Getting the Gist of It

Although I was pretty set on choosing the “Global Citizens” stream of the Coordinated Arts Program I remember having a really difficult time committing, as all the other topics seemed equally interesting and inspiring. The CAP conference, as I’m sure it was designed to do, was a great opportunity to see the intersections and divergences between the different streams. I went to see the Gender and Sexuality panel, and was particularly interested in Tara Rogic’s (of Media Studies) presentation “Warped Women: Representation of Females in Mass Media.” Drawing primarily on the…read more

Across many different academic disciplines this year, considering the roles that race, ethnicity, and ancestry play in society has shed light on the dangerous consequences of the marginalization of certain groups. In recent years much media attention has been shed on the thousands of “Crypto-Armenians” in Turkey–survivors of the 1915 genocide who hid themselves within Turkish society through complete and hidden assimilation: abandoning their Armenian identities for false Turkish ones in order to protect themselves and their families from further persecution. As more people come forward about their true identities, a revelation…read more

Although I secretly love a catchy “Top 40” hit as much as the next person, I can’t help but feel mildly appalled when when the work of older or lesser known artists is repurposed and capitalized by large record labels. It often doesn’t seem right to remove components of a song from their original context, consequentially altering their meaning and how they are publicly received. With the rise of new mixing and recording technologies, the music industry has grown and changed rapidly throughout the greater portion of the 20th century. It’s…read more

Throughout the semester we have identified many ways in which people document their lives online. Whether it is through blogging, tweeting, or creating an album on Facebook—in today’s increasingly digitized world more and more people are publishing personal content for the masses. Many of the scholarly articles that we have worked with in our class’ focus on life narrative explore the motivations behind these practices. Miller and Shepard in their analysis of the weblog, for instance, point to peoples’ increasingly voyeuristic inclinations—suggesting that people produce and consume personal content as a means of vicariously…read more