POPULAR CULTURES: plaCes, spaCes, and poSers

This Blog is for LBST 499- places, spaces and posers. It will serve as an asynchronous discussion for students to reflect on class readings, activities, cultural events, and discussions as it relates to your lives. As you contribute, you may raise questions, consider responses, and generate possibilities for follow-up activities in class. There is no maximum or minimum length.

Blog #4: To "Binary" or not to "Binary" that is the question

In class, we discuss how our realities have been constructed by forces far beyond our control by politics, social norms and mores, gender roles, decorum, etc. When we fall into these binary constructs, how does that impact our identities? Is it possible to live outside of the binary and be socially accepted? How do we straddle the divide and also stay inwardly true to oursevles?

Blog #3: Moving Ourselves into New Contexts

At this juncture, we have covered material as it relates to our developing subjectivities in different spaces. 'Apparate' or secondspace yourself into a context that has yet to exist and consider how your subjectivity would be vulnerable to either stabilizing or destabilizing in this context. In brief, invent a context you've never been in, describe based on what you know about yourself, how you might respond, and describe the visible and invisible sociopolitical messages that the given space tries to inscribe onto you. You can use each others' contexts if you like em'. Go play! Again, be sure to use class discussions, references and articles...

Blog #2- due 9/24: Reflect on how your current identities have been influenced by any particular popular culture...read below

Applying concepts from Baudrillard, Visual Rhetoric, class discussions, observations, your WIKIS and course readings, reflect, by selecting one popular culture that has "SUCKED" you in and describe how your identity has been influenced. Consider the space(s) you inhabit when you participate in that popular culture(such as a sporting event, or a dance club...), the logos present, colors, your senses, presence, and the tools that rhetors have used to seduce and construct identity. What sociopolitical ideologies impact those spaces and how does that impact you?

Reflection #1: Due 9/17/09

Your reflection is a 1-2 page response of how you negotiated and experienced your identity stabilize, destabilize or even restabilize in the space you attended. For support, draw upon class discussions, readings, and websites, to analyze your own experience. Please consider the sociopolitical messages that attempted to unveil itself in those spaces and its' impact on you. Consider visual rhetoric, visual reading (oppositional, negotiated, or dominant stances), film tools, archetypes, color symbology and any other tools you have up to this juncture. Your responses should be in either MLA or APA and references are a must.

Blog #1: How do you interpret Baudrillard's concept of the simulacra? Can you identify other simulacras?

Hi all- it's been a pleasure having all of you in class and talking with you! For your first blog entry, please respond to the question posed above as you also read through your peers' responses. In your responses, please take into consideration class discussions, readings, peer comments, and outside experiences, etc. Please note the authors and theories we have discussed in your responses. Your answer is thorough when you have included these aspects. Have fun!