Interviews

Hi folks,

I have ALL of your Oral History interviews and have commented on them all as well. I will leave them in an orange folder on my office door for you. Feel free to come pick them up anytime this week or next if you want to work on your Oral History projects before I see you a week from Thursday!

Thanks for your patience,

LB :)

Activism resources from class

You too can be an ally, advocate and/or activist... in just a few easy steps!! :)

The Elevator Pitch (from This American Life on NPR)

Saving the world -- one postage paid envelope at a time


How to create an EPIC pitch (from www.Results.org)

Activism as Feminism/Feminism as Activism

The readings for next week are all about issues of activism and how this work is connected to the larger feminist goals. Both the Ayvazian, “Interrupting the Cycle of Oppression” and the Blanchard, “Combatting Intentional Bigotry and Inadvertently Racist Acts” are on the RIC Library reserves for you to find. (As always, please make sure you have the texts in class with you.)

As you read, think about the conversations we have had about being an Ally, a Bystander, a Target or a Perpetrator. Think about the conversations we have had about the Occupy movement and what it means for social justice.

In class next week, we will focus on some examples of activism and what it looks like in the world. Is activism always feminist? Is feminism always activist?

Food for thought...

Cinderella

Hi all,

Sent you an email yesterday with the Cinderella reading in it... it went to your RIC accounts. If for any reason you didn't get it, email me so I can send it off to you!!

See ya on Thursday!

LB :)

Reading Groups for Thursday

These are the assignments that we designated in class, just in case you lost track. Please read your assigned text careful and post about it. Ultimately you will be responsible for teaching your peers about the major issues from your article so read carefully and do any google-ing work to make sure you fully understand the main ideas.

YAMATO:
Sheila
Sydney
Heather
Kristen

SMITH:
Yemi
Steph
Taylor

ANZALDUA:
Eric
Grisel
David
Amanda S

LORDE:
Brooke
Amanda A
Elsa

Promising Practices Conference

On Saturday, November 5, you will be attending the Promising Practices conference at Rhode Island College (or attend three films on the WMST film series). Please go online here and register so that you will have the best shot at getting your first choice in workshop sessions at the conference.



(If you want to bring registration checks to class, I am happy to deliver them for you!)

Compulsory Heterosexuality

For this week you are reading two text, Rich's Compulsory Heterosexuality and Walker's Definition of Womanist. You can find both of these things on the Adam's Library electronic reserves. Just click on the tab in the middle of the page that says RESERVES and type in my name (BOGAD). You will see a listing for WMST 200. The rest of the reading for the course are found there.

Adriene Rich is not an easy read so please read slowly and carefully and try to stay focused on her central issues as she defines what she calls, "compulsory heterosexuality" and "lesbian exisistence." Try not to get bogged down in the details -- just work hard to understand these basic terms.

Note that the assignment in the syllabus asks you to focus your Talking Points specifically on this task. You don't have to choose one of the talking points options this week -- just focus on defining the terms.


Talking Points #4: Define what Rich means by “compulsory heterosexuality” and “lesbian existence” using specific evidence from the text (focus on this specifically rather than one of the TP options) (posted to your blog by 10/4 @ midnight)

I want to highly recommend that you use the internet to help you with Rich. Google "compulsory heterosexuality" or "Adriene Rich." What have others written about this article? What resources can you find online to help you figure her out? Googling is not cheating -- it is learning!! So include links to any resources you find that help you!!

See you next Thursday!

LB :)

Another Event for WMST

Several of you were looking for other events to attend in addition to the Promising Practices conference at RIC in November.

Here is an interesting one that would be great to write about.

Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health Fun(d)raiser
Sunday October 2 (7-10 pm)

Check it out!!!

Materials for Thursday, Sept 29

Next week we will be looking at issues of social class and how they relate to Gender and Society. Your reading is all online for this week.

Spend an hour exploring the website for

People Like Us

and

The Center for Working Class Studies.


I think you will enjoy the resources that you find there. Then, blog about them. You blog can describe what you found and name some interesting issues that you notice. But I also want you to take at least one paragraph to answer the question: Why/how is economic inequity a feminist issue?

Youutbe funny

You should really watch this... worth ten minutes of your life!

Welcome to Gender and Society!

Welcome to this Women's Studies blogging adventure!

Sometime before September 6, you will set up your own blog to use this semester for all of your Talking Points assignments, and to keep track of your thoughts about any of the issues we cover.

A blog is your very own, personal online journal. It is public, in that I and your classmates can read it and comment on it, but it is your space and you can control most everything about it.

In the context of this course, your blog has three purposes:

1) Your blog will provide a space for you to keep all of your Talking Points assignments over the course of our semester together. You will not hand in written assignments to me each week; rather you will post them on your blog. In this sense, your blog is merely your assignment notebook that you will use as you read and prepare for class each week. You will also be posting any additional thoughts you have: responses to class discussion, after thoughts, things you forgot to say in class, relevant experiences you have, etc.

2) But importantly, your blog is a public space and as you post (and comment on others'), you will gain a much richer understanding of everything we read and discuss in class. I want you to think of it as interactive and intertextual in that way. Blogging is not the same as writing a paper in Microsoft Word — you have to stretch your brain to make sure you are taking advantage of this unique technological and communal experience.

3) Creating your own blog will also introduce you to the blogisphere if you don't know this place already. I hope that you will discover creative personal and professional uses for this online medium. You will see how easy it is to use blogger.com, and perhaps it will inspire you to use blogging as a form of activism and community.

To start your own blog, you will go to:

www.blogger.com

The big orange box at the top right of the page will direct you to creating your own blog on a site called blogspot.com. Follow the instructions to open up a free account. Don't forget your Username and Password!! You will need them to login everytime. (If you already have a gmail/google account, then you don't need to create a new one.)

As you fill in the info, you will be asked to name your blog. This title will appear at the top of your blog. (Mine is called "Gender and Society")

Then, you need to choose an address:

http://_______.blogspot.com

This will be the web address associated with your site. you can call it anything you like. Be clever or simple (or both) -- it is up to you.

You will also need to choose a design template for your blog. Look through the options listed and see what appeals to you. You can change this later and can even find fun, creative templates at sites like PYZAM.

Once you have the account set up, you can start posting. A “posting” is an entry on your blog. (For clarification, you have one blog, but many postings). Give the post a title and then compose as you would any journal entry. When you are finished, hit the button at the bottom that says Publish Post. It will not appear on your blog until you publish it. You can always go back and edit old posts and create new ones.

Your First Post:
Your first post should be a short introduction to you: who are you, how your semester is going so far, why yu are taking this class, what do you do when you are not in class, etc. (Just a short paragraph — no big deal). You will post the rest of the entries as they are due (see course syllabus for dates), or whenever you have something to say!

When you are done creating your site and posting your first entry, please come back to this blog and post a comment at the end of my first posting (scroll down) that includes your blog address so that I can post it in the link list to the right.

Some Tips and Helpful Hints:

• Once you are in your blog, look at the top right corner of the screen. If you click on the word DESIGN, you will be able to make design changes, create new posts, edit old posts, etc. (You can only do this if you are logged in to your blog.)
  
• Once you are in the DESIGN screen, you can do all kinds of things to make your blog a bit more interesting. Change your fonts and colors, edit a post, change your settings. See the tabs at the top of the screen for all kinds of options.
• Poke around online and make a list of websites related to education, diversity, social justice or anything else relevant and post them on your blog. You can add all kinds of things by ADDING A GADGET from your Design Screen.
  
• Just do the best you can with this. If you get stuck, don't fret... I am happy to help you anytime as you work on getting this started. Send me an email, come see me in office hours, or grab me after class. And remember: you can't break it. It is just a blog. Everything can be changed if need be!

Good luck!!

LB :)