Jerry Springer's Final Thoughts

Effective, Exciting Titles:

1. Make sure the title is in the same "voice" of your writing style. Reason stands that a title will exemplify the writer! (Ernest Hemingway would create a list of 100 titles, and whittle down from there, to find the best title.)

2. The title is the first insight into your mindset as the writer. It is the first opportunity the reader has with you and your view on topic.

3. In an Academic Essay, generic titles can disengage your reader. Therefore, if you have a "catchy" main title, think about a sub-title that will "set the stage" for your research focus

• Notice how many professional academic essay titles include key concepts or key words that are used to within the essay.
• Sub-titles are another chance, then, to clarify to reader what they can expect to be discussed in regards to your subject.

Creating/Revising a Title: Inspirational Questions:

• Who am I writing on, within culture (gender, gender terms (senoras), age, age terms (adolescents)?
• Where did I focus my studies (city, neighborhood (nickname, street), place of business/worhship/etc.)?
• What larger idea does my research focus on? What larger idea do I include in my thesis, and keep coming back to in my paper? (Transcendentalism, Gentrification, Proxemics,
• What is the relationship among a behavior (or belief), aspect of culture (such as "food") and concept (such as "respect")? ex: "Take Off Your Shoes for Dinner: Ideas of Respect in the _____ Culture"
• What is a key phrase used by people within your culture that represents what your essay is about?

Other Strategies:

• Bookstores! Go to a store, go to the Cultural Studies section, and skim for attention-getting titles.

• Substitution: find a article/cultural studies book title that you admire, and replace the nouns (and possibly verbs) with your own subject. But leave the syntax: placement of articles (the, of, and) and punctuation...

• Imitation: Play off your favorite book/movie/TV show title. ("Pride and Prejudice in Teen Cliques at Lane Tech"; "Breaking the Law & Creating New Order: Political Graffiti Artists"; The Southpark Generation: The Empowerment of Vulgar Language and Satire")

EXAMPLES

• "Gender Role Stereotyping in Advertisements on Three Radio Stations: Does Musical Genre Make a Difference?" by Elizabeth Monk-Turner, Tiffany Kouts, et al

• "The Coming of the Young and Sexy Lesbian: The Israeli Urban Scenario" by Diana Luzzato and Liora Gvion

• "Nonverbal Cues in Mobile Phone Text Messages: The Effects of Chronemics and Proxemics" by anonymous

• Crystal Methamphetamine use among American Indian and White Youth in Appalachia: Social Context, Masculinity and Desistance" by Ryan A. Brown

• "Honourable senoras, liminal campesinas and the shameful other: re-defining feminities in Bolivia" by Chantal Robillard

• "The Rise of 'Me Culture' in Postsocialist China" by Yangzi Sima

• "Moral distress among Ugandan nurses providing HIV care: A critical ethnography" by Jean N. Harrowing
• "Doing 'Diversity' at Dynamic High: Problems and Possibilities of Multicultural Education in Practice" by Bic Ngo
• "The Art of Decay and Eternity: Ritualization in Aipan Practice" by Gudrun Frommherz

• “Researching “Race” in Lesbian Space: A Critical Reflection.” by Held, Nina

• "Fame is a Losing Game: Celebrity Gossip Blogging, Bitch Culture and Postfeminism” by Kristy Fairclough

• “Trinidad Calypso as Postmodernism in the Diaspora: Linking Rhythms, Lyrics, and the Ancestral Spirits” by Michael Toussaint

Announcements & Presentations: Week 15

Announcement:

ALL LATE WORK IS DUE FRIDAY, MAY 6, @ 2pm. IF YOU ARE CURRENTLY FAILING THIS COURSE AND ARE MISSING GRADED ASSIGNMENTS, you will not pass the class, despite the final essay and presentation grades.

• To repeat, I am not accepting any old assignments past this Friday, from any student, no matter what the student's reasons are. If you cannot comply with handing in of late work, there is no need to show up Friday, as you have not fulfilled the requirements of the class as laid out in syllabus.

• Check Oasis for missing assignments. Those with zeroes (o) next to the assignment means you have not turned in that assignment.

• From Student Advocates: "Though it is unfortunate, it is in the best interest of the [failing] student to be informed about the Academic Forgiveness Policy and to meet with their College Advisor to strategize a schedule for next semester...."

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General Presentation Guidelines: You are limited to 10 minutes, and will be cut off at 10 minutes. Make sure that any video or audio does not take up the entire 10 minutes. Make sure to leave time for one to two questions. See handout for more detailed explanation of presentations.

If you are not prepared during your assigned time, you lose points, and you are moved to the back end of the day’s presentations. (I suggest being prepared and on time, obviously.)

Wednesday, May 12, 2010:

1. Morgan Thomas

2. Justin Bostian

3. Matt McQuaid

4. Keeley Morris

5. Ash Butler

6. Tate Durr

7. Michael Symanski

Friday, May 14, 2010

8. Sarah Doyle

9. Chris Kutill

10. Michael Scott

12. Alex Price

13. Elijah Alvarado

14. Deanna Stovall

15. Qeshane Coleman

Introductions to Final

Homework: Workshop 1

- Due on Wednesday: a draft of your introduction, two (2) complete pages, min.

o Include: an opening narrative that provides a clear contextualization of the culture performing “normal behavior” of group

o Description that sticks your analytical points: notice how all the physical description provided by Pascoe deals with subject of Pascoe's analysis: masculinity gender and sexuality in high schoolers (descriptive value of the narrative).

o Must include in contextualization at least one secondary source used and cited. Again, notice how Pascoe transitions from focused detail to significance of the scene portrayed…

Reading for Friday, April 9:

Read the Google Book excerpt of CJ Pascoe's Dude, You're a Fag . This text serves as an excellent example of how contemporary ethnographies are written, both creatively and in the incorporation of secondary source material to further the author's (Pascoe's) ideas on sexuality in high school society.

Answer the following questions, and be prepared to discuss (and turn in):

1. List the various ways Pascoe uses secondary sources in the ethnography. Be thorough and specific in your explanation. For each way, provide an example (page number/author's last name).
2. What is Pascoe's overall thesis on how high schoolers look at sexuality, and which secondary sources seem to be most important to Pascoe's own analytical argument?
3. Briefly discuss what you liked about the way she structured the two main components of the ethnography -- the narrative & the analytical points.

*** Next class we will also discuss lines of inquiry that can be inspired from article, so you might want to think of questions about masculinity/sexuality the article made you think about...

Work Cited / Bibliography

As we enter back into our research course from spring break, today's lesson is an extremely necessary aspect of the writing process: Work Cited page. Though we have gone over individual text citations, today is our day of focusing on the odds and ins of creating a readable, efficiently written, reader-friendly Work Cited page.

General Rules to live by:

1. The author is always cited first. The only exception is that if the author is anonymous or corporate. Also, it's last name, first name.

2. For multiple authors unknown authors and corporate authorship, follow the guide here.

3. Alphabetize citations by author's last name. This helps readers find the complete Work Cited citation quickly (since you use the last name in in-text citations). If no author: use title of the source.

4. Indent the second line one of an individual citation, and single-space.

5. Provide one space between individual citations, so that each can be seen as separate.

6. Formatting titles:

• Italics (or underlining) are for complete sources: books, anthologies, reference sources (dictionary, encyclopedia), magazine or journal titles, film/ tv shows, albums, long poems and plays published on their own, works of art, specific legal cases (Roe v. Wade).

• Quotation marks (" ") are for small sources: chapter in a book, article in a newspaper/mag, song title, official title of an art exhibit, a particular episode of a tv or radio show (Chuck = show; "Chuck versus the Pink Slip"=an episode)

7. In 2010, in MLA, you no longer cite the URL/web address for on-line sources. As we will have gone over, this is messy-ugly and the web address should appear NOWHERE in your essay or Work Cited page.

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Homework for next two classes:

Friday, April 2nd:

***We will NOT be meeting in class so that students can accomplish a few things:

1) Accumulate more sources for Work Cited page of final essay. Some of you need to majorly catch up by getting to the library and getting some secondary source material.

2) By e-mail, by 2pm Friday (4/2), for attendance credit: I want to read about what kind of final essay you are envisioning. I would like you to provide me with at least three well-developed paragraphs that:

• propose a title for your essay, and why this title

• what is your current vision for organizing your essay; provide the general structure you are thinking about using. It might help you to think of and explain through texts that you admire the way they've been put together. (You must provide a thought-out structure; meaning: you can't say "I haven't thought of that yet." Saying something along this line will get you an absence, and further demonstrate a lack of engagement.)

• Who is a writer that inspires you? How do they influence your writing, and how do they influence how you WANT to write your final essay?

• What are you thinking will be the main subject of your writing on your subject-culture? What is something in the culture that you feel represents/symbolizes the way you see the culture? How so?

Wednesday, April 7th:

• Have read Translating Culture: "Chapter 8: Finding a Focus"

• Bring in a typed draft of your final essay's Work Cited page with at least six secondary sources cited that you've been using, or have read and intend to use. Make sure that they are, in fact, secondary sources and not primary sources!

Indicative of Culture?

I know we are on Spring Break, but I had to share this article with all of you. Considering you should have been reading up on your subject-cultures enough, and started to observe firsthand enough that you are getting clues to how you will approach an essay...

Look at the research some academics have done on Paintings and Eating Habits over the last 1000 years!: "Study: Last Supper paintings supersize the food"

Why is that funny? Stop laughing!

What is humor?

Analysis includes the use of specific ideology (often found in guiding principles used) to better understand the complex construction of a text, and to better articulate our view of that text.

Analyzing humor, for example, allows us to better understand our humanity! At least, we hope that it does. Furthermore, analyzing one's humor is a great topic because humor is a great example of how individual our ideologies may seem on the surface while united underneath.

Huh? Well, let's look at three large theories of humor, as described on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Superiority:

• Thomas Hobbes’ “Superiority Theory”: “The passion of laughter is nothing else than sudden glory arising from some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.”

• Eminency – having a higher status (for some reason)
• Infirmity – lack of strength, character flaw

Incongruity

• “Arthur Schopenhauer agreed in 1844, when he explained in The World as Will and Ideathat laughter is a way of acknowledging an incongruity between the conceptions that listeners or viewers hold in their minds and what happens to upset their expectations.”

Relief: see definition on IEP link

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Applying New Knowledge:

Connect to your texts (primary or secondary sources) through inquiry:

1. Which of the three general theories is most prominently used in this text?

2. Who is the intended audience for the humor? What might be some of the basic characteristics of someone who might find the text funny? (ex: gender, height, religion, race, orientation, the South, East Coast, urban, rural, 12-year-old/80-year-old?)

3. Where do your inferences come from in answering the above questions? Clarify your inferences by discussing the connections between joke content and plot, and the theory. To do so, provide detail that you would attach to the inference. (

Now, lets practice this by watching an episode of Flight of the Conchords.

• Record down important details that will help build context for your analysis. (Location; relevant details of person telling the joke; content of joke; theme of joke...)

• Record down your inferences for who the joke is meant for...and why you think this way.

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Homework Reminder:

• Translating Field Notes 1 is due Friday.
• Make sure to include a Work Cited page and in-text citation.
• Consult MLA guidebook for any confusion. I suggestion Diana Hacker's on-line resource.