Some Holiday Cheer

Looking for a gift for that tough academic on your list? How about this....We can wear it at our next conference :)

holligrams on CNN

We were talking about this Holigram thing in our visual class today, and I found a video of it online and thought you guys would be interested in this too. What would Baudrillard say?

Civic Forums at UGA

Hey all,

Last summer Chris and I attended a workshop, hosted by the Russell Library, to learn how to moderate National Issues Forums. This training was one of the many initiatives the Library has undertaken to boost civic participation in the Athens area. Below is some info. about upcoming forums--I hope you'll go and encourage your students to go as well!

* * * * *
The Russell Library and the Jimmy Carter Library and partners across the state of Georgia are excited to announce the forums series, Georgia Deliberations: What Policy Decisions Today Will Get Us A Better Tomorrow? In 4 cities around the state, Athens, Tifton, Atlanta, and Albany there will be three forums on issues public concern. In each city a new issue guide on paying for healthcare will be the centerpiece deliberation. Students from the University of Georgia's Honors Program's Roosevelt Institution will moderate many of these forums. Here are the details for the Athens area forums. Please join us and encourage your family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and students to come as well!

Coping with the Cost of Healthcare: How Do We Pay for What We Need?

September 25, 2008, 7-9 p.m.

Russell Library, UGA Main Library, West Entrance

Making Ends Meet: Is There A Way to Help Working Americans?

October 16, 2008, 7-9 p.m.

Oconee Public Library, 1080 Experiment Station Road, Watkinsville

The Energy Problem: Choices for an Uncertain Future

October 28, 2008, 7-9 p.m.

Russell Library, UGA Main Library, West Entrance

We will also host "Debate Watch 2008" on October 7, 2007 at 7 p.m. at the Russell Library with Dr. Paul Gurian as our special guest commentator.

Brochures for the Tifton, Athens, and Atlanta forums are attached. Information about all the forums is available at
http://www.libs.uga.edu/russell/exhibits/deliberations.shtml

arts politics in Athens

This Paste article got my attention because of the local reference, and then featured a somewhat nonsensical political quotation from Eric's favorite local band: Dark Meat. Does this say anything interesting about the relationships between arts, activism and politics?

Zombie Survival

Test your knowledge... How prepared are you for the outbreak?

http://www.newsandentertainment.com/zFzombiequiz.html

My scores were B physical, B mental, B experience, and F emotional (my mantra is "numbness is the key to survival"--lol)

Overall, Z+--says I can survive a nuclear war. Whew! I was worried...

Remembering George Carlin

As you know, comedian George Carlin died this past week. I would use the more sensitive "passed away," but Carlin would probably only despise the pretentious euphemism. Carlin was not only an important social critic, he was more specifically a student of rhetoric. So much of his humor centered on the absurdity of social symbols as well as their potentially destructive force. Sometimes this was set in a playful context, such as pointing out the differences between football and baseball jargon. At other times, his observations of public rhetoric were used to explain the atrocities of American foreign policy. Most recently, Carlin told us, "Fuck Lance Armstrong . . . and fuck Tiger Woods. I'm tired of being told who to admire in this country." This was not so much an attack on the athletes as it was an attack on the mindless approval and admiration of public figures he was rightfully afraid of. One might find it odd that Carlin did not think of himself and as a political comedian. While Carlin's humor may not have been as explicitly political as someone like Bill Maher, his humor was in a sense even more political or at least richer. He didn't so much criticize public policy as he did the discursive relations (though he would never use such an academic term) that produced those policies in the first place. I do not think I'm exaggerating when I call his observational humor a master class in contemporary rhetoric and popular/political (distinction?) culture. So in the wake of Carlin's death I encourage you to take advantage of all his footage being shown on TV. The first ten minutes of Jammin in New York will not only have you in stitches but also show Carlin at his most political, criticizing the Gulf War (the first one, the one that wasn't popular to question). But even when Carlin was doing airplane humor, which he spent the next twenty minutes doing, he was original and poignant, exposing the absurd language and other social symbols used to exert power, in this case, that of airlines. Carlin didn't limit his scathing observations to the government, probably because that would be the most obvious place to look. And Carlin didn't point out the obvious, but rather those things he made embarrassingly obvious for us to see.

So in the spirit of this stimulating and oddly inspiring social critic, Fuck George Carlin. Now, more than ever, we need more people like him.

Bakhtin stuff

Since people on this blog love theorists whose names begin with B, I thought I'd let you know that I've made two posts on my personal blog summarizing Bakhtinian concepts and applying them to the context of Christian Worship.  I know few of you are worship leaders, but I thought you might be interested in the summaries.  They are here:

The Living Word

Ideological Becoming

Blogs of interest

Hey All:

Since I teach my WMST class about the power of the Internet for resistance and feminist activity, I had them post their assignments this semester on a class blog. Today their media analysis projects are due and you can view them at the sites listed below. The students could either create a feminist text OR do a mini rhetorical criticism of a cultural text. I'm really proud of how much work went into the project.

If you'd like to check them out:

http://ugafeminism.blogspot.com/
http://wmst2010.blogspot.com/

I love a lot of the projects, but in particular I thought these videos were pretty powerful. I encouraged them to put their activism on Youtube as well. I hope you're as inspired as I am!

Barbie Culture: http://ugafeminism.blogspot.com/2008/04/clark-media-analysis.html

Tension between sex positive feminism and sexual exploitation:
http://ugafeminism.blogspot.com/2008/04/sexpos-expos.html

Taking on the Beauty Myth:
http://wmst2010.blogspot.com/2008/04/peyton-feminist-text.html

FEMINISTS UNITE!

Benjamin Post of the Day

Hi, I wanted to finish the "On Language" essay...sorry for the delay

The Fall made language mediate, making multiplicity and linguistic confusion one step away. In this turning away from things, came the plan for the Tower of Babel, and linguistic confusion with it.

Nature begins its muteness, which we call the deep sadness of nature. Because she is mute, nature mourns. Also, the sadness of nature makes her mute. It's a deeper inclination to speechlessness (in all mourning) which is different from an inability or disinclination to speak. It mourns because it feels itself known by the unknowable. Men names them, they become overnamed. This overnaming (too many names for a 'tree' for instance) is the cause of the mourning.

“There is a language of sculpture, of painting, of poetry. Just as the language of poetry is partly, if not solely, founded on the name language of man, it is very conceivable that the language of sculpture or painting is founded on certain kinds of thing-languages, that in them we find a translation of the language of things into an infinitely higher language, which may still be of the same sphere. We are concerned here with nameless, nonacoustic languages, languages issuing from matter; here we should recall the material community of things in their communication” (73).

Crazy Cat Lady

For the whole story, check it out: http://nicodauphineisevil.blogspot.com/

Please spread the word... Nico must be stopped.

I don't know what I think about this...

But what do you think about it? Apparently a senior at Yale has done an art project by getting artificially inseminated and taking drugs to induce a miscarriage.

Here's the link...
and another one

Seriously, what do you think?

UPDATE: Bitch Ph.D. has also weighed in

UPDATE #2: Feministing has some more information, including that her project was just a "creative fiction" and another clarification that she went through the process without knowing whether she was actually pregnant.

FINAL UPDATE: The artist, Aliza Shvarts, has written a column in Yale's newspaper explaining the project, what it entails, and how she thinks it functions. I find her explanation fascinating in light of some issues we've discussed this semester, particularly Butler's arguments about the performative and semiotic capacity of the body.

visual, media, gender, sexuality theory and criticism?

hi all,
i got assigned to teach a special topics class this fall 2008. i'd like to use any sources that you all think might work well, since many of you have expertise in some of the areas i'll be covering. please pass on any helpful cites! thanks... ~ jamie

fyi, the title of my course is: "Visual and Mediated Rhetorics of Gender and Sexuality.”

lessl needed a quick description of my course to publicize to the undergards, so here's a quick explication of it: "This course will survey types of media theory and criticism within and outside of the discipline of rhetoric. Extra attention will be given to the visual medium and the mediation of gender and sexuality. The purpose of the course is to introduce students to theoretical perspectives as well as case studies in order to enhance their ability to critically see, think, write, or in other ways create better rhetorical artifacts for heterosexual women and men and LGBTQ communities. This course is reading and writing intensive as well as it is heavy in discussion."