2008-09 BM2 Tutorials

Tutorial Times:

Sorry there might be some confusion. Here are the official places and times.

Michaela Koch (starting on Friday 24th, October)

Fr 12 - 14, A10 1-121a

Florian Gubisch (starting on Monday 27th, October)

Mo 12 - 14, A01 0-004

Tutorials are optional. You don't have to sign up.

Introduction (Meyer) Oct. 15, 2008

• Christina Meyer. Course outline, ppt file

Diasporas (Meyer) Oct. 22, 2008:

• Christina Meyer. Diasporas, ppt file

From Anglo Saxon Raids to Global Anglophone Culture (Simons) Oct. 29, 2008

• Olaf Simons. The Expansion of the Anglophone Sphere, pptx file, ppt file
• BM2-3 Anglophone Expansion:Timeline - A page you can expand with hits at good information.

Harbingers of Freedom, Democracy and Civil Rights? (Simons) Nov. 05, 2008

Text for today's session:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06215/710851-115.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6557625.stm

Planning/collection of ideas/issues:

I have no idea about the New Zealand-Maori-Topic, ...sounds interesting.

My lecture will give an overview of forms of government, it might touch the question of conspiracy theories. Why is it that the Americans feel they should have a president who can distance himself from Washington? They live in the country they celebrate as the harbinger of civil rights, freedom and liberty, yet they feel that their capital is corrupt and their government a cheat, a mere facade. Are the conspiracy theories a mark of a nation defending its liberties? Is it that the propaganda leaves them with a taste of being cheated by the same propaganda?

Topics on the US could hence be: The role of lobbying and attempts to curb it. The UK is a peculiar structure with several initiatives to introduce proportional representation. Topics otherwise the stages of the enfranchisement: Blacks, Women etc. why so late?

Classical option: Hobbes and Locke - yet not necessarily my choice here --Olaf Simons 14:45, 3 November 2008 (CET)

New Zealand-Maori/Oz-Aborinies --> too closely linked to last weeks lectures for my opinion (when was citizenship granted to whom? e.g. Chinese immigrants, Native Americans in the US. And I guess they all know by now that fairness is rarely part of colonialism/imperialism.)

On the other hand: Why not make Civil Rights struggles the focus of the tutorial? We could look at different forms of resistance/activism. Who fights how when where against or for what or whom? E.g. AIDS activism in the US (coalition of gays, lesbians, women's rights groups and others against US health system and pharmacy companies. Forms: die-ins etc. "Fight dangerous sexual practices, not male homosexuality")

Found a HP with loads of material on gay/lesbian history in the US. http://209.200.244.13/wiki/Main_Page Michaela Koch 11:05, 4 November 2008 (CET)

We could also take a closer look at one of the "other" issues in the the election like the prop. 8 in California. Who got involved? How is an election campaign organized in the US? (--> role of lobbying) http://www.noonprop8.com/ vs. http://www.protectmarriage.com/ Michaela Koch 09:38, 5 November 2008 (CET)

Not up to date with conspiracy theories. But why not. Is there sth. we could use from Star Trek? Or what was this novel again a couple of years ago ... Michaela Koch 15:29, 3 November 2008 (CET)

Some thoughts on the Astroturfing topic. Of course you can analyse the materials. How is the video made? Who is addressed? Who seems to have produced it?

Beyond this: To reach a debate you have to reach a point, that cannot be solved easily. If you reach problems you actually see - that is the ideal starting point, with which people will join you.

Now some questions I see: We know why Youtube, Wikipedia etc, grew so rapidly. These media give virtually everyone a chance to spread his/her videos an opinions. You do not have to convince any board of editors. You just upload your video and off it goes.

It is clear why Obama would like these media. See Wikipedia - abounding with private knowledge about him and his wife. Private photos, ancestors, complete family trees. Obama decided to become that transparent and to leak these information. Obama fans added stuff on all of these new channels: blogs, youtube... It allowed him to circumvent established media, to reach a public other candidates missed.

The old media had been either balanced and virtually dead or commercial and potentially partisan. The new media stand for freedom, yet they also show a vulnerable spot: Are you sure that you are getting grassroots democracy? Who controls these media? Who decides what video clips you are going to see? What do you know about Youtube and its internal structure? (What do you know about studiVZ?)

How much can you find out about how these media work when visiting their sites? Wikipedia is immensely transparent, most of the others of these new media are not. They are the offspring of Napster.

The interesting question will be: Should we control these channels? Will they become a battleground of entirely new dimensions - one in which money will again make the race (he who has money can invade these media with manpower of fans, with well produced materials etc. - and will not even be noticed. These media create conspiracy environments just as they deny transparency. some thoughts, --Olaf Simons 14:22, 7 November 2008 (CET)

PS. I watched all the material I could find on Sarah Palin on Youtube - often I could not decide: When does a double speak when do I actually hear her. Even where I get her, the clips manipulate her statements cutting them together. Who offers these clips? (And then I get clips that just pretend to offer me sth. oon her, and it is actually something completely different - a pop group advertising its music, aware that I'd be less interested in them than in her and hijacking my interest. The new medium is immensely entertaining but when it comes to journalistic standards it is worse than anything you'll find on FoxNews. It will give you, however, the pleasant feeling of being just your own making, done by people like you... (whilst I have never uploaded anything there). --Olaf Simons 14:31, 7 November 2008 (CET) (Have fun with the Sarkozy cheat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwzgF0s3Dzg)

Religion (Simons) Nov. 12, 2008

Texts from today's session:

PNBC.doc

ChurchOfEngland.doc

ChurchOfScotland.doc

ChurchesChart.doc

NewChristian.doc

CatholicBishop'sConferenceOnAbortion.pdf

Media and the Public (Meyer) Dec. 3, 2008

Noam Chomsky "Democracy and the Media"

http://www.taz.de/1/leben/medien/artikel/1/times-meldet-anklage-gegen-bush/ Michaela Koch 16:05, 13 November 2008 (CET)

Considerations

Maybe: Julia Ward Howe's "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", set to William Steffe's already-existing music, was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862 and quickly became one of the most popular songs of the Union during the American Civil War. In 1870 Howe was the first to proclaim Mother's Day, with her Mother's Day Proclamation. After the war Howe focused her activities on the causes of pacifism and women's suffrage. From 1872 to 1879, she assisted Lucy Stone and Henry Brown Blackwell in editing Woman's Journal. [1]

4 Oct. 29, 2008 Harbingers of Freedom, Democracy and Civil Rights?

Material: Sojourner Truth "Ain't I a Woman?" --> Intersectionality: Human Rights + Women's Rights + Afro-American Rights

another idea: colonialism in Oz (and NZ). treatment of Aboriginals (Maori). Who was counted as "human", given citizen status and right to vote? 1967 referendum in Oz.

5 Nov. 05, 2007 Religion

Maybe: Intelligent design / creationism vs. Darwinism / evolutionary theory. Compare prominent examples. Methodology: devil's advocate

6 Nov. 13, 2008 An Economic History of the English speaking World

Material : maybe caricatures/posters etc. from different eras commenting on the economic development like [2] --> economic development for whom? And who's excluded? (Social) consequences of industrial revolution, globalization ...

7 Nov. 19, 2008 Technology and Knowledge

Maybe sth. on the emergence of natural sciences: L. Daston/K. Park (1998) "Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150-1750". Or a little different: L. Schiebinger "Why mammals are called mammals"

8 Nov. 26, 2008 Media and the Public

Maybe sth on sports? (We might not do it in the VL, but the tutorial could be a place...) Cricket?

or sth. related to music: Trumpet player Billy Tipton comes to mind. Hir story served as a background for "Trumpet" by British novelist Jackie Kay. Although Kay changed it considerably: Placed in GB not US, from white to black skin, from piano to trumpet. Full media attention: newspaper articles, songs, shows, a biography etc.

Noam Chomsky "Democracy and the Media"

9 Dec. 03, 2008 Representations of Justice

Maybe a text by Angela Davis? (Against "prison-industrial complex" in the US, Black feminist, academic, communist, Civil Rights leader, "Free Angela Davis" campaign in early 1970's)

Maybe something on "Hate Crimes"?

e.g. Brandon Teena (see Sloop: Brandon Teena, Public Representation, and Normativity" in Disciplining Gender) --> documentary + Hollywood + print media: Which stories are told by whom? (Could also work for one of the Media sessions 7/8 or Academy Awards (2)) Media Audiences

Maybe something on theater actors and actresses: Who is when allowed to play which (gender) role. From all-men to all-women casts in English theatres in the 17th century (cp. Straub and Trumbach in Epstein/Straub: Guarded Bodies, also Greenblatt "Fiction and Friction")

10 Dec. 17, 2009 New Topic: Key Concepts in Cultural Studies (a) gender, race, class, ability etc. --> concepts as socially constructed and interdependent categories. b) What is a 'text'? --> movies, literature, art, clothing etc. as material in Cultural Studies)

ad a) Maybe sth. with Thomas Laqueur: Making sex. --> from one sex model to two sex model (and where it might or might not end...) ad b) connected to a): medical, juridical, religious texts and documents

11 Jan. 07, 2009 The Construct(edness) of Traditions

Paul Auster "Music of Chance", also: copies of villages from the black forrest in Japan

Scotland (kilt, Ossian, etc.)

12 Jan. 14, 2009 Written Test

13 Jan. 21, 2009 Cultural Icon(s)/Iconology

14 Jan. 28, 2009 Feedback on Test and Look Ahead