Complete course evaluations online and take a screenshot of your confirmation! If you have already completed the survey, just email me! 😀
20 – 40 points:
In a short 2-4 page essay or 5-8 minute video, explain the most valuable course readings and think through our final attempt at person-based research. Explore the following:
What did thinking about the world around you from a social constructionist perspective do for you, particularly? How has tackling issues of identity like gender, sexuality, race, and class been fun, difficult, uncomfortable, empowering?
What type of research (autoethnography, historical and academic, or person-based survey or interview) did you find most interesting or enjoyable?
How, specifically, would you improve or expand each particular research assignment? Would you be interested in learning how to apply for an approved person-based study through the university and work collaboratively to produce a formal research study?
What do you think 104 can do to help build research knowledge and skills for your particular field, major, or future professional work?
I know you’re all super tired, but keep going! The end of this class is near. Here’s everything you need to know about your final presentations:
Once you complete your video, make sure each of you upload it to Youtube and submit your link and final memo to Canvas! (Remember, EACH group member needs to complete a memo, buds!)
In a 2-3 page memo, answer the following questions about your media documentary:
Describe your process using person-based research methods. How did you go about gathering data and how was this experience different from traditional research?
What did you like about this project? What would you do differently?
How and why did you go about building a video documentary? What problems did you encounter? What was most fun or stressful?
How did you use course ideas (social construction theory, etc) and secondary research from your RQ II paper to inform your video project?
What audience do you think this video could reach? Where could you circulate this video and what do you hope viewers think about or do in response to your research?
Use your answers to plan your 10 minute presentation during which you are required to address the following:
Show your mini research documentary to the class
Explain both the original argument AND the process, purpose, and new audience of your qualitative or quantitative research
Reflect on the digital composing practice and what you might do with it in the future
Include a 1-2 page handout (one copy is fine) covering your main points (use images if you can!)
Remember, this presentation should make creative use of course readings, lectures, outside media, etc – to briefly teach the class about the public identity issue your work addresses AND the process of using person based research!
First things first, how are our RQII’s coming along? Ready to submit them? YAY! When you are finished writing and PROOFREADING your final essays, take a few minutes to include a Writer’s Memo answering/exploring the following questions:
What secondary research sources did you find most useful in understanding your primary sources? How did you go about incorporating these secondary sources into your own writing and thinking?
How did social construction theory help (or not) you build knowledge around your popular culture and official sources?
What do you think you did really well in this Research Quest?
How would you improve your work if you had more time?
What do you hope readers might learn, understand, or do after reading this work?
Turn your memo in with your final RQII essay on Canvas (“Research Quest II: Cultural Interrogation”) by Midnight tonight! 😀
After watching these samples, how can we begin to imagine our own project potential for RQIII? Spend some time talking and thinking with potential group members or completing your RQIII proposal on your own!
Now here’s how we go about gathering and producing our data for RQIII:
Today we are going to practice using iMovie or Wevideo (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. software to create a 50 – 90 second movie trailer for the film of our lives. Use your teammates as your cast of characters and choose a genre for your film. Will it be a raunchy all-girl comedy? A tail of tragic romance? What?
Next, use a trailer template in iMovie or a text theme template in Wevideo to help expedite your in-class process here and aid in your invention. What scenes will you want to film? What voice-over narrative will you need? What footage from Youtube might you use, if any?
Make sure you experiment with the following features (I’ll be here to help if you need it):
We’ll probably need to continue this practice through next week, so make sure you are arranging and inventing your own video project in the meantime and always let me know what you need help with!
When you’re done, save your trailer and upload it to Youtube. Next, check your privacy settings and make sure your audience is as restricted as you prefer. Then publish your video via link here as a comment! WOOOOO HOOOO!!
* You are NOT your peer’s copy editor; don’t worry about sentence-level “error” or grammatical “mistakes”. You are not expected to be an expert on mechanics and style of English writing. Neither is your buddy
*You ARE your peer’s reader – and as a reader you can certainly call your peer’s attention to moments where you are confused, entertained, wanting more detail, missing the point, etc.
*You ARE your peer’s colleague in a sense. You are working together to collaborate on how to build better, clearer writing. That being said, be helpful, not critical. Be supportive, but not patronizing. Above all – DO NOT be lazy. The comment “I like this intro, Bro,” is really nice, but also generic and disengaged. Be specific, substantive, and reflective. I promise this will pay off in the quality of feedback your own writing receives!
*This is a social activity! Feel free to dialogue on, discuss, and have fun with your ideas about one another’s work!
Now, here’s what you need to do:
*Read the RQ II drafts of at least three buddies. You MUST address the following questions/notes:
1) What is the thesis? Does this thesis make a clear argument or lay out a relationship between primary sources, social construction, a public issue/identity? What is the argument, exactly?
2)What are the writer’s primary sources and how are they using them in their argument?
3)How is the writer using or planning to use direct quotations from their secondary sources? Do the sources and quotations make sense? Are the sources well-integrated?
4)Check the entire essay/outline for structure. Is there an early, thesis? Does EACH paragraph make a claim and focus on ONE claim only? Does EACH paragraph use source quotations, summary, OR/AND statistics as evidence to support the claim? And does EACH paragraph explain HOW and WHY that evidence “proves” the overall argument of the essay?
5)Finally, look at the RQ II prompt to which your peer is responding. Is the prompt fully addressed through the writing? What could be added, cut, re-structured to help answer the assignment or clarify the ideas?
Submit your notes for each peer to your buddies and to Canvas by Midnight! 😀
Before we make time for finishing our close readings and begin looking for secondary sources, let’s get in our groups and check out this student example of a RQ II argument:
Now, in your group, make a list of the different types of sources the author uses to explore the construction that racial bias driven by social constructions of African Americans leads to racist police brutality and violence.
What is the larger purpose or thesis of the writer’s cultural interrogation?
What are the writer’s primary sources and how does he use them to build her larger argument?
What traditional, academic secondary sources does he use?
How is the writer using personal experience to explore the argument he’s making?
How might you use this essay as an example as you begin writing? What of his approach to the assignment do you like and why?
Today we’re gonna practice making a research agenda from primary and secondary sources we’ve closely read. So let’s take a look at some sources that complicate and inform the conversation about how immigrants from Mexico are socially, legally, and culturally constructed:
Now, get together with your group buds and use what you know about about social construction theory and this collection of texts to answer the following:
Which texts from those listed above are primary and secondary sources?
What argument might you make about how Obama-era vs. Trump-era social understandings of Hispanic immigrants have changed? Try making a thesis statement for a RQII-style paper about Underwater Dreams, DACA, andPresident Trump’s current legislative and social definitions of Mexican immigrants.
Given the thesis statement you’ve crafted, what kind of source might help you explore this particular research quest? Do you need data and statistics? A news source helping readers understand the current immigration debate? Or a scholarly study of Mexican immigrant contributions to American culture?
Now go find a scholarly source! To do this check out OneSearch at Bracken Library. Make sure you’re signed in to your my.bsu login. With your group members, click the filter on the left to only search peer-reviewed sources and try various search terms like “Mexican American immigration” or “DACA” to find a new secondary, scholarly source to help explore your argument. In a discussion thread, record your search terms and link your source!
Ok, so how might we go about looking at this official primary source as a pop culture text? Let’s imagine we want to write about how the use of Blackface constructed and continues to construct a racist version of African American culture and people? How can we use our skills of searching the internet to find out the history of Blackface in the US and how it is regulated or legislated? Where and how is Blackface regulated? Are there any laws, public speeches, institutional rules, or judicial rulings that we can find to read alongside the film or show Dear White People?
Obama in his 2004 Democratic Convention speech decried “the slander that says that if a black youth walks around with a book in his hand, he is acting white.”
-John McWhorter, Forbes
On a biological level, “less than 1 percent of the human genome accounts for visible characteristics such as skin color. In terms of our genetic blue print, we are more than 99 percent the same.”
-Maia Szalavitz, Race and the Human Genome: The Howard University Human Genome Center
Think about how the above quotations help support the notion that racial difference is less biology and more sociology? How and why have Westerners insisted so vehemently on the empirical “truth” of race? And how do socially constructed notions of racial identities affect policy to enact social control and racial supremacy?
Imagine the following excerpt of the 1915 film Birth of a Nation is our media artifact:
Now pair this with the 1896 Supreme Court ruling in the famous Plessy vs. Ferguson case.
What research steps do we take to build cultural and historical context for these texts? How do pop culture texts like film affect social control and legal policies?
First, recognize that research can be fun.
There, I said it. Now before you have me committed, take a moment to think about the online “research” in which you already engage – what does it begin with? A question. A question that makes you curious to discover information – makes you want to “research”? Is Betty White still alive? What WAS the name of that Ben Affleck movie with Jennifer Lopez? Weren’t they married for a minute? What exactly does “exigence” mean again? This is really all you need to find in order to make Inquiry I an intellectual fiesta! No? You don’t believe me now, but you will.
Choose any ONE question to explore. Use any outline and notes you have prepared and make sure you do your best to answer the entire question:
1. This 1960’s advertisement for men’s hair grooming products relies on notions of gender to sell a product to consumers. How does it reflect and perpetuate constructions of what it means to be masculine and feminine before the women’s movement of the 1970’s? How does it rely on and perpetuate warrior masculinity? Do you think these constructions of men and women still surface today? Why? In what kinds of examples?
2. Check out the following comic by Barry Deutsch.How does Deutsch make the case that masculinity is socially constructed? Do you agree with this perspective? How does his comic reflect the ideas Palahniuk explores through his male characters in Fight Club? What do you think his comic and Tyler Durden have to do with male violence and school shootings, if anything?
3. In a recent New York Times opinion piece, comedian Michael Ian Black argues that:
“The past 50 years have redefined what it means to be female in America. Girls today are told that they can do anything, be anyone. They’ve absorbed the message: They’re outperforming boys in school at every level. But it isn’t just about performance. To be a girl today is to be the beneficiary of decades of conversation about the complexities of womanhood, its many forms and expressions. . .Men feel isolated, confused and conflicted about their natures. Many feel that the very qualities that used to define them — their strength, aggression and competitiveness — are no longer wanted or needed; many others never felt strong or aggressive or competitive to begin with. We don’t know how to be, and we’re terrified.”
How (and where in the novel and/or film) does Palahniuk also build this same perspective in Fight Club? Do you agree or disagree with both writer’s takes on how masculinity is socially constructed? What kinds of social constructions might help boys and men understand masculinity differently?
4. Check out this anti-suffragette poster of the early 1900’s below. How is it socially constructing female people? How did this piece of propaganda discourage and control women who might have wanted to advocate for equal voting rights? Use what you know about this part of American history and social construction theory to think about how social constructions can become social control over marginalized groups. Do we still see social control of women through advertisements today? If so, where and why?
5. Take a look at this Bud Light ad below. How do the makers of this beer and the ad agency they’ve hired construct a potential gay male consumer? In what ways is this ad empowering? How is it not? How do Ennis and Jack in Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain” influence ads like this one and how did they help challenge common popular culture representations of gay men? How are popular representations of gay men problematic? How are they empowering?
6. Take a few minutes to watch this short video:
What argument is artist, Eli Rezkallah attempting to make with her work? How are the original ads constructing femininity and masculinity during the 1950’s and 60’s? How are those constructions still dominant in our culture today? And how might art like Rezkallah’s change social constructions of men and women?
7. Think about what you’ve learned about advertising, social construction, and gender and embark on our future considerations of race as socially constructed. How does the below pancake mix advertisement from 1941 reflect and construct black women’s social role and value? Use what you know about this part of American history – pre-women’s movement and pre-civil rights act – and social construction theory to think about how social constructions can become social control over marginalized groups. Do we still see this kind of social control of women (and men) of color through advertisements today? If so, where and why? What examples can you think of in advertising, popular culture, and politics that perpetuate or challenge these long-standing constructions of black women (and men) as “help” for white people?
8. Relying on what you know about social construction theory and common constructions of female and male gender, how does this Ok Cupid ad address and construct a lesbian consumer? What assumptions about lesbian identity and female identity do these advertisers make and why do you think they make those assumptions? What other popular depictions of lesbian women help construct what our culture assumes about lesbians and how are these constructions empowering or disempowering?
Use one or more of his photographs below to closely read and answer the following questions. What argument is Buck trying to make with this image or images? What social constructions of white women does he attempt to highlight? And what constructions of women of color is he making commentary on? How might art like Buck’s photo essay work to change social constructions of women and race?
10. Take a moment to watch this short video introducing a new line of dolls from Mattel, the makers of Barbie.
Closely reading these new dolls and how Mattel’s toymakers and designers explain their potential role in children’s lives, how do these dolls participate in socially constructing gender in ways that reflect larger cultural changes in our understandings and definitions of gender? The designers mention that these dolls might be met with challenge from certain populations. Why do you think they make that assertion? Do you agree or disagree and what evidence from our current cultural moment informs your perspectives?
English 104 