Intro

Greeting fellow students and Professor my name is William Brownlee. I am an engineering student and all though i’m a tech person I much prefer personal classes in fact i postponed taking classes last semester due to my dislike of online classes. I find them to be for more inferior to regular classes to so the lack of interaction. However I can can’t make my education wait forever and this pandemic doesn’t show clear sighs of waning anytime soon. So here I am.

HW for Wed, 5/1

HW:  If you haven’t already presented, make sure your Essay 2 presentation is ready to go live on Wed.  

Also: Read the sample student Essay 2 on pp. 25-32 of Packet 2.  This essay didn’t receive an A; so what I want you to do is make notes on how this essay could be improved to receive a higher grade.  Pay special attention to transitions: the connections between paragraphs. Also highlight any boring or repeating information that you think could be removed or rewritten.

HW for Mon 4/15

Reading & Research: Finish reading Imp Kerr’s “Feasts Under the Bridge.”  With your Essay 2 group, find one more article you will look for quotes on your Essay 2 word in.  Arrive in class next week prepared to discuss quotes from this article.

Writing:

  1. In Imp Kerr’s “Feasts Under the Bridge,” find and quote one sentence where Imp Kerr uses the word “troll” (or “trolling” or some other variant of this word) in a way that gives you a new understanding of this term.  Introduce this quotation, paraphrase it in your own words, and explain how it gives you a new way of understanding what “trolling” is.
  2. Copy and paste into your response below an old blog post you wrote as well as feedback on it that you received.  Below it, write a revised version of this blog post using the suggestions in the feedback.

Is XXL Freshman list really the truth?

XXL releases its annual “Freshman Class” list. The issue features ten artists to watch out for, all of appearing on the cover of the magazine. The list has a history of showcasing underground rappers, as well as artists considered to be on the rise. BUT, Freshman list is now a money/fame hungry magazine. Recent years including this upcoming Freshman list (has not been revealed yet) are picking up artist that is famous but not talented at all. Freshman list is picking up artist that cause drama on social media and make themselves famous. This magazine is doing this just to get sales and to be talked about. The magazine got a lot of controversy because of this problem.  Freshman magazine wasn’t like this before a few years ago, but now everything changed. People are hoping they give the credit to the artist that deserves it.

HW for Mon 4/8

HW: Finish reading Crawford’s “The Anxieties of Big Data.”  Read Caraminica’s “Drake: Rapper, Actor, Meme.”
With your Essay 2 group: search for new articles on your Essay 2 word, make a list of them, decide on 1 of them to read.  Read this article and arrive in class next week prepared to write about 2+ quotations from it that feature your Essay 2 word.  

Writing Prompt (2 parts)
1
Building connections between words and texts.  First, spend a few sentences explaining what the word “normcore” means.  Ground your explanation in a quotation from K-Hole’s text “YOUTH MODE.”  Second, explain what the word “surveillant anxiety” means when Kate Crawford uses it in her text, “The Anxieties of Big Data” (which starts on p. 46).
 Third, explain why you think Crawford discusses “normcore” on p. 48.  What is the connection made here between data anxiety and the trend known as “normcore”? 

2. Post article info (author, title, publication, link) for the new text your Essay 2 group has found and will be reading this week.

HW for Mon 4/1

HW: Finish typing your midterm summary into your group’s Google Doc.  Read “Youth Mode” by K-Hole as well as Michelle Nijhuis’ “The Pocket Guide to Bullshit Prevention” (both in Packet 2).

WRITING PROMPT:
Working with your Essay 2 group, create a new Google Doc for your essay.  Make sure to share the document with everyone in the group as well as with me (street.monroe@gmail.com).
Once the Google Doc is created and shared, I want each of you to type a revised version of your midterm summary in the group’s document.  Please paste a link your Google Doc below by Monday at 1p.

HW for Mon 3/18

HW: Work with your Essay 2 group to choose a word or phrase to focus your research on.  (You can change your mind later if you’re not pleased with your research results.)  Working individually: search for, find, and print a text dealing with your word/phrase that you want to read.  Bring this in next class.  In Packet 2, read “Intro to Summary Writing” and “MLA Citation Quick Guide.”  Reminder: a revised Essay 1 is due at the Midterm exam next Wed.
Prompt for Mon: In the text you’ve found for Essay 2, find five sentences that show interesting or important points the author is making.  Write out these sentences exactly as the author has written them.  At the beginning of each quote, introduce it using the title, the author’s name, and a signal verb.  At the end of each quotation, include an MLA-formatted in-text citation.  An example for you to follow is below: the introduction and MLA citation are color-coded.
EX:
In “The Viral Virus,” Lauren Duca points out that “Identity-bait listicles invite readers to indulge a kind of cyberchondria for attention, a like-driven version of Munchausen syndrome” (Duca 95).

Online Research Resource Quick Links

Publication titles to add to your Google search: E-flux, The New Inquiry, N+1.
Below are some Databases to Play With (for most of these, you need an activated City Tech ID/library card)
POPULAR/RECENTLY USED RESOURCES
Gale Virtual Reference Library (encyclopedia/tertiary sources)
Academic Search Complete (a spectrum of news & scholarly sources)
MLA Bibliography (literary sources)
CUNY OneSearch (search everything in CUNY’s library system)
Google Scholar (general array of scholarly texts; not discipline specific)
Google Trends (search usage of key terms in Google searches, from 2004–present)
Google Books Ngram Viewer (search usage of key terms in books, from 1500-2008)
OTHER POSSIBLY HELPFUL & INTERESTING RESOURCES
Kanopy (full-length films and documentaries)
Underground & Independent Comics (comics and graphic novels)
JSTOR (literary criticism & theory)
Project Muse (humanities and social science articles; theory)
Opposing Viewpoints (tertiary source on debates; especially good for topics in politics and news)
Academic OneFile (general academic articles; not discipline specific)
Applied Science & Tech Database (science & tech sources)

HW for Mon (3/11)

Hi everyone,

Quickly: a reminder to activate your ID/library card.  You need an activated card to do research on Essay 2 from home/off-campus. 

…and the reading for Monday: Read Graf, “Yes, No, OK, but…”  If you haven’t yet, read Griffiths’ and Martin’s texts that were assigned for this week.  Also: continue revising Essay 1.

…and your blog assignment (2 parts to this one, respond as a “reply” to this thread, thanks!):

Reading Response Prompt
Re-read the opening of Dawn Lundry Martin’s “When a Person Goes Missing” and respond briefly to the following reading response questions before moving on to the “Writing Prompt” below.
Notice how Martin opens the essay with a brief, but provocative “scene.”
–What is it exactly that makes this a “scene”?  In the opening paragraphs, what are some of the images and actions that Martin shows us?
–What does the essay as a whole seem to be about?  How does its opening scene “show us” (and lead us into) what the essay is going to be about?  What is the effect on you (as a reader) of Martin’s decision to begin the essay with a “scene”?
Writing Prompt: Beginning with a Scene/Image
Look back over your essay and think of a “scene” and/or image you could begin with.  Start writing a new opening section (2+ paragraphs) of your essay, beginning with this scene/image.
E-mail me if you need help!
xx
M

HW 2/25

  1. Chen starts of speaking of how the internet is no much different today then it was in 2016 and how he met a close friend through the internet
  2. His meeting and bond with his best friend
  3. There is still a stigma about meeting people online
  4. Cat fishing and its problem and where it originates
  5. Explaining how “cat fishing” the show works
  6. Further explaining how someone was caught catfishing someone from the show
  7. Shows how people purposely ignore the signs that are clear to them. also how people who do the cat fishing are “deranged” and look for entertainment
  8. Cat fishing is a mix of old fears and new anxieties that questions the authenticity of online friendships
  9. Computers scientist JCR Licklider believed that the internet was a place people could come together and would lead to truer bonds that real world relationships
  10. Social media and the internet keep people from building real relationships
  11.  Facebook makes people feel lonely and the creator seeing it through the eyes of a programmer rather then a ” college student”
  12. Anonymity is a big factor on why people are able to catfish
  13. Computers area a small part of ourselves the portion devoted to logic, order, rule, and clarity.
  14. Introducing earlier social media before Facebook and Myspace
  15. First social network “makeoutclub”
  16. Makeoutclub made for a distinct group of lonely people looking to find others like themE
  17. Excerpt from Andy Greenwald book
  18. Great place for hookups but not what it was made for
  19. How Austin was able to meet someone proving how meeting people online can work sometimes
  20. Real online friendships are present you just have to actively look for it
  21. Austins story on how he met a women through social media because he made a decision that is he met a girl with an eye patch he would marry her
  22. Austin eventually came in contact with her again and in person and eventually married here
  23. There are still social medias that allow people to make friendships that aren’t exclusive to the internet
  24. As much bullshit there is on the internet you can always find someone else to bullshit with
  25. Makeoutclub still exist and gives the author a nostalgic feeling for the early days of social networking
  26. Makeoutclub forum

HW for Mon (3/4)

HW for Mon: Begin revising your Essay 1 and complete any missing blog posts.  Read Dawn Lundry Martin’s “When a Person Goes Missing” (available online here).

BLOG POST UPDATE: Enjoy the snow—no new writing due on the blog for Monday!  Please take some time to make up any blog post assignments you haven’t yet completed (recall that this includes commenting each week on another student’s post in addition to writing your own) .

Remember: I cannot pass you if you do not participate fully in the online component of the course.  Each week of missed blog work counts as an “absence” and more than two of these jeopardizes a student’s final grade.

As a courtesy, I am granting credit for any past blog posts you are able to complete by the end of this week.  Going forward, we will follow the original policy and late blog posts will not receive full credit.

See you Wednesday at the library (4th fl Atrium)

M

HW for Wed (2/27)

Hi all,
An update on the assignment for Wednesday.  Several things…
Please remember to bring 2 print copies of Essay 1 to class.  In addition, please submit your draft online as a Google Doc.
Lastly, please complete a brief blog post on the film, following the prompt below.
Watch Kriegman and Steinberg’s Weiner (2016).  ( <– This is a download link that will only work for 7 days; the film can be streamed—for a fee—here.)  Make notes during the film and, at the end, write a paragraph about something in it that connects to something you’re writing about in your Essay 1.
On Wed, I will continue checking in with students wanting help with essays or other work assigned this semester.
Yours,
Monroe

HW for Monday

1. Inverse outlining an essay to see connections within its many ideas. Re-read Adrian Chen’s “Don’t Be a Stranger” (pp. 61-66). Make a numbered list of notes describing the main idea in each of the essay’s 29 paragraphs. Each of your notes needn’t be longer than a phrase.
When finished, look over your list. What do you notice about the overall form of this essay? What is the main topic it seems to be about? Where and how is the main topic introduced? Where and how does the essay meander away from this main idea?
Post your list and a couple sentences responding to 1 or more of these questions.

2. Finish a rough draft of Essay 1 and bring in 2 hard copies of it next week. By Monday night, please turn in a digital copy of your draft as a Google Doc (instructions for how to do so are here).

Revised Full Blog Post

A conflict that happened in my life was a dealing with a problem with my older sister. It was more like a conflict with my emotions, because a couple of years ago my older sister joined the navy.

I was behind her all the way, but apart of me didn’t want her to go because it felt as though I was going to lose my best friend as well, we had a really close bond. I was at school one day and we were listening to the radio in the classroom and they were talking about the Navy Seals in the Navy and I automatically thought about my sister, 2 years had went by without no communication. I ran out the classroom with tears running down my face because I thought something happened to her. After a while, I was able to keep my emotions in hiding and I thought I was okay, but deep down I wasn’t because I was hurting but in the inside. Not only was I hurting in the inside, but I would lash out at my friends because my sister wasn’t here with me and I would always think the worst when I heard people talk about the Navy or the Army. Finally, fighting with emotions caught up with me when I saw an unknown number calling me, when I answered it was my sister alive and well on the other line. I couldn’t help myself but break down on the phone, happy that she was okay and returning home soon where she belonged.

Don’t Be A Stranger Conflict

In the article “Don’t BE A Stranger” one of them most immediate conflicts you notice is that the author find people look down on internet friendship. This is partly due to the negative stigma attached to the internet’s person to person experience back in the days of myspace in the early 2000s. When the news was pledged by stories of sexual predators and murderers finding easy pray vea the internet/myspace. Later claiming that there are even worst methods of tricking people. Referring to CatFishing, with is the act of purposely lying to other pretending to be older or younger than they are and to be more sexully and finatually mor attractive than try really are in hope to get someone to spend money on them or meet them to get a shot at them they would normally otherwise not get. This leads to relasonships being seen as sacams because of this. With the world of socal networking exploding due to the rise of Facebook and a world where you can always be can be logged in all the time. As well as all the sexual online application. All this has servearlly damges the image of the internet to outsides however tivieal it may be.

Media Analysis

We the Animals is based on the book written by Justin Torres. The film surrounds three brothers. “Us three. Us brothers. Us kings.” The film is a sensitive portrayal of a toxic relationship. There is so much violence in the way the boys’ parents love each other.

There is one scene in particular that boils over from the cycle of abuse, passed down from father to mother to brother to stranger. The youngest boy Jonah is struggling with his own conflict, as many growing adolescents do.

Jonah sprints through the woods with a smile plastered on his face. He stops. Walks. Then runs some more. He climbs through his window avoiding his brothers. In his bedroom, he discovers his bed to be disheveled. So he searches for his secrets. His notebook has gone AWOL. He flings the sheets from his bed. A pillow is tossed into the air. A mattress flung.

He sees his family in the living room. His attention darts from them to the drawings sprawled out on the floor. He scoops up his drawings. His mother reaches out and grabs his forehead to hers. “Where were you?”

He looks in her eyes. His hands scratch and claw at Ma. His roars are heard, His anger felt. His father peels him off of his mother. His legs kick out from underneath his father’s hold.

This scene was intense. It was intense because I could easily see how hurt Jonah was to have his sexuality on display. His thoughts things he kept hidden. The conflict is with the way he dealt with his anger.

He knew no other way to express his anger. He learned this from his father: placing his anger upon someone else.

I wonder how do others experience anger? How do you deal with it correctly?

 

Revised Media Analysis

There is no better way to get the attention of males than with two of the things that they love : food and woman. This is a Carl’s Jr. ad featuring the beautiful Heidi Klum, wearing an attractive black dress and a holding a burger in her hand. This is stereotyping that woman have to be sexy, and very appealing toward males by wearing little clothing or no clothing at all If a black person advertised this same ad for Carl’s Jr., no one would be interested in going there, but because people like Klum and Hilton that are attractive to male audience, it would make sense to use them as model especially when it comes to drawing customers in. In our society, these ads all over stereotype how a woman suppose to look like; skinny, attractive and to be seductive.

  1. CONFLICT- If one is to bring in the right audience, why not use the same gender other than the opposing gender?
  2. ENIGMA- Is it really about selling their product or just showing how attractive the person who is advertising the product looks?

Questions:

Conflict: Why did they use an attractive female to advertise a food product?

Enigma: How does having an attractive female holding a burger draw’s attention to both females and males?

Melannie Moreira

The notebook – fight scene

The enigma in this scene from this movie is that the women Allie went back to the house of the man who she fell in love with fist which was Noah but she doesn’t know why when she is engaged and is about to marry a rich man then she tells Noah that she has to go. When Noah says ” your bored and you know it, you wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t something missing”. She still leaves. It’s mysterious because we don’t know if Allie actually wants Noah back.

The contradiction in this scene is when Noah says “so you make love to me and then you go back to your husband” . Allie says “they were irresponsible” meaning she has her fiancé waiting for her but if she has a fiancé and she loves her fiancé why is she with Noah. She says she knows the couple of days she spent with Noah happened but that they were irresponsible.

The conflict in this movie is that Noah wants to be with Allie but Allie keeps thinking about what everyone else thinks is best for her instead of thinking about herself.

Media Analysis Lab Agenda

–Use phones/PCs to find media (images, sound, etc.) to share on the blog.
–Show how to post content using the “Media Analysis” category.
In addition to posting media, identify a contradiction, conflict, or enigma in this media and develop a series of discussion questions (2 or more) connecting to it.  No “Yes-No” questions or questions you already know the answer to.
–Discuss 1 person’s post.
–Write brief responses to that person’s post.
A model piece of writing for this assignment is Jerry Salz’ description of a selfie by Kim Kardashian:
The bizarre side of the mirror is Kim Kardashian’s now-famous picture of her ass and side-boob [7]. The pose is utterly banal; she’s like millions of others admiring themselves in mirrors, trying to show some part of their body to best advantage. Kardashian goes a step further. As she gets everything to show just right while admiring her own image in the phone, the third meaning that pops out is not her body. It’s how weirdly stage-managed the scene is. Her body is blatantly visible while her décor is carefully blocked off by Japanese screens. Her ass-crack is intentionally outlined, but she doesn’t want us to see her sofa. Kim has even authored four rules for the perfect selfie: “Hold your phone high [as you shoot]; know your angle; know your lighting; and no duckface!”
     Equally idiotic winds of third meaning blow through other recent celebrity selfies. Seventy-year-old Geraldo Rivera’s selfie shows him gazing at his own stomach muscles in a bathroom mirror [8], naked but for a low-slung towel.
  1. Selfies are considered a new genre of portraiture. In the article Art at Arms Length, Salz compares the quick wit of selfies to the precise nature of traditional portraits. It is clear that Salz interprets selfies as modern day portraits. 

A selfie is 

  • powerful pg 3 
  • A form of intimacy  pg 3 
  • Displayed through social media pg 3 
  • Causal pg 3 
  • Can be taboo pg 6 and 7 

A selfie is not Accidental pg3 

  • Both hands cannot be in it pg3 
  • without skewed camera angles  pg3 
  • Traditional portraits pg3
  1. A selfie is a casual form of intimacy that that is displayed through social media. It wasn’t created by artists. Yet, the impact is just as powerful. Modern day portraiture ranges from silly pouty faces to chilling expressions from the depths of horrid gas chambers.  

One part of this article that stuck out to me was when Salz mentioned the hole that 9/11 left. Curiosity got the best of me and I took a detour from the article. From this I stumbled upon a photograph of a woman named Marcy Borders aka the Dust Lady. Marcy was covered in the dust of one of the towers. Stan Honda captured this moment: the despair and the sheer shock. 

And, after hours of deep research into 9/11, I returned to Salz’s article. The taboo nature of that photograph is similar to John Quirke’s photograph in Auschwitz. 

It raises the same red flag that others gawk at. 

  1. “We live in the age of the selfie.”

This is a hook because it grabs the readers attention. Salz does this by using the buzz word selfie. It’s a word many recognize and would stay to read more. 

“A fast self-portrait, made with a smartphone’s camera and immediately distributed and inscribed into a network, is an instant visual communication of where we are, what we’re doing, who we think we are, and who we think is watching.”

This sentence explains what exactly a selfie is, how it’s used and where it’s found. Salz sets a foundation then builds on top of it with key details to explain the topic sentence. 

five ways Salz describes what a selfie is:

  1. A fast self portrait
  2. Selfies are casual
  3. Silly,typical.boring
  4. Locatable but not describable
  5. Extraordinary moment

five was Salz describe what a selfie is not:

  1. not like the self portraits
  2. selfies don’t make pretentious claims
  3. if both of your hands are in the picture
  4. created by artist
  5. never accidental

1)In the article “Art at Arm’s Length” Jerry Salz expresses what a selfie is in comparison to a self portrait. he claims that selfies today have revolutionized the way we are able to communicate by taking quick photos that can be casual, silly, typical,and or boring, all the while expressing how we feel in a specific moment. Salz further emphasizes how we use selfies in order to share intimate,scary or funny moments

2)He uses this hook because it immediatley catches the audience attention by giving a statement and in a way forcing the audience to want to know why he believes this

3)In the following sentence he explains what a selfie is and how fast it reaches to social media and online    this builds of the first sentence because it tells the reader how smartphones make it easier for people to post their everyday lives