Friday, August 9, 2013
Thursday, August 8, 2013
MA 260 / Week #7 Discussion: Bookstores
What was the impact of the growth of book superstores on the rest of the bookstore industry?
MA 260 / Week #7 Discussion: The Convergence among Books, Television, Films, and the Internet
Describe the synergy among books, television, films, and digital media under the same roof. Is this a good thing?
MA 260 / Week #7 Discussion: Mass Market Paperbacks
What are the good and bad sides of mass market paperbacks?
MA 260 / Week #7 Discussion: Muckraking Journalism
Why did President Teddy Roosevelt hold muckraking journalists in disdain while he rode on muckraking journalism to carry out his progressive reform and trust-busting?
MA 260 / Week #7 Discussion: How was the "The Great Wall" in a high-revenue magazine "torn down"?
Do a case study to show how the separation line between the editorial content and advertising content in magazines can get blurred.
MA 260 / Week #7 Discussion: Why Are Magazines Attractive to Advertisers?
Explain how magazines help advertisers reach their targeted readers with specialized content.
MA 260 / Week #6 Discussion: Blogs Challenge Print Journalism
How have weblogs challenged mainstream print journalism?
MA 260 / Week #6 Discussion: Wire Service and Paywall
Explain the operational mechanism of wire service and paywall.
MA 260 / Week #6 Discussion: Public Journalism vs. Citizen Journalism
What is public journalism and what is citizen journalism? What are the differences between these two kinds of journalism?
MA 260 / Week #6 Discussion: Objective Journalism
How did objective journalism develop? What are its strengths and limitations?
MA 260 / Week #6 Discussion: Newspaper Became A Mass Medium
How did the newspaper emerge as a mass medium during the penny press era? How did content changes make this happen?
COM 325 / Week #7 Discussion: The dark side of identity
Identity reflects the snobbish side of human nature. With identity "politics" in full play, our society employs stereotypes, racism, and bigotry to exercise power. The media and politicians are very skilled at using identity to "divide and conquer." Please share your views/experience regarding identity politics in our society.
COM 325 / Week #7 Discussion: How did I enact and establish my cultural identity in a globalized society?
Describe your communicative activities for establishing and enacting your cultural identity. For me, I follow the lunar calendar to celebrate Chinese New Year and celebrate my Chinese heritage. I reject fast food and rock music... how about you?
COM 325 / Week #7 Discussion: What is wrong with ethnic fashion?
Read the article below. Do you agree with the author in regard to ethnic fashion such as Gwen Stefani's "Harajuku Lovers"?
“Ethnic fashion” obscures cultural
identity
Feb.
2, 2001/ Yale Herald / By Sunita Puri
I live a hyphenated existence. South Asian-American. Indian-American.
Punjabi-American. Physically, I am also a patchwork of different cultures: I
wear jeans and t-shirts, I braid my hair in Punjabi kudiya style,
have a nose ring, and wear a bindi, a small colored dot worn in
between the eyebrows by South-Asian women. Depending on who you talk to,
though, I can be seen as an Indian trying to be "fashionably ethnic"
in superficially "multicultural" American surroundings. While my
extended family sympathizes with my efforts to reconcile my sense of belonging
to both India and America, I do not meet with such understanding from those
surrounding me who interpret my wearing bindis as a fashion
statement rather than a statement of cultural belonging.
This is cultural imperialism at its worst. Pop icons like Madonna
perpetuate a faulty understanding of Indian culture by selecting exotic images
from India, such as the bindi, taking them completely out of
cultural context and popularizing them in the West. What people like Madonna
don't realize, however, is that appropriating the bindi in
such a way has devastating effects on the symbol's meaning in South Asia. For
example, while in Delhi over the summer, I was hard pressed to find plain
red bindis, finding instead very flashy, so-called "export
quality" bindis, replete with sparkles and a variety of
colors. The bindi is no longer what it once was—a symbol of
being Hindu and of having a symbolic union with God. Now, it is not only a
fashionable item to wear, but is also produced mass-produced specifically for
export to other countries. The Madonnas and Gwen Stefanis of the world—along
with those who have blindly followed their example—have successfully changed
the meaning of the bindi in South Asia, for the worse.
I recently had a conversation with an acquaintance who believed that I wear bindis because, in his words, "It's a, you know, convenient way to sort of like assert an identity. Like, you're making a statement, but it's not offensive or anything. It's actually fashionable." I was shocked, especially at his claim that many others agreed with him. I wear my bindis to demonstrate my adherence to and respect for my culture and religion and the large roles they occupy in my identity and everyday life—not to imitate a pop icon. My acquaintance then pulled out a picture of Destiny's Child, taken at a recent awards program. Not only were the women clad in outfits made from sari material, but they all sported matching, colorfully flashy bindis.
I recently had a conversation with an acquaintance who believed that I wear bindis because, in his words, "It's a, you know, convenient way to sort of like assert an identity. Like, you're making a statement, but it's not offensive or anything. It's actually fashionable." I was shocked, especially at his claim that many others agreed with him. I wear my bindis to demonstrate my adherence to and respect for my culture and religion and the large roles they occupy in my identity and everyday life—not to imitate a pop icon. My acquaintance then pulled out a picture of Destiny's Child, taken at a recent awards program. Not only were the women clad in outfits made from sari material, but they all sported matching, colorfully flashy bindis.
And this new meaning obviously extends to South Asian Americans, among
them young women such as myself who are labeled as consumers of teenybopper
culture rather than as heirs to the cultural legacy represented in small part
by bindis. My stomach turns when I see non-South Asians
wearing bindis to proms, social events, or simply "as
part of their outfits." Without realizing it, they are transforming the
meaning of the bindi from an inherently sacred entity to an
accessory whose popularity will undoubtedly fade, as all trends do. And the
popularization of this trend may suggest to our peers that those of us who
wear bindis to bridge our hyphenated existences do so only to
assert cultural identity in an acceptable, Americanized way.
While I do not mean to imply that all Americans think this way, even
knowing a handful that do is insulting, both to me personally and to South
Asian culture. How am I, for example, supposed to react when I enter a
bookstore and see The Bindi Kit lying on the shelf marked
"International Books?" Am I supposed to be happy that bindis are
now being sold along with body paint in kits that encourage girls to wear bindis as
exotic belly button ring substitutes surrounded by colorful paint?
One could argue that the bindi phenomenon is a good
thing because it could motivate interested Americans to examine diverse South
Asian cultures and histories more closely. Even though this might be true, I
resent the fact that a culture should be considered worthy of study or attention
because of the fashion appeal of its symbols or traditions.
Assigning new cultural meanings to symbols with very old traditions or
deep personal significance is inappropriate and insensitive. It reduces the
complexities of South Asian culture to mere physical items, rather than the
continual process that culture is.
So please—don't wear bindis, and don't think of my homeland
simply as the origin of yoga, incense, and exoticism if you are going to ignore
the context and meanings of these cultural components as well as the reasons
why we "ethnic folk" appreciate, treasure, and cling to them.
Sunita Puri is a junior in Davenport. She wrote this article while an undergraduate at Yale.
http://www.yaleherald.com/archive/xxxi/2001.02.02/opinion/page12aethnic.html Sunita Puri is a junior in Davenport. She wrote this article while an undergraduate at Yale.
COM 325 / Week seven discussion: Ethnic identity: How did I acquire and develop it?
Our textbook cites Phinney's three-stage model to explain how we acquire and develop our ethnic identity. Furthermore, Martin and Nakayama provide theoretical models to map out minority identity development and majority identity development. I am a Chinese living in 'Merica. So I have faced a similar situation for developing my minority identity as described by Martin and Nakayama. What's your experience with acquiring and developing your minority/majority ethnic identity? Does your experience confirm those theoretical models?
COM 325 / Week #7 Discussion: Identity shopping
Cultural identity is one's sense of belonging to and affiliating with a particular cultural or ethnic group. We sometimes passionately defend our cultural identity the same way we defend our political ideology or our religious beliefs. The problem is that cultural identity has never been a clear-cut iron plate. Instead, it is constantly evolving, like our cyber-identities (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). You can never take an individual's cultural identity for granted. Actually, people can recreate their cultural identity just like they can update furniture for their house. So, is it good to be culturally creative?
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)