The NY Times reports on public radio and the web.
One of my students recently asked where we can get news with context. NPR is a good beginning: Tell Them Public Matters.
teaching: April 2006 Archives
The Junior Writing class wiki is turning into something hot. :-)
"Writing, like fornication, should use proper technique, should serve a functional purpose," explains Craig.
Speaking of technique, some of us have been experimenting with poetic license.
We've a month left to really whip it into shape, but there are some compelling things posted, including two critiques of the recent Tent State University.
I haven't bragged on my students for awhile now, but it isn't because I haven't been proud.
In the UNH-Manchester intro course on Mass Media we had a grand round of Jeopardy to finish off a sophisticated (technologically and intellectually) presentation on The Torino Olympics. This following two other impressive performances by a team comparing Mary Tyler Moore with Desperate Housewives in Female Image: Past and Present and another team investigating copycat violence, Monkey See, Monkey Do?
We had an awesome paper (which I hope to be able to post, ahem!) and discussion regarding the movie, Crash: does it anaesthetize white/caucasian viewers? Even if not, does it still generate more narcotizing dysfunction than movement toward social justice?
Another terrific discussion was inspired by the team that presented a media analysis of three different tv stations' coverage of Jill Carroll's release. (I'm hoping this info is going to be transferred into the class wiki for all to be able to revisit...hint hint!)
Kirk, our resident alternative (?) news guru, responded to a question about where folks can get news that provides more than "just the facts" by softly chanting, "BBC, BBC." :-) (Which I listened to on the drive home, and want to buy this recently released "sounds of rarest wildlife" CD.) Kirk's official turn is coming up in a couple of weeks.
There were many moments of levity tonight, including the slip in the Jill Carroll presentation about "How To Get a Hostage Killed". Of course, I heard the slip as eerily reminiscent of a veiled threat on my own life...
VPP and I had a lengthy discussion about the rash of vicious and hateful posters to the blog of the white man, Kevin Ray Underwood, who brutally murdered and violated a ten year old girl last week in Oklahoma (reported by CNN).
It led us into a conversation of the concept of valence, which is an element in group relations theory.
What launched us was the apparent data from the guy's blog that he was surrounded in his life by the kind of people now posting vitriolic comments to his blog. Perhaps, he acted on a surplus of the hatred around him that somehow built up in him beyond the point of his ability to suppress?
One of my students caught me out yesterday. He'd just announced he would miss class on Thursday because it was Passover, and I'd hesitated. I could fudge, and say I hesitated moreso because of the two additional students who immediately chimed in that they would also miss class, sensing a run on an easy excused absence. (Indeed, another student then announced, "If they're not coming, I'm not either!")
I caught and corrected myself, but there it was, the truth of a stereotype hanging out there for all to see. This young man, to all visible clues an African-American, is also Jewish. Duh! It's not like I don't know the fact that the largest percentage of the world's Jewish population is of a skin tone other than pale pinkish-white! Yet my personal demographic exposure, combined with common US mass media representations, set me up for a textbook case of momentary essentialization.
How embarrassing. This NPR broadcast on Blacks, the Jewish Faith and Hanukkah addresses the "misperception that black people are not Jewish."
There was the colleague I saw this morning who didn't moderate the emphasis: "You look like you could use a cup of coffee."
The professor who took pains to express in several different ways what I "need to understand."
The lecture that included details about the despicable events at Duke over the weekend.
The cartoon drawn for me by a student mocking my emphasis on parsimony in writing. I forgot to write down the sentence reconstructed to correct a dangling modifier. :-( It referred to "festering trolls in the basement" and was a genuine collaborative effort, with the adjective, subject, and location (I think) all supplied by different individuals. More of this!
The idea for a SNL skit on a PR firm specializing in dissertation titles for graduate students.
Finally, there were blini. (Delicious!)
