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  • Archive for the ‘course material’ Category

    efficiency, productivity, and corn


    2012 - 12.07

    In case you’re not convinced by Oryx and Crake and you want an alternative vision of what the drive toward efficiency looks like when taken to its logical extreme:

     

    utopia and dystopia: some how-tos


    2012 - 12.05

    some paradigm-shift-related examples


    2012 - 11.10
    A few things we’ve already looked at in class also operate under a kind of paradigm shift logic:

     

    Lastly, here’s one more example from PSU English’s own Jessica O’Hara, who has posted a link to an essay she wrote for an edited volume on the philosophy of horror.  The essay is entitled “Making Their Presence Known:  TV’s Ghost-Hunter Phenomenon in a ‘Post-‘ World,” and you can find it on Google Books here.  She calls particular attention to the “Spectres of 9/11” section, near the end of the essay, as an example of paradigm shift argumentation.  Here’s Jessica talking about the development of the essay:

    When I developed this essay, at first, all I knew was that I wanted to write on ghost-hunter shows because I liked them and the Paranormal State people were local.  The section about 9/11 came out of my realization that the structure of ghost-hunter shows mimicked HGTV home-improvement shows. Once I made that connection, which amused me, I started to wonder why both genres of shows appeared this past decade. Then I connected their rise to the rhetoric of home improvement, which imagines the home as a “sanctuary.” Why does the home need to be a sanctuary? I thought about this question in relation to 9/11, the emergent dread of public spaces, and the decline in organized religion.

    amusing ourselves to death


    2012 - 11.09

    Just so you can find it if you want to take a look back at it, here is Stuart McMillen’s comic version of the foreword to Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, which we looked at in class today.

    standing up to rape culture


    2012 - 10.27

    For anyone wishing to take another look at it, or to pass it along to others, here‘s the piece we read in class today, Emma Woolley’s “What it’s like being a teen girl.”  After the post went viral, she wrote a brief thank-you followup that’s worth reading.

    Here‘s the piece Jess mentioned, “An Account of Sexual Assault at Amherst College.”  And here‘s a good piece on the term ‘rape culture’ (wikipedia entry here), which I invoked a couple times in class today to describe the cultural and institutional status quo Woolley’s piece targets.

    Thanks, once more, for the wonderful discussion today.

    some more manifestos


    2012 - 10.26

    The LIVESTRONG Manifesto:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HVxZnz20PM

     

    The Health Justice Manifesto:

     

    The Happiness Manifesto:

     

    The Bacardi Manifesto:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUHkm94TDWE

    manifesting manifestos


    2012 - 10.24

    “living differently”


    2012 - 10.15

    a third pill


    2012 - 10.12

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-0VMnFmnL0

    inspiration in many pieces


    2012 - 10.10