves as separate from the continental mainland) to the rise and development of Cultural Studies. The readings looked at the European/British beginnings of cultural studies as a field of knowledge – how it began as ‘civilized’ Westerners examining and making judgments about other cultures – but also discussed the later backlash against these Eurocentric origins by “colonial intellectuals” who “challenged the ‘Britishness’ of the New Left” and took into account groups (women, immigrants) who had been previously overlooked (p40).

1) Sardar and Van Loon mentioned that “intellectuals play a key role in Gramsci’s ideas”, specifically “organic intellectuals” (51). New Keywords’ definition of intellectual is enlightening, denoting “a category of people whose social status rest on their claim to intellectual expertise (but who are not simply writers, philosophers, or artists)”.
Gramsci argued that there were “Organic intellectuals’ who arise within every social class except the peasantry, and ‘Traditional intellectuals’, the priests, administrators, scholars, scientists, and so on, who claim a certain autonomy of the social field and thereby betray their lack of it” (190).
It goes on to state that “the central question becomes one about the social interests that go along with possessing and exercising knowledge, about whether those interest are strong and coherent enough to give intellectuals some kind of relative independence as a social group, and bout how those interests ling intellectuals in relation to the power of the state or of a ruling class”, but emphasizes that a variety of theories have been applied in an attempt to answer these questions (190).

2) Wikipedia helps explain Gramsci’s thoughts on “cultural hegemony”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony

3) UCLA Prof’s page on “Cultural Studies and Ethics”, basically a short essay that summarizes/reviews British Cultural studies and their ties with media, ethics, politics…
http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/

Pretty sweet little youtube bite-sized lectures on Cultural Theory (this one's Marxism 101: Althusser's Concept of Ideology):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz3YNMPMNzU

History of Origins: European Theory

2008-04-15T20:49:00.000-07:00

Sardar and Loon commence by stating that from the very beginning, British Cultural Studies is more than British...it is "internationalist"(p.40). The New Left was created since it was deemed virtually impossible for non-english speaking colonialists to break into the British Cultural sect. These colonial intellectuals brought a new perspective and enlightenment to the British Left establishment, creating the New British Left.
Sardar and Loon continue by naming some of these colonial intellectuals who brought about the diversity and political dimention seen in British Cultural Studies today. French philosopher Althusser and his thoughts on Structuralism, the Italian Antonio Gramsci, a believer in the Marxist movement. The idea to be brought from this section of the book is that "a series of movements, groups and individuals have absorbed and manipulated his theories (Gramsci)-cultural studies jbeing just one example (p.51).
Munns and Rajan go into greater depth in defining the specific goals and beliefs of such renound intellectuals as Althusser, Foucault, Freud, Saussure, Levi-Strauss...All of these men provided theories that were critiqued and have been adapted within their culture specific context, be it British, American, European...

1. TERM: Sign...Munns and Rajan talked about sign systems and how they help the theories to produce meaning of the subjects trying to be conveyed. The New Keywords defines sign as "a broad class of objects, events, or marks that are used or interpreted to convey some meaning"(p.321). Therefore the theories used by these intellectuals are explained using sign systems...they are used to define language, cultural experiences, encompassing socio-economic, phychological, historical, political, biological, ethnic and religious realities (p.82).

2.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics
I thought posting the Semiotics definition from wikipedia could be useful to go along with the term sign. Semiotics refers more to the way in which the systems of signs are transmitted, meaning anything from codes, coined phrases, etc...and is seen to extend on the definition of language. It goes beyond linguistics in the sense that it can adapt itself to mean certain things given its subject matter (medium or sensory modality).

3.http://ec.europa.eu/culture/portal/index_en.htm
I just thought this was an interesting site to look at. We have talked alot about the specific theories and beliefs of theorists over the past 100 years. To look at the cultures that are present in Europe and how people express their cultures is endless and imaginative at the same time. I guess it just led me to think that it is amazing that there are people who actually attempt to define why people act the way they do and represent themselves in certain ways.

Anita

History of Origins: European Theory

2008-04-15T18:04:00.001-07:00

Sardar and Van Loon discuss the role of colonial intellectuals within British cultural studies in the 1980s, and how the influx of colonial perspective “challenged the ‘Britishness’ of the New Left” and ultimately expanded the realm of cultural studies (p. 40). Sardar and Van Loon seem to imply that until then, British cultural studies were preoccupied “with the ‘style’ and behavior of young working-class men” and didn’t really examine the many diverse identities that make up British culture (p.41). With these changes it could begin to investigate the marginalized individuals within British society, and understand more fully different cultural identities across Britain's history.

Two key terms which seem to accompany this shift: hegemony and the subject.

The Impact of European Theory, introduces the idea of ‘the subject’ in its first paragraph;

“Such theoretical formulations, inherently interdisciplinary in their foundations and implications…provide models for understanding the formation/construction of agency for the human subject, the implicit and explicit drives that motivate or hinder such an agency in a socio-cultural arena, and explanations of sign systems (ranging from language to myths) which produce meanings...the subject is constructed in and between layers of language and cultural experiences, encompassing socio-economic, psychological, historical, political, biological, ethnic, and religious realities” (Munns and Rajan, p. 82).

This is somewhat dense, and I’ve cut some things out, but for the most part it suggests the unique position of different individuals within the many overlying social structures. The word 'subject' also has many meanings in different contexts that most of us have probably heard somewhere.

Wikipedia's page on 'the subject' (this page is pretty ambiguous as well)

‘Hegemony’ is not in New Keywords, but can be found [again] on good ‘ole Wikipedia

Also, reading Althusser's theory about ideology helped me place these definitions a little better.

History of Origins: America

2008-04-15T17:28:00.000-07:00

It is hard to point out specific texts or people that built the foundation for cultural studies in America. Instead, it was sparked by a range of movement and issues. The GI Bill and America’s rise a global power after WWII are said to have caused the emergence of cultural studies in America. Many struggled with the task of finding an identity for America and there was no legitimate method for analyzing its culture. German intellectuals fleeing to America from Nazi Germany sparked a focus on mass media and its effects on a new concept called mass culture. Some viewed it as a threat to individualism while other recognized it as part of the cultural experience (something that went against most of Europe’s “elitist” views). Issues brought up by the civil rights movement shifted the focus to race and gender’s integration into “the construction of patterns of domination and subordination.” (p. 212) The Vietnam War then changed the way Americans perceived themselves and their relation to the rest of the world and “marked the end of the post-war” era of cultural consensus.”

1) “Identity” is a term that can be brought up a number of times while looking at cultural studies in America. America, after just becoming a world power, searched for a collective identity for themselves which proved hard because of its diverse background. The identity of the individual comes into question when looking at the mass media’s roll and mass-culture. On the subject of race and gender in American culture we’ve seen recent movements of ethnic and sex identities. Keywords says “Identity is to do with the imagined sameness of a person or of a social group at all times and in all circumstances; about a person or a group being, and being able to continue to be, itself and not someone or something else. Identity may be regarded as a fiction, intended to put an orderly pattern and narrative on the actual complexity and multitudinous nature of both psychological and social worlds. The question of identity centers on the assertion of principles of unity, as opposed to pluralism and diversity, and of continuity, as opposed to change and transformation.”

2) Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GI_Bill
The GI Bill of 1944 had a profound effect on higher education in the United States. It aided in the creation of Cultural Studies as a field in America.

3)http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/books/series/Seriesamerican.html

This links to a number of books recommended by our fine university. Each book has a brief summary which can give you a good look at how ethnic cultural studies can be approached today.

History of Origins: European Theory

2008-04-15T15:59:00.000-07:00

As the title of today's post suggests, the main theme of this reading is Britain's contribution to Cultural studies (in the European Theory article this expands to include Europe as a whole). What we find in both readings is that Europe started the cultural studies phenomena, and also gave the subject its worst shortcoming. That is, as Europe gave birth to the field of cultural studies, so did it give birth to its "Western" bias and perspective. We see this on page 52 of Introducing Cultural Studies where it mentions that British cultural studies in particular has a tendency to see its own culture, "...as a prototype model for the world to follow" Also in the Impact of European Theory article, "...Levi Strauss is blind to the fact that his own bipolar structure is an imposition of the West" (83) The main issue with the begining of cultural studies is that it was terribly flawed.

1) A keyword I found particularly useful is "civilization". This ties back to cultural studies tending to favor the culture of the one who is studying another. In 1879 Arnold said "Civilization is the humanization of man in society" (35) So according to Arnold, the term "civilization" is what makes us human. However, this is purely a subjective idea. After all, you are always most likely to say that you yourself are furthest from the uncivilized (you are the one doing the research). So it's fairly predictable, that when studying civilization anyone different from you becomes less civilized; or to follow Arnold's definition, less human.
2)Wikipedia has an article on Semiotics "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics" read it if for no other reason than that they keep bringing it up in all the texts and if you don't know what the term means (I didn't) you'll continue to be lost.
3)Here is an article on structuralism, one more term I had to look up:"http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/struct.htm"

History of Origins: America

2008-04-15T15:46:00.000-07:00

In the introduction to Cultural Studies in America by Jessica Munns and Gita Rajan, American studies is roughly defined as “the emergence of interdisciplinary studies engaged in understanding the genesis and development of the national culture through a study of ‘great’ works and movements.” Simply put, a large part of American culture studies is built upon prominent literary works and the contributions of writers such as Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, and Twain. The study of American culture and history must also include pertinent social advancements, like the women’s movement and the civil rights movement. The text explains that “…by moving history, to some extent, from background to context, by looking at popular as well as canonical works, by insisting on an interdisciplinary approach, and by raising questions of method, the Americanists made a vital contribution to the scholarly study of culture.”

1) An important key word to note when reading this introduction is media. The concept of mass media and the influence that it has on popular culture and opinion is interwoven throughout this text. It is cited by Munns and Rajan that “each communications medium- the print word of the Gutenberg era or the electronic media of the present age- alters beyond out recognition our ways of thinking and perceiving.” In New Keywords by Bennett et al, mass media “constitute powerful one-way systems for communication from the few to the many... The critical tradition, under the influence of Marxism, has often been concerned with the question of the media’s role as an agent of powerful groups (political or commercial, elites or classes), purveying ideologies which may conceal the reality of structures of inequality from those who are most disadvantaged by them.” For the full definition of media, see New Keywords 211-214 p.

2) The American civil rights movement was cited alongside the women’s movement as being an important contributor to the construction of patterns of domination and subordination in America. The Wikipedia article about the civil rights movement provides adequate information about this movement and would be good to gloss over before reading the introduction to American cultural studies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Rights_Movement_%281955-1968%29

3) This website offers a word bank of key terms found in the book, Keywords for American Cultural Studies edited by Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler. Clicking any of the words in the word bank will bring up a short definition and/or excerpt from a literary source containing that word.

http://keywords.nyupress.org/

History of Orgins: European Theory

2008-04-15T10:03:00.000-07:00

What cultural studies can do, its social and cultural effects on the world was of important concern to Sardar and Van Loon in Introducing to Cultural Studies and to some of the European scholars and philosophers studying cultural studies. According to “The impact of European theory” in the Cultural Studies Reader, the theories that were created to study the “nature in culture, or elaborations of subjectivity or identity-politics in society,” were valued for their capacity to provide a “methodology for producing, reading, and consuming cultures and cultural practices.” The theory of signs, or semiotics, for example, looked at language as something that generates meaning by a systems of relationships, by producing a network of similarities and differences. This linguistic theory of the signs also served as an influential ground for other theories, such as structuralism, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and post-structuralism. Structuralism, as it is often noted, shifted and “situated language in a scientific frame.”

1. Since several theorists have challenged Freud/Lacan’s “phallocentric models of male/female identities in culture and their proliferation in language,” gender is an important term to consider in cultural studies. According to New Keywords, “several developments transformed understandings of sex and gender...one was the overturning of earlier feminist suspicions of psychoanalytic theory as inherently masculinist, and the development of a specifically feminist pschoanalytic body of theory” (Curthoys, 141).

2. Link to Wikipedia: “Hegemony” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony
Hegemony is a key term in understanding Antonio Gramsci’s “unique theory of subjectivity.” He believed that “cultural practices ranging from art, literature, education, architecture, theatre, philosophy and religion exert ‘hegemonic influences in society.” Hegemony binds society together without the use of force with the use of negotiation and consent.

3. Link to other outside source: Semiotics http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html
An indepth explanation of the linguistic theory of signs.

--Theresa

History of Origins: European Theory

2008-04-15T02:07:00.000-07:00

The discourse on early Cultural Studies, as well as cultural studies' early discourses, owes a remarkable enrichment to voices and perspectives coming from U.K.'s former colonies and other European countries. These contributions helped to broaden the issues, making the new-born discipline eminently encompassing. However, the authors didn't hold themselves back with criticising several assumptions, sometimes up (or down?!) to the very quiddity of critical notions, such as: culture, art, dialectical materialism. Sardar and Van Loon name two thinkers believed to be crucial: Louis Althusser (1918-1990) and Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937).

"The French philosopher L. Althusser imported structuralism into Marxism in his effort to make it a science. Althousser conceptualizes society as a structured whole which consists of relatively autonomous level - legal, political, cultural - whose mode of articulation (or "effectivity", as he says) is only determined "in the least instance" by the economy. [...] So, for scientific Marxism, there is no society but only modes of production which evolve in history and are permanently inherent in the relatively autonomous levels of the structured whole". The ideas and terminology of Althusser stimulated a proficuous debate on ideology and Marxism; nevertheless Althusser's ideological standpoint itself was later attacked by E.P. Thompson in The poverty of theory, 1978. "The key term in Gramsci's thought is hegemony, which is critical for an understanding of history and the structure of any given society. Hegemony is what binds society together without the use of force." (Sardar and Van Loon, page 49). As A Cultural Studies Reader point out, Antonio Gramsci was influenced by many other authors: Benedetto Croce, Nietzsche, Hegel, Marx, Lenin to name a few. The book by Munns and Rajan then continues by mentioning a number of -isms and other authors, all somehow or other connected to each other. The variety of interconnections is a result itself of the interdisciplinary cultural studies approach. As we discussed in class today, sometimes it was quite difficult for some of them to read others' publications due to the lack of a lingua franca. In some cases it was harder: Gramsci's manuscript written in jail wasn't even meant to be published..
Also, the Cold War and the absence of the World Wide Web didn't make things any easier..

Ideology: "Gramsci emphasized the complexity of the relationship that define human reality at any particular time and place; and he rejected the assumption that such relationships were the necessary result of trascendental forces - like the economy. Consequently, he opposed the tendency to assume that class and/or economic relations necessarily provided the truth about everything. [...] His concept of hegemony describes an ongoing struggle to create ideological consensus within a society, while his concept af common sense emphasizes the fragmentary and contradictory nature of the unconscious meanings and beliefs with which people make sense of their world." from New Keywords, page 176.

"Structuralism began in linguistics with the work of Ferdinand de Saussure [...] As a method, the basics of structuralism consist of analyzing social events ... to discover the synchronic structures that both underlie them and make them possible, which are then typically broken down into units, codes, rules of combination, etc. The essential theory underlying this method is that these structures are autonomous, and that their units are interdependent, because they are constituted through contrast with one another. So how we discursively conceive of ourselves, or anything, for that matter, is dependent on contexts found within historically contingent systems". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism

A link I found useful related to today's readings is: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B
The web page is entitled "Semiotics for beginners", however, it depends on what this Welsh university means for beginner..

One more thing: if you feel like taking a break after the semiotics for so called beginners (see above), go to youtube and type in "monty python marx", then select one of the videos. The communist quiz sketch and the philosophical soccer match are awesome..

History of Origins: Great Britain

2008-04-15T00:08:00.000-07:00

In General Introduction by Jessica Munns and Gita Rajan, they explain the origins and the ways of cultural studies. The text explains that cultural studies evolved from a separation of cultural classes amongst countries after World War II. Distinctions became more and more apparent after "development" of certain countries above others. The distinction was made by designating countries in the "global south" the title of third world, the middle region of development to be second world, and the super powers to be the first and best. Culture and its differences has become defined now by economic development and social interaction as opposed to traditional values of indigenous regions. The text explains that "With this double agenda, with regard to cultural studies as both an academic project and a particular social formation, we hope to bring together an energetic mode of inquiry and one of the most dynamic and vital disciplines to be taught in the academy in recent years."pg. 77 Artifact and Artifice reader. This explains what separated Britain from other countries in values and what cultural studies is, which is a an extensive investigation academically of what a culture is and how it got to be that way over the course of time.

1) A useful keyword to think of when reading this article is the word development, which is a very controversial word to use when thinking about humans sustainability on this planet in which development does not really describe more successful living and could also in turn describe destruction of our surroundings. The process of development is described in the New Keywords book as "The insidious corollary to this argument (the traditional economic model of development) is the claim by authoritarian governments that economic development must and should precede social and political development. These governments point to the length of time it took for industrializing countries in hte C19 to achieve a level of economic stability, and to the fact that only later did their governments begin to focus on civil liberties and social rights."pg. 80

2) A good article to read on wikipedia would be the article on "Third World", which describes the hierarchy of nations that we see on the planet today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_world

3)This article is one that speaks of the economic development of nations during and post WWII from britannica online. http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-25768/economic-development

History of Origins: Great Britain

2008-04-14T22:41:00.000-07:00

After reading through the text, a correlation can be made between the two as they both seem to mention the importance of cultural studies constantly being refined. As Munns and Rajan states, "cultural studies has been subject to prolific growth in academic institutions in the late 1980s and the early 1990s." (Munns and Rajan 152). And as Sardar and Van Loon says, "its constant goal is to expose power and relationships..." (Sardar and Van Loon 9). Basically, these two have stated that cultural studies is still in the process of growing and will continue to do so because there is no determined definition of the study and will, more than likely, not have a definite definition for as long as we know it.

1) Term from New Keywords: Evolution

Through the readings, it seems to have the common trait of cultural studies and how it evolves. Steven Rose chooses to define evolution as "unrolling, unfolding, or opening out." (Rose 117). Taking this term into relation with cultural studies definitely makes the point that cultural studies itself has and always will be current and up to date. As new culture comes into play, cultural studies will be following it every step of the way.

2) Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_evolution

This gives us an insight into cultural evolution and how we may be affected by the changes and not have noticed it.

3) Other link: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/146212/cultural-evolution

Here's more about cultural evolution.

Cultural Studies in Britain

2008-04-14T16:02:00.000-07:00

Both texts that we read can relate to eachtother as they refered to the same founding fathers and the same texts as the grounds for culture studies. As far as the importance of Britain culture, both mentioned the Hungarian uprising as an important time in Britains culture formation. The difference between the two, perhaps, would be the informational style of writing in the graphic novel and the more "historical" or "dates and facts" style of writing in the reader. After reading both of them it helped to see the important aspects and what to focus on. The New Left played an important role in Britian culture studies, "..the formation of the New Left is seem by many historians as a precursor to cultural studies. The New Left emereged as a British response to the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956." (Introducing Culture Studies page 39)

Keyword: ELITE..."implies a process of selection- which may be natural, social, or cultural.....When the term is applied to the relations between social groups, there is the further connotation that the few are not just distinguished from, but exercise some form of power over, the many" I chose this word because I have seen in many of our readings and wanted to see its specific link to culture studies.

Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_uprising Here is a link to information on Hungarian uprising. It was brought up in both texts. In a nut shell, there was a nation wide uprising against the Stalinist Government which eventually overthrew the government.

Other link: http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=history Here is a link on the New Left

Cultural Studies in Britain

2008-04-13T22:48:00.000-07:00

In A Cultural Studies Reader, Munns and Rajan discuss the beginnings of cultural studies in Britain, stating that "all the standard accounts of British cultural studies trace its origins to the 1950s and to the emergence of three key texts" (Munns and Rajan 149). Using these texts as the foundation of British cultural studies, Munns and Rajan highlight the development of the field through the 1990s.

1) Term from New Keywords: Representation
Both New Keywords and Introducing Cultural Studies discuss the importance of representations to the study and understanding of cultural studies. In New Keywords, Freadman states that "representations stand for their objects in some sense, but 'standing for' is a contested expression. If an object needs a representation, then it is part of that logic that the representation is not its object; but if the representation is different from its object, how can it truly stand for it?" (Freadman 307). This view of representation forces us to consider and scrutinize the value and meanings of representations in cultural studies.

2) Wikipedia link: Richard Hoggart
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hoggart
Richard Hoggart is credited in both texts with giving "cultural studies its first identifiable, intellectual shape" (Sadar and Loon 27).

3) Link to outside source:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/hallas/works/1993/10/thompson.htm
This site provides a more detailed history of E.P. Thompson's life, concluding with Thompson's great work, The Making of the English Working Class.

History of Origins: General

2008-04-13T20:49:00.000-07:00

In the “General Introduction” from A Cultural Studies Reader, Munns and Rajan begin by discussing the emergence of cultural studies. They say that most scholars agree that cultural studies began around the time after WWII. There were several factors that lead to the endeavor of cultural critique. However, there is no “absolute beginning” of cultural studies (Munns and Rajan 149). The Cultural Studies Reader and Introducing Cultural Studies focus on the texts of Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams, E.P. Thompson, and Stuart Hall. These founding fathers were “concerned with the question of culture in the class-based society of England” (Sardar and Van Loon 25)

1) Term from New Keywords, “class”:

The most conventional meaning of class is “a division or order… or rank or grade of society” (39). Classes affect life chances for individuals-the probabilities of social and occupational mobility; of educational access and achievement; of illness and mortality. They also shape the experiences of individuals, producing the possibility of (more or less coherent) class consciousness (40).

2) Link to Wikipedia, Marxism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism

Stuart Hall, one of the founding fathers of cultural studies, describes himself as always remaining a “shouting distance of Marx” (Sadar and Van Loon 37). Here at this site, we can further read about the practice of Marxism.

3) Link to other source, Stuart Hall:

http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/h/a.htm

This site includes a brief biography of Stuart Hall and a list of some of his works. The site mentions Hall as being faithful to a Marxist tradition, but Introducing Cultural Studies points out his ambiguous relationship with Marxism.

History of Origins: General

2008-04-13T16:38:00.000-07:00

Sardar and Van Loon begin Introducing Cultural Studies by trying to define what exactly cultural studies is. The conclusion I got from it is that cultural studies has no clear beginning, yet it is attributed to the “founding fathers”, Hoggart, Williams, Thompson, and Hall. Both the book and the reader pin the post World War II era as the foggy beginnings of cultural studies. “The Second World War had just ended, educational opportunities within Britain were being promoted as a means of post-war reconstruction. But pre-war class politics was still the norm in a changed and rapidly changing social environment. Moreover, Britain was being invaded by popular American culture that shaped public consciousness and highlighted the class-ridden character of English cultural life.” (Sardar/Loon, 25) Munns and Rajan complement this history: “Most scholars in both countries see it emerging as an area of academic research, and consequently, a pedagogical practice from different socio-political and economic changes that followed the second world war.” (Munns/Rajan, 1)

1) Each text commemorated the works of Karl Marx as being a key ingredient to the history of cultural studies. In main part, his ideas about class and society. Keywords defines class as “a social ordering that articulated privilege and deference”. (39) It goes on to say that, “Classes affect life chances for individuals--the probabilities of social and occupational mobility; of educational access and achievement; of illness and mortality. They also shape the experiences of individuals, producing the possibility of (more or less coherent) class consciousness”. (40)

2) Sticking to the origins of class and its connections with cultural studies, I investigated Karl Marx on Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”.

“Marx devoted himself to an intensive study of history and elaborated on his idea of historical materialism, particularly in a manuscript (published posthumously as The German Ideology), the basic thesis of which was that "the nature of individuals depends on the material conditions determining their production." Marx traced the history of the various modes of production and predicted the collapse of the present one—industrial capitalism—and its replacement by communism.”

3) One of the founding fathers of Cultural Studies was E.P. Thompson, who’s work focused on understanding class. Sardar and Van Loon write, “class is not a thing-it is something which in fact happens (and can be shown to have happened) in human relationships”. (Sardar/Van Loon, 31) Thompson defined class as “a social and cultural formation arising from processes which can only be studied as they work themselves out over a considerable historical period”. (Sardar/Van Loon 32) He explores how different class standings can effect the way an individual views life. For more information on Thompson, visit http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/HIStompson.htm

So, although there are many differing views on the term "class", it is evident that it is important to understanding the origins of cultural studies.

History of Origins: General

2008-04-13T13:22:00.000-07:00

From reading the introductions of the texts Introducing Cultural Studies and A Cultural Studies Reader, I found that both share many of the same ideas and agree on the history and parameters of cultural studies. Cultural studies is viewed as having no true beginning, unlike physics or philosophy. Both texts mentioned the “founding fathers” (Hoggart, Williams, Thompson, and Hall) and addressed the importance of the Second World War as being a key beginning point in the cultural studies field. Also, both texts addressed the issue of using/creating the term “others” as causing a lack of individualism and creating a negative bias. Race, class, and gender are also mentioned as being defining features in culture.

1. Term from Keywords: “Other”
“The other is what eludes our consciousness and knowing, and it is what resides outside the sphere of “our” culture and community” (Robins 249).
“The other is necessary for change and creativity to exist in the world (both collective transformation and self-alteration)” (Robins 249).
The term “other” is referred to in both texts, referring to any group outside of one’s self. Keywords provides a better understanding of the term and describes the several dimensions the term has.

2. Link to Wikipedia: “New Left” <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Left>
The New Left played a key role in cultural studies and is even thought of as being the forerunner to the field of study. Provides the origins, key leaders, and history of the movement.

3. Link to other outside source: “Birmingham's cultural studies department given the chop”
<http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/socialsciences/story/0,,745058,00.html>
Provides an insightful view of the present day situation of what has happened to the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, the sight of where the name “cultural studies” originated. Also, all four “founding fathers” (Hoggart, Williams, Thompson, and Hall) were at one time associated with the CCCS.

History of Origins: General

2008-04-12T13:21:00.000-07:00

In the "General Introduction", Munns and Rajan provide an overview of the origins of cultural studies. They argue that cultural studies has its roots in cultural critique. According to Munns and Rajan, "cultural critique is more than an interdisciplinary solution, it provides a spectrum of approaches to questions that are raised in today's global, multi-classed, multi-racial, and multi-cultural societies" (2). In other words, cultural critique is a way of understanding the world with its different power relations and cultures.

An important term to consider is "history", which, according to New Keywords, "principally signifies a retelling of past events which is professedly true" (Schwarz, 156). Munns and Rajan do not intend their Reader to be a history of ideas, but the historification of cultural studies is still key to their work. Instead, they consider their Reader to be "an interpretation of how certain ways of thinking about culture have come into being in relation to cultural phenomena" (7).

Munns and Rajan often refer to Matthew Arnold and Karl Marx, because of their significant influence on the practice and purpose of cultural critique (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Arnold and http://www.cultureguide.com.au/marx/ for more information on Arnold and Marx). Both Arnold and Marx saw cultural critique, and thus cultural studies, as a way of changing society for the better. Munns and Rajan agree, saying that "cultural studies is an inherently powerful tool with a radical potential for intervening in the education and socialization, i.e., acculturation, of future generations of students" (6). As with knowledge in general, cultural studies in particular is a powerful force in the political and economic structures of our world.

"Orientalism"

2008-04-10T14:26:00.000-07:00

Today in class we started to define/describe the term “orientalism,” using the “Introduction” to Edward Said’s Orientalism (1977) and (lurking in the background) the entry for this term in New Keywords.

In his introduction to Orientalism, Said discusses how he will use this term, focusing on how one society (“European”) defines another (“the Orient”) in terms of what is “different” about it, so that “European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self” (Said 3). In other words, by defining “the Orient” as everything that is NOT “European,” Western identity can claim to be both coherent and superior.

Please add to, contest, and generally build up our sense of this term in a comment to this post. In your comment, you might:

Quote important passages or summarize key ideas from Said
Quote important passages or summarize key ideas from the “Orientalism” entry in New Keywords, by Nicholas Dirks
Point out differences between Said and New Keywords
Refer us to other entries in New Keywords that complement the entry for “Orientalism”
Link us up to definitions or discussions on the web that illuminate ideas, words or names used by Said in Orientalism or Dirks in New Keywords
Discuss how “Orientalism” complicates our picture of culture—or, specifically, how it interferes with the “art-culture system” in Clifford

Are You an Author?

2008-04-08T15:42:00.000-07:00

“Author” is one of those terms that, unfortunately, New Keywords does not describe. (The book is—as its editors freely admit—a necessarily selective and incomplete “collection” of terms.) If there were to be an entry for this term, however, it would have to address Roland Barthes’ 1967 essay “The Death of the Author.” (The essay was later included in his 1977 book Image-Music-Text. Here are some notes on it). This phrase should remind you of Mitchell’s “art” entry in New Keywords; remember how he talks about the many twentieth-century announcements of the “death” of various art forms? Barthes declares that the idealized author is “dead” because “We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.” This conception of “text” should be familiar to you too, by now.

What Barthes means by an “author” is mostly a nineteenth-century figure, although he does not really note this historical condition. (Nor does he bother to seek out examples of authorship to support his argument beyond those who are iconic in France.) Another key ingredient of the term “author” would be Michel Foucault’s 1970 essay “What Is an Author?” (Here is an excerpt from the essay, and here is a summary.) Foucault, in describing his notion of the “author-function,” fills in some of the historical gaps in Barthes’ essay, by looking at authorship beginning in the Middle Ages as a way of controlling ideas and defining intellectual property. In other words, it was only when “a system of ownership and strict copyright rules were established (toward the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century) that the transgressive properties always intrinsic to the act of writing became the forceful imperative of literature. It is as if the author, at the moment he was accepted into the social order of property which governs our culture, was compensating for his new status by reviving the older bipolar field of discourse in a systematic practice of transgression and by restoring the danger of writing which, on another side, had been conferred the benefits of property.” Huh? I think what he’s saying here is that governing forces have always kept tabs on who is writing in order to regulate what is written; it was only when this regulation eventually gave authors ownership of their work (thus enabling authorship as a profession) that authors took on a heroic cultural role. Here you might think of the distinction, as marked perhaps in the aisles of the mega-bookstore, between capital-L “Literature,” where you find “great books,” and plain old “literature,” as it would appear in the phrase “travel literature” or “scientific literature,” i.e., a body of writing. Like the difference between “art” and “Art,” this distinction implies cultural status: great Authors write great Literature.

It would also be important that our prospective entry for the term “author” address the contemporary textual phenomena of email, text messaging, and of course the web, with many kinds of sites, including social networking sites, discussion groups, virtual reality games and blogs like this one, that are “authored” by all kinds of folks. These forms of authorship seem to confirm Barthes’ idea that a text is nothing but “a tissue of quotations from innumerable centres of culture”—think of the abbreviations used in text messages, which practically constitute a new dialect; the many cultural references we make in our emails (“Did you see last night’s episode of Battlestar Galactica???”); and of course the quotations from and links to other sources that comprise the web.

Please comment on this post to indicate you have successfully signed on as a co-author of this blog. In your comment, why don’t you name one of your favorite Authors? Or, if you want to resist validating that particular form of authorship, link us up to a virtual author you admire?

"Paris, Capital of the 19th Century"

2008-04-03T12:30:00.000-07:00

Some annotated online versions of Walter Benjamin's essay or notes on the essay:

From Professor Andrew Feenberg’s homepage (Simon Fraser University):
http://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/benjaminparis.pdf

From Perspecta, Vol. 12. (1969), 163-172.
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0079-0958%281969%2912%3C163%3APCOTNC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B

From Professor Chuck Tryon’s website (Georgia Tech University):
http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~ctryon/fwp/benjaminparis.htm

Some sites devoted to the Arcades project and/or the material culture of Paris in the nineteenth century:

Giles Peaker, “Walter Benjamin’s Passagenwerk: Reading in the Ruins,” from Other Voices 1.1: http://www.othervoices.org/gpeaker/Passagenwerk.php

Brown University Center for Digital Initiatives, “Paris, Capital of the 19th Century”:
http://dl.lib.brown.edu/paris/

My own notes on the first half of the essay, with references, terms and translations I looked up. Weblinks to sources are included. Notes in purple are my own thoughts as I worked through the text. These notes demonstrate a very thorough engagement with the essay; your own reading practices might vary depending on what you need to get out of it.

Page 146
epigraph 1: from a Vietnamese poem.
Does Benjamin like it because it is pretty or because it alludes to “great ladies” and “small ladies,” i.e., class on parade?

epigraph 2:
The magic columns of these palaces
Show to the amateur on all sides
In the objects their porticos display
That industry is the rival of the arts.

Fourier: A Utopian Socialist who hated industrialization. http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/lecture21a.html
1772-1837. “French social theorist who advocated a reconstruction of society based on communal associations of producers known as phalanges (phalanxes). His system came to be known as Fourierism.”
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9035043/Charles-Fourier
What does this have to do with the Arcades? Fourier presumably would have disliked them as monuments to industrial capitalism.

Page 147
“Empire is the style of revolutionary heroism for which the state is an end in itself.”
Intriguing, provocative to suggest that "empire" is a "style" and that it is not driven by high aims.
architectonic: 1. “relating to, or characteristic of architecture, design and construction. 2. relating to the scientific systematisation of the totality of knowledge.” http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/architectonic

Page 148
Epigraph: “Each epoch dreams the one to follow.”
Much of this page I don’t understand—leave it for now.

Page 149
Travail (1901) and Therese Raquin (1867):
Novels by French writer, intellectual and political activist Emile Zola, who was famous for his article “J’Accuse” (1898) in which he accused the French army of injustice and anti-Semitism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Zola

Daguerre: Inventor of photography (1839). Others had experimented with recording images seen through a lens, but he was the first to devise a method (and have it patented) that allowed such images to last. Before inventing the daguerreotype, he was a “Romantic painter and printmaker most famous until then as the proprietor of the Diorama, a popular Parisian spectacle featuring theatrical painting and lighting effects.” http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dagu/hd_dagu.htm

panorama: A view, but here the “painting in the panoramas” reference suggests that Benjamin is specifically referring to painting. “Panoramic paintings are massive artworks that reveal a wide, all-encompassing view of a particular subject, often a landscape, military battle, or historical event. They became especially popular in the 19th Century in Europe and the United States. A few have survived into the 21st Century and are on public display.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panoramic_painting
So, Daguerre was engaged in making visual spectacles, the diorama and the photograph, that are a lot like the panoramic paintings.

epigraph: “Sun, look out for yourself!”
This alludes to the technology of photography, in which sunlight (or an artificial light source) is used to illuminate and "transcribe" the scene to be photographed.

David: (1748-1825). “French painter, one of the central figures of Neoclassicism” http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/david/. Neoclassicism is “A French art style and movement that originated as a reaction to the Baroque in the mid-eighteenth century, and continued into the middle of the nineteenth century. It sought to revive the ideals of ancient Greek and Roman art. Neoclassic artists used classical forms to express their ideas about courage, sacrifice, and love of country.” http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/n/neoclassicism.html
From the examples given, it seems that neo-classical paintings are very “realistic,” clear and detailed—very suitable for a visual spectacle like a panorama, which is meant to create the illusion of a real landscape.

Page 150
“Daguerre is a pupil of the panorama painter Prevost, whose establishment is situated in the Passage des Panoramas.”
Aha! Another link between photography and panoramic painting.

Page 151
Grandville: French cariacaturist and political cartoonist. http://www.search.eb.com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/eb/article-9037712

Page 152
Saint-Simonists: “(n.) A system of socialism in which the state owns all the property and the laborer is entitled to share according to the quality and amount of his work, founded by Saint Simon (1760-1825).” http://www.drwords.com/define/Saint-Simonism

“The world exhibitions glorify the exchange value of commodities. They create a framework in which commodities’ intrinsic value is eclipsed. They open up a phantasmagoria that people enter to be amused. The entertainment industry facilitates this by elevating people to the level of commodities… The enthronement of merchandise, with the aura of amusement surrounding it, is the secret theme of Grandville’s art.”

Okay, I’m starting to see the links now between world exhibitions, where commodities are displayed as if in a theme park, and the other ideas about visual spectacles, panoramas, photographs, and the Arcades, which are shopping galleries. The Arcades are important as a key site where this whole “phantasmagoria” of commodities occurs, and thus they connect to other sites (like the world exhibitions) and media of display (like photographs, panoramas, dioramas, and Grandville’s cartoons). In places like the Arcades, PEOPLE are on display, as much as PRODUCTS.

READING: A WEB MODEL

2008-04-01T14:09:00.000-07:00

The reading for this course will often consist of critical and sometimes theoretical texts. While the number of pages will be substantial, the main challenge will come from the content: these texts will often be difficult. I will provide you with resources to assist you, and our class time will usually be spent in discussing and digesting the reading. However, you must be prepared to work hard at this reading—and to become comfortable with a certain amount of intellectual discomfort. In other words, don't expect to “get it” immediately, or completely! Nor should you expect it to become transparent; there will often be some element of a reading that remains obscure.

To address these challenges, we will adopt a “web model” of reading. That means that I will often assign several texts for you to read together. For example, I’ll assign short articles in New Keywords to go along with longer essays; at other times I will ask you to look up terms on online sources such as, yes, good old Wikipedia—or even Google—as well as more academically acceptable reference sources, online exhibits or articles. Texts that are not encyclopedic or referential in nature may also illuminate other texts in ways we should query. As the quarter progresses, I will ask you to find texts to situate next to assigned texts. We will not necessarily regard any of these texts as definitive. Instead, our aim is to put texts into conversation with each other, both to enrich our understanding of each one, but also to reveal the fissures that exist within and between them.

The idea of the “web” will also figure in the course in other ways. Soon, I’ll ask you to post to this blog. Some of your assignments will also take the form of a “web,” albeit in hard copy. Most importantly, “web reading” serves not only as a practice, but also as a kind of model for what it means to read culture.

Please note that the course blog can not substitute for class; it will not include assignment guidelines and all course materials. The blog is intended to supplement and reflect what we do together in class, and to serve as a compilation of references and resources.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

2008-03-31T12:30:00.000-07:00

As you no doubt noticed when you signed up for this course, most descriptions of English 207: Introduction to Cultural Studies (and I think there are about five available in the catalog right now) offer some version of the following disclaimer: “A commonplace about cultural studies is that it is ‘difficult to define’” (Rachel Goldberg). One instructor puts it like this:

Cultural studies is, by its nature, interdisciplinary and diverse. It is comprised of literary theory, media studies, sociology, political economy, cultural anthropology, philosophy, and art history/criticism to study cultural phenomena in various societies. Cultural studies researchers often consider how a particular phenomenon relates to matters of ideology, race, ethnicity, nationality, social class, and/or gender. Given its inherent diversity, cultural studies can be regarded as a nebulous and “floating” discipline (Sydney Lewis).

Perhaps this lack of disciplinary definition and consensus excites or intrigues you… or perhaps you already find it frustrating! In either case, the first thing to understand about cultural studies is that nobody, including me, can offer you an authoritative, comprehensive description of it. As Sydney Lewis notes, it is “interdisciplinary,” which means its SUBJECTS and even its METHODS come from a variety of disciplines. Moreover, as Heyang Julie Kae goes on to explain in her course description, “While cultural studies has derived its inquiry and methodologies from specific intellectual and institutional formations, this field of study is also the subject of heated criticism.” In other words, there is even debate about the GOALS of cultural studies. So why this chaotic state of affairs? Well, the second thing to know about cultural studies is that its practitioners need this disciplinary freedom, even at the cost of some disciplinary disagreement, because they want to be able to move between and within the conventional disciplines in order to pursue questions that have been neglected or marginalized by conventional disciplines. In other words, cultural studies is generally adaptive, circumstantial and partial (in both senses of the word); its scholars modify their SUBJECTS, METHODS and GOALS in practice.

“In practice”: this term provides the transition to my next point. In lieu of a permanent definition of what cultural studies “is,” we will investigate how to “do” cultural studies—and what cultural studies, in turn, can “do.” How does one implement a cultural studies approach? What are the benefits—and challenges—of such an approach? Those are the overarching questions we will ask.

But of course we will also need a focus—something upon which to practice! For this class, the set of issues and materials we’ll explore have to do with “textual culture” in and about the urban environment. By “textual culture,” I mean the culture that is generated through various kinds of written texts: books, of course, but also newspapers, magazines, posters, fliers, street signs, graffiti and of course virtual texts that we encounter via the internet, such as web pages and email. For cultural studies scholars, the term “text” has come to mean just about any cultural artifact or artifice (which can be a noun or a verb) that can be “read,” or analyzed, in terms of the culture that has produced and/or consumed it: visual materials, such as paintings or photographs or comic books, musical recordings, performances, television shows, even mass-produced products like Barbie dolls, Eames chairs and the shirt you are wearing right now. The particular forms of “textual culture” we’ll examine are those that are present in and speak of the city.

Okay, this terrain is still pretty huge, so I’m going to delimit it further to focus our investigations: while the internet will provide us with resources and even models (more on this later), our main texts will be physical materials that 1) are printed, i.e., are reproduced through old-fashioned print technologies, or 2) are written on the “body” of Seattle itself, i.e., are found within this here urban environment. In particular, we’ll explore graphic novels and their relationship to conventional novels; and then we’ll research artifacts that you collect from your own urban locales. In order to orient these activities to cultural studies, we’ll preface them with a set of introductory and key cultural studies texts that help us understand its history and character—a few gateways and skyscrapers from the “city of texts” that is cultural studies scholarship.

To summarize: our study of cultural studies will consist of three basic parts.

I. Introductions to cultural studies. We'll start off by thinking about different origins for cultural studies and the disciplinary debates that inform these origin stories. Our readings from this part of the course will come from the course reader and from Bennett, et al, New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society. We’ll finish this section of the course with Sardar, Introducing Cultural Studies.
II. The graphic novel. We’ll read Paul Auster’s City of Glass twice: first the conventional and then the graphic novel version. We’ll look at some of the ways scholars have discussed the novel(s) and the "contexts" and "keywords" that we need to invoke to fully account for it/them. Then you will investigate a different graphic novel; you'll work with a group to make a brief presentation and write a short essay about it.
III. Urban artifacts. We'll think more explicitly about cultural studies methods at this point. Then you’ll collect and analyze artifacts from a particular urban site--a project that will culminate in an illustrated "tour guide" of the site, along with an essay.