For your 4th blog, continue to choose your own research topic that focuses on some aspects of life narratives or the representations of lives, as outlined with lots of topic suggestions in blog 3 (review here). You can write about World is Moving, about Jiwani & Young, the issues both raise about how media represent lives / subjects, or any of the primary and secondary readings to date (think, though, about what you’re adding to our discussions that’s new). You can also take up the popular readings I’ve asked you to complete alongside Jiwani & Young for Nov 8: “When the Media Treats White Suspects Better than Black Victims,” Chris Hayes’ spoof journalism, as discussed in this story, and “I am Not Your Wife, Sister, or Daughter” (and you might check out the myriad discussions of the wife/daughter/sister trope that surfaced after the Trump Tape media storm).

Leave your comments on each others’ posts here by Tues 9:30 am.

For Tuesday’s class, please look at 2 blog posts, “We’re Not Here for Your Inspiration“ and “But You Don’t Look Disabled,” an interview with filmmaker Jason DaSilva, and the Sundance trailer, with with extra footage (here), for his documentary film When I Walk. The documentary chronicles DaSilva’s experiences with MS, and explores what it means for him to navigate the world as a person with a disability (see the). The feature-length film is only the latest (and longest) of DaSilva’s self-representations; he’s been a video blogger for years (see one here, but also note his many posts for organizations such as the MS Society, including this one).

Please read the post below (“Free-Range Blogging”) for directions about writing your next post (due Mon Oct 17).

Also, looking ahead to our work with The World is Moving Around Me, please pay attention to media responses (and some artistic ones, too) to the devastation that Hurricane Matthew has wrought on Haiti.

This week you will choose your own topic for the blog, working with the expectations of the assignment. The blog post must in some way address the ideas, materials, and discussions of our course, and in particular the study of life narratives. For example, it could:

• Take up an aspect of one of our readings that you don’t understand, or that you find problematic, or that you find particularly useful, and explore why;
• Raise one or two insightful new questions about what we’re reading and then explore your own questions;
• Take up another student’s post or comment in class as your own launching point (build on, rethink, develop the original’s ideas)
• Bring in new material (website, video, news story, image, etc., all properly attributed) relevant to our current discussions, and connect it to the scholars and writers we’re studying.
• Connect what we’re doing in ASTU 100A to a concept, issue, or discussion in another of your CAP classes.

What might that look like? Here are some starting points, if you are stuck:

• Take one of the recommended readings from Smith and Watson (see course schedule) and work with that concept in relation to Cockeyed, or another life narrative we’ve studied or that you’ve read.
• Look ahead to the blogs & videos I’ve asked you to look at for Tuesday’s class and write about them (I’ll post these separately).
• Apply Couser (or Whitlock, or another scholar we’ve read) to other life narratives, beyond our reading list. Take up an issue or the scholar discusses and use it to think about a new research site. Or connect one of our scholars to other scholarly and popular conversations.
• Consider representations of disability (or, taking a page from Whitlock, of subjects from the Middle East).
• Put 2 or more of the life narratives we’ve read so far into conversation: what do we learn about by looking at these texts together?
• Find new instances of life narratives working in the world: for example, how are US political campaigns using their candidate’s life narrative as a form of political rhetoric? Note that Hillary Clinton is featured on Humans of New York (and I don’t think Trump is, interestingly).

Posts are due Monday and comments Tuesday @ 9:30.