Speeches

I had expected the papers that people were writing to be pretty spread out between all of the intersections that could be created between the many groups we had to choose from.  I was suprised how many people did the intersection of gender and violence. I think literally all of the people on this first day with the exception of me were either doing gender and violence or race and class.  I guess these two are kind of the more obvious options looking back at it. These two topics are also not very controversial. It also makes sense that a lot of people chose gender and violence because a lot of the readings that we've done throughout this semester have been about the subject. I liked Marissa's presentation. I thought it took a lot of courage to critisize "christian values, especially in a presentation to a class in Texas and also becuase a few people in this class have talked about their religious beliefs. I think the presentations in general would have been more interesting if there was more diversity in the topics. Maybe it would be a good idea in the future to have students sign up for topics and limit the amount of people that can discuss the same topic.

Thoughts on Spring awakening, paper, and the coming out monolouges

I can see why Spring awakening has been banned in a lot of scool libraries for so long. The subject matter is pretty intense and controversial, even if the actual wordings arn't extremely explicit. It is interesting that people were talking about issues like when to tell children about sexuality in the late nineteenth century. I had thought theses diolouges hadn't started until much later. I haven't reccieved any essay ideas from my parters yet, I'm guessing chilifest may have had an effect on the timelyness of their responses. I went to "The Coming Out Monolouges" for extra credit on wednesday.It was a very interesting, though intense, experience and I learned a few things. One of the main things that I now understand after going to this event (to quote my write up about the event): I didn’t understand before is that people don’t just come out once, they have to come out or decide whether to come out again and again whenever they meet new people, join new organizations and get new jobs.. Another thing I came to realize is that even today coming out can defiantly be hard to do but can also be liberating as it removes confusion and stress of secrecy. I would reccomend that other students go to the events that are going on next week, it was not as intimidating as I had expected it to be to go to an event on a controversial topic with people that I don't know.

Thoughts on the Guest panel

I missed class on tuesday and forgot that we were having people come to speak to us on thursday. When I first walked into the class i thought I had walked into the wrong class. I thought the guessing game was pretty interesting, it was pretty suprising that the first things they encouraged us to ask about were the things that you are typically not supposed to ask people about when you first get to know them: religion, political views and personal feelings. Based on the reactions of the panelists it seemed like our class was more reserved in the questions we asked them than they were used to. This might have been because we were in a class or because it was 8am, as was joked about. It was interesting that the by having us try to use stereotypes about gay people to try to guess who was gay, they were able to show us that you really can't tell. It was interesting listening to their stories about the gay community here on campus, I knew there was a glbt resource center but I had always thought of it as being like an office where you could go if you were being discriminated against. I didn't know that it was also a place for people to hang out and socialize. I also didn't know that the allies was a group that exists. The guy who is a member of that group had an interesting perspective because he faces some of the stigma that gay people do when he's around homophobic people and even around his gay friends he faces some confusion at times that he presented in a comical way but I could also see as being a real issue.

Test

The defininition part of the test was pretty easy, and being at the beginning made it a good confidence boost, as did the name line having a point value. I thought the second part of the test was pretty hard. I forgot most of the author's names, which is really going to hurt me. I also forgot a few of the character's names, in my mind they were "the person who did this". I guess I remember concepts a lot better than names. Determining which play the quotes was from was pretty easy, most of them i remembered the exact lines and the ones that i didn't it was pretty easy to tell from context but still, missing author and character names is going to hurt my grade. The essay part wasn't too bad, the questions were pretty straight foward. I did the first question and one of the second questions. I thought the first question was pretty easy to answer, especially with the email we got last night giving me an oppertunity to ponder the subject as I fell asleep. It was much better than having to answer three of the bottom questions. I also answered the question about gender and violence intersecting, using lysistrata and Titus Andronicus as the pieces, which seemed like the obvious choice. My annotated bibliography is going well, having to look up most of the sources for last week's draft really helped get on track and the fact that the whole thing is due next week isnt too stressful since I already have a portion of it done and the test is out of the way. Spring break being right around the corner doesn't hurt either.

Titus

I thought the readings for Tuesday were interesting, especially the voice for lavinia piece. I hadn't thought of it from that point of view, and didn't notice the language around rape that was used in the play when I first read it. I also liked the point made by the irreligious piety piece. It's point was more along the lines of what I had thought was what the play was about. A lot of the violence in the play is justified by saying it is necessary for religious reasons, and the criticisms of the ancient roman religious beliefs and culture also apply to the Christianity and culture of both SShakespeare's and our time. I think the movie so far is interesting, it is defiantly a strange adaptation but i don't think i find it as strange as some people in the class seem to. I like the combination of modern and old things and the vauge time and place. It adds the the univerality of the film.

Thoughts from the first week of Febuary

I thought the Most interesting part of the discussions from Tuesday was the discussion about if the mission was worth the man. In my opinion sending six men to rescue one men is not worth it unless that person is tactically important to the overall victory of the war. In the case of saving private Ryan he was not an important person so I believe the mission was not worth it. The manpower could have been used in a more productive way. I hadn't really thought of whether or not the mission mattered or not the first time I saw the movie.
I thought several parts of Thursday's discussion were interesting. I thought it was interesting that the focus was on whether she was a lesbian and not on whether it mattered or not. I think that whether it matters if a teacher is homosexual is a more interesting topic. In my opinion it doesn't matter. I thought it was interesting that I had two different classes that discussed the topic of heteronormativity this week, both this class and my intro to women and gender class. before this week I had never heard that term and had never thought about how our society is heteronormative or the implications that could have for certain people and groups. I thought it was interesting that several people thought of children as not lying. I've always thought of lying as a childish act and something that children do frequently. Maybe the kids that I teach aren't very good children.

Lysistrata

http://drama.eserver.org/plays/classical/aristophanes/lysistrata.txt 

Lysistrata was an interesting piece. When I found it my initial reaction was that it was going to be a long and boring play. It was actually more interesting than I expected. The language and style of humor were more modern sounding than I had expected. The words were much more explicit at times and cleverly hinting at time is a way that was reminiscent of a modern comedy. The Feminist Ideas in the play were also surprising for a play that was written over two thousand years ago.