Friday, August 27, 2010
Kris !
I just want to let you know I appreciate you :]
You and Jeff were amazing Bridge Instructors.
I am looking forward to Columbia College Chicago!!!!!!!
I am also looking forward to the email about my writing patterns.
You helped me perfect my em dash usage & that is AWESOMEE!
HOPE ALL WENT WELL WITH YOUR SURGERY :]
-Sierra
Hey Kris!!
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Kristen Orser!
I think I can speak for everyone and tell you that we all missed you today and hope the best for you. Hope you are feeling well. I want to thank you for all of the help, insight, advice, and fun you brought to the class. I am very thankful that you were my teacher and hope to stay in touch. It has been such a short time, but I have learned so much about writing, my peers, and myself. Thanks again Kris for everything, I am kinda gone miss our discussions and workshops. Hope to see you on campus! Enjoy whatever time you have off and feel betttttterrrrrrrr (:
-Abby
Kristen Orser
Kris Orser
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Critique of presentations
Clarence
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
FINAL PROJECT NOTES
You are discussing form (medium, materials, and shape) to see how it is an extension of content.
Discuss, also, your process of making. How did one perception lead to another perception? How did you shape your energies, passions, and ideas?
Once you've established an understanding of the finished product (by discussing form and process), use your piece to BEGIN A CONVERSATION with your peers. Considering asking your peers questions or making the piece interactive in some way.
Have fun with this presentation and try to aim towards (including Q&A) about a 10 minute presentation. That's a lot of time, but your work should generate a conversation, critique, and exciting points. Some of you may want handouts or material that keep the conversation going.
YOUR FINAL ESSAYS ARE ALL DUE 8/26. Because I am missing class that day, email me your essays as an attachment by 12 pm that day. No exceptions regarding the time. If you have your essay earlier, awesome! Hand it in to me.
PRESENTATION DATES:
8/25: Abby, Jaymee, Kyrin, JayVon, Adilla, Tequira.
8/26: Brittany, Clarence and Sierra, Domenic, Christian, Charlie, and Mike.
Please feel free to ask questions and workshop like crazy today.
Best,
Kris
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Rehabilitation - Aug 19, 2010
How do you Feel?
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Mike's Question 8/17
reading images, making bridges

"We are surrounded by worn-out images, and we deserve new ones." - Werner Herzog
"Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long." - Walker Evans
Talk to me about the differences between these two images. Deconstruct the images so that you analyze the importance of the context, the differences, and the values associated with these images. This is good practice for finding points of juxtaposition for your final.
Monday, August 16, 2010
watch!
This is akin to what we'd like to see as the visual instantiation of your final essay. This "works with" the ideas of language we are seeking.
Talk to me about this video. What do you like? How is this "like" an essay? Can we call this a visual essay? Does this help any of you approach some concrete paper subject?

This is another AWESOME video for a larger project. See how the author takes the "symbol" of a tumbleweed and applies it in a new way? This is what we are looking for--something that is textual and visual, something that opens up a new space for thinking, something that sustains an idea into all of the things it can connect with and to. (click on the image to watch the video and learn about the project)
GROUND ZERO
O8|16|2O1O :)
Thinking about all you have expierenced thus far in the Bridge Program - what have you learned? What are your thoughts about how you are doing? are you excited to successfully pass? if so - why are you so excited? Just marinate on your thoughts about Bridge and express yourself...
Blog Question
Thursday, August 12, 2010
blog questions over the weekend
Those of us who are posting up videos need to deconstruct the videos and help us see what is being revealed by the text you've given us.
I am curious about how the Illuminati relates to the texts. DO YOU SEE BELIEF STRUCTURES IN YOUR TEXTS? HOW ARE THEY CHARACTERIZED? DO YOU SEE ISSUES OF CELEBRITY, CONSUMPITION, AND MARKETING IN THE BOOKS? Please make clear connections to your texts and remember to TALK TO YOUR PEERS ON THE BLOG.
Question!!
8/12 Blog Question
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
8/10 blog session
Geert Wilders made a short political film called Fitna; it exposes his view of the religion of Islam. It's only seventeen minutes in lenght, but it attempts to demonstrate that the Qur'an motivates its followers to hate, encourage terrorism, antisemitism, violence aganset women and sugjugation of infidels.
In response to the movie, many people in the Netherlands (where the movie focused its attention to--Muslims in the Netherlands--and where Wilders is from) created online videos. The attempt was to "block" people from watching Wilders film, which was distributed online. When you would search for Fitna or Wilders, you would find these "apology" videos from the people of Netherlands instead of the film itself.
Here is their intention statement: Why? Well we can't stop Wilders. He has a right to freedom of expression and he is smart enough to stay within the boundaries of Dutch law. Actually, we do not want to stop his movie because we cherish our freedom of expression. Even stupid populist politicians have fundamental rights. Especially they!
We can compete for attention however. And we can produce disinformation. So we are going to make Movies called “Fitna” in which we apologise for Geert Wilders embarrassing behaviour. We will make so many of them that it will be hard to find the movie by Wilders without finding lots of movies apologising for it.
Just to let the world (and ourselves) know that allowing confused people to speak does not mean that we agree with what they say. Sorry.
1. What does Fitna mean in Arabic? Why is this meaning important to know before understanding the issue?
2. What do you think about this initiative?
3. How is this movie different from an episode of South Park making fun of a religious group (which they do all the time)?
4. Is there anything to be said for the idea that Wilders is "investigating" Islam, has a right to free speech, or as views that should be put out there and discussed?
5. Theo van Gough is another Dutch film-maker who made a movie that was critical of Islam, he was murdered and there were notes left on his body, by the murderers, threatening Western countries. His murder caused Wilders to say, "The Netherlands has been too tolerant to intolerant people for too long. We should not import a retarded political Islamic society to our country." How does this story change your perspective of Wilder's story? Does it?
6. These are points of conversation, your role is to consider these events, apply them to our texts, and think about what your texts show you about TOLERANCE, DIVERSITY, PUNISHMENT, FREEDOM, and OTHER ISSUES--there are a ton--THAT THIS BRINGS UP. Does your book show you anything that you think our country should "apologize" for?
Monday, August 9, 2010
Second Chances
Friday, August 6, 2010
Sunnis vs. Shi'ites
The Islamic religion has always been split up in two different type of Muslims. One being called the Sunnis and the other being called the Shi’ites. The difference between the two goes far back to the death of the prophet Muhammad, and the issue of who would take leadership position for the Muslims.
The conflict is more then just hatred and is more of a political dominance. The war between the two has caused many issues to where some of the actions that were done to one another went too far.
The picture I have chosen is the cover of a time magazine, it illustrates the world wide recognition the Shi’ites and Sunnis were calling towards each other.
I can remember being really young watching CNN and not really understanding what was really going on, I never knew the division between the two was that serious. This effects the American Islamic population as well because I see this everyday in my community, to the point where certain areas are divided just like if I were to live in another Middle Eastern country.
This reminds me of Persepolis being that when I saw this I was as young as Marjane except I wasn’t living the life that she was. This is a direct depiction of her life in this novel but the political aspect is more of the topic rather than this particular issue, which I’m sure was an issue.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
BLOG ASSESSMENT
I suggest you open up a microsoft word document and type your response in there so you can better estimate the length. I suggest you clarify your terms and ideas more fully so that we can all start responding to each other's comments and having a really academic conversation on the blog.
Clarence's question was posted and it is a good question! Domenic started to respond to it, but he could (and you all will) go a little deeper to consider the consequences of inaccessibility and the cultural codes we are teaching our younger generations by not thinking about accessibility in our city planning and/or as a priority.
Please respond to his question and please see my responses to your blog posts.
LIFE IN DEARBORN

Where I am from there is a tremendous amount of islamic people. Probably something close to 50% of the city. In every class we have the teacher and the arabic translator. I couldnt find the article about this because it was years ago. But I think that this is a really good example of cultures being tolerant with one another. In PERSEPOLIS it is a constant change of culture. Islamic, Communism, Democracy, War, etc. The culture changes SO many times throughout the story. And not only that but they fight with one antoher and people are getting killed. But where I am from we have found a medium. There are deffinately racial issues in Dearborn, deffinately. But we aren't killing eachother, our governament make an effort to accomodate these foreigners.
I didn't have an article but take a look at the picture. I see people like this ever single day, all day, anywhere I go. I lived in the city before and after the Arabic/Islamic population arrived. Things most certaintly changed, but I wouldn't nessicarily say it was for better or for worse. Just change.
Inglewood/True Notebooks
In True Notebooks, the characters are all in there because they committed crimes. Just like them, we were stuck somewhere and couldn't leave. However, these guys were actually convicted of the crimes, where we were almost victims. We were being held wrongly, like we were being held in lockdown.
Christian Dior made a racist advertisment because the white women showed pride, while the Asian women sat back in the shadows. They were being held back just because they are Asian, just like True Notebooks characters are all getting punished for just a few people's mistakes, and how everybody on our block was punished because of a few people's mistakes.
Assumptions of people are not always true because you can't just hear one side of the story. The authorities just think we're bad because we live in a certain area of the world. We were treated just like the characters in True Notebooks and the Asian women in Dior's ad, people treating us as inferior because of a generalization.

I'm drawing from Prop. 8 being struck down, which had prevented same-sex marriage in the state of California, to compare to Persepolis. Both are events of cultural revolution where the conservative right are keeping fast to antique ideals that are too restricting and persecuting to be carried out in a modern society. This refers to "the other" where the fear of the unknown leads to generalizing. Satrapi alike has been victim of this, seen as "that Iranian girl." Another connection is the struggle for identity within culture, in which both the ban and Satrapi pertain to. Overall, they both go back to the root of wanting to confirm their liberation against oppressive forces to follow personal pursuits.
Freedom Writers and True Notebooks
The movie Freedom Writers relates to True Notebooks with the topics of race and racial profiling. In the beginning of the movie all of the students were sitting in groups with their own races. None of them wanted to interact with another race and they stayed seperated until the movie progresses and they start interacting. In True Notebooksthe groups have mixed races. Usually in a prison setting everyone sticks with their own and they don't interact with others unless there is a fight or something serious. In the writing group everyone is cool with each other, but this is only in the writing group. When they aren't in class they dont interact and can't because of the different groups that they belong to.





When we see ads on television we usually see "pretty" and skinny women, mostly using sex appeal to sell a product. From our lecture yesterday, we realize that when we associate successful, "popular", or "perfect" with a so called hot girl. What I mean by this is that we subconsciously stereotype people. With ads, we are conditions and brainwashed into think beautiful is only defined as certain way. Also in many other ads subliminal messages may be presented. In True Notebooks we see how we stereotyped the writers beforehand; we assumed they were uneducated or did not have the ability to write well. We quickly see how truly smart these men are. This raises a gender issue as well, we also do not expect women to be prisoners or be in jail. There are no women in True Notebooks. Kris told me that we like learning about outsiders because "its fun", this is why people by things that use sex in their ads or product or even their message because it is fun and interesting to us.
Here are some pictures of subliminal messages in advertisements, and examples representing how "sex sells".
response

Propostion 8 is about gays and lesbians wanting to have the right to marry. but many people dont feel that they should have the right to marry, because of religious reasons. so many gays have been campaigning to get the right to marry. i feel they should have right to do whatever they want because everybody should have equal rights. I can connect this to the book Persepolis, because the main character and her family is fighting a for their rights too. The characters in the story are seperated from other "Classes", and cant share the same right, because of reglious reasons. Just how gays cant share the same rights as striaght people because of their own beliefs. I can also connect in the book many people were killed for fighting for their rights, just how many gays were hurt and killed for fighting for their rights.
True Notebooks in Rolling Meadows?
TRUE NOTEBOOKS/NFL PLAYER

Boycotting for what?
Most of us know about the three month oil spill into the gulf. While it is the largest oil spills, people are attacking BP and hurting the owners of the independent stores. There's even a "like" page on facebook that "Boycott BP" has over 650,00 "fans".
This relates to True Notebooks a lot because people get a stereotype that everyone in prison, or a juvenille hall , are bad people. And just because of the stereotype that is fed to people, they think that they don't need help, and that they're never going to change. In True Notebooks you get to see another side of the men that are incarcerated. They're trying to learn, and they pray everyday that they can get out and start a new life. They're not benefitting from the negative thoughts that people perceive. Like the BP issue, the people that boycott BP have no idea that what they're doing isn't "helping" the way they think it is. I think that if people were to try and educate themselves more about issues the world faced, then the other end wouldn't be suffering for nonsense reasons.
-- buildinq the connection with the book True Notebooks and the movie Freedow Writers

The book "True Notebooks" has really allowed me to see whats life like in a place I have never been--a Juvenile Detention Center. When I read the book, the movie Freedom Writers pops up in my head. I think that the idea and the climax of each are very simular.
In the book, the author is a writing teacher to urban students in jail.
In the movie, the teacher is a writing teacher to urban students that go to a an urban school and some of them have been in jail. Both the author and the teacher in the movie, have allowed the students to tap into their emotions and indentify their challenges and past times.
Clarence's Question for 8/5
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Scavenger Hunt (of sorts)

for class 8/5:
I want you to, during the blog session, find a current event that relates to your text and work to explain the text's relationship to your news clipping.
The goal here is to move us outside of the classroom and start seeing how/if our classroom conversations join with other conversations. We are gathering a larger conversation, we are joining with our communities.
The event need not be a "global" occurance, but could be something happening in your neighborhood, at your church, or somewhere local. Since we are part of many communities, it will be interesting to see us relate our reading to local/regional issues and global issues. How we relate to the text and the issue will tell us more about our membership in those many communities.

For example, Christian Dior's new campaign (pictured here) reminds me of both texts. In the campaign, there are Asian women who all look identical, are shorter than the singular white model, and seem "plain and complicit." This reminds me of
James Smalls' essay, "Slavery is a Woman," where Smalls breaks down Jean-Marc Nattier's "Mademoiselle de Clermont at Her Bath Attended by Slaves". Smalls comments that "black women are shown in their expected roles as servants and exoticized complements to the white mistress. [...] The portrait constitutes a visual record of white woman's construction and affirmation of self through the racial and cultural Other. [...]" Is Dior doing the same thing? Reaffirming the postcolonial perspective that Asian women are subordinate? Do the rows of Asian women stereotype Asians as submissive? Indistinguishable from each other? And opressed? What do we do with a fashion advertisement that has so much cultural resonance?

While the photograph is alluring and the work might not be intentionally racist, the work is--in fact--racist. At least, it bring up issues of racism. And I'm reminded of how we portray prisoners--as people who all look alike--and how True Notebooks is really working towards offering individual identity through writing. If we gave a pen to all of these Asian women in the photograph and asked them how they feel being "lumped together in conformity," would that give them freedom? Marjane plays with this in her illustrations--she illustrates everyone to look the same or at least similiar. How are her illustrations and her intentions different from the Dior ad?
self portraits galore!
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT AND DISCUSS SELF PORTRAITS

In class, we talked about Lacan, Frued, and Hegel's (among others) concept of the Other. Here is a brief refresher of this "academic" term and theory--it will help with your reading and our reading discussion to apply this to your texts and to see how it is encouraging or deviating from the process of Othering.
The Other
The Other is an individual who is perceived by the group as not belonging, as being different in some fundamental way.
Othering is a way of defining and securing one’s own positive identity through the stigmatization of an "other." Whatever the markers of social differentiation that shape the meaning of "us" and "them," whether they are racial, geographic, ethnic, economic or ideological, there is always the danger that they will become the basis for a self-affirmation that depends upon the denigration of the other group. When a group claims to be "chosen by God," the danger multiplies, not only for the "unchosen" other who may be subjected to violence, but for the chosen group itself that is at risk of being undermined.
Otherness takes many forms. The Other may be someone who is of...
a different race (White vs. non-White),
a different nationality (Anglo Saxon vs. Italian),
a different religion (Protestant vs. Catholic or Christian vs. Jew),
a different social class (aristocrat vs. serf),
a different political ideology (capitalism vs. communism),
a different sexual orientation (heterosexual vs. homosexual),
a different origin (native born vs. immigrant).
When social, ethical, cultural, or literary critics use the term "The Other" they are thinking about the social and/or psychological ways in which one group excludes or marginalizes another group. By declaring someone "Other," persons tend to stress what makes them dissimilar from or opposite of another, and this carries over into the way they represent others, especially through stereotypical images. It also extends to political decisions and cultural practices. In the recent past of the United States, Anglo-Americans made African-Americans into cultural Others through the use of minstrel shows in blackface, popular figures like Sambo and Aunt Jemima, and separatist policies like the Jim Crow laws. Similar practices can be traced in practically (if not) every culture in the globe. The recent genocidal wars in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia , as do the continued struggles in Ireland and Israel , remind us that Othering is an instrument of terror that results in multi-generational hatred and violence.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
My Self Portrait
The pain inside
From lonely nights
And tears I've cried
Nobody knows
What's really on my mind
Self-portrait

A self-portrait by nature is an introspective experience, allowing the creator to examine, form, view, and experience oneself. It’s a mechanism of developing and explaining personal character to an audience, but more importantly, to the author. The composition of self-portrait has little or no restrictions, allowing creative freedom to release one’s work. Another essential is the symbolism, which mirrors the composition in that’s it’s open-ended and capable of being non-literal. In response to these personal definitions I’ve titled my self-portrait, “Pursuit.”
The portrait’s materials in the making of included standard computer paper, a pencil, and a black Sharpie. The process implemented was the traditional methods of connect the dots, in where I numbered my image and then began to draw with pencil, later darkening it with a black Sharpie. Visually it displays shoeprints stepping and walking from the left to right end of the paper in a non-linear way helping to suggest my personality. This piece echoes to me in a manner that creates a basic external image of myself that lets me chew over my traits, and picking up things I wouldn’t otherwise without the aid of the image. This being said, I’m happy with the work and the success of its goal to explain and imply me as a whole.
This self-portrait purveys its meaning from both the title and the imagery of the work, which in summary is the chase for all things new and adventure. Now while this pursuit includes establishing friends, it includes less tangible things such as knowledge, truth, wisdom, experience, success, and so forth. But the piece isn’t about end games but rather the steps to achieve those goals and the gains from working your way their. This description relates to my concepts and key character traits of independence, curiosity, and dabbling.
Crime Rates on the Rise!!!
Monday, August 2, 2010
LECTURES
Below are the speakers, title of speech, and location of the lecture series. Remember to start bridging (get it? Bridge) the lecture series to the work in the classroom. We are looking for connections (connecting the squid...see, it all gathers).
8/4: Shanita Akintodne "A Journey Through Marketing" (1014 S. Michigan)
8/9: Sharon Bloyd-Pehskin "Asking Questions" (1014 S. Michigan Ave)
8/11: Stephanie Shonekan "American Popular Music: Black and White?" (600 Michigan)
8/16: Jean Petrolle "Madness, Medicine, and Literature" (600 Michigan)
8/18: Brendan Riley "Zombies and You: Why You Should Care About The Walking Dead" (600 Michigan)
8/23: David Dolak “Don’t Fear the Numbers: Using Science, Mathematics, and a Found Object to Make Music” (600 S. Michigan)