Bard on the Butte takes place on top of Skinner’s Butte and just finished up a eight show run. This was the first year of doing a Shakespeare production on Skinner’s and they hope to do it again next year. I went to their show and was amazed at the way the actors were able […]
Here are three advertisements from the excorporative marketing group, AdBusters Magazine. In class we discussed the top two and the bottom advertisement I found today and I think it is pretty spot on with regards to how heavy brand advertisements are ingrained into our society and the disconnect people have with “un-branded” items even […]
Definitely one of those books that my mom didn’t like when I was younger. She probably still doesn’t care for it today. I came across this article that claims that The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Stupid Fairy Tales introduces its readers to “post-modern landscapes.” I thought that this was an interesting concept. The article also […]
This comic runs daily in the Register Guard and is usually full of eye rolling puns. This one ran on August 30th and I thought it was fairly thought provoking. Would we categorize cows as higher/smarter animals if they could write poetry? Or just call them snooty? Patsis, Stephen. “Pearls Before Swine.” The Register Guard […]
This Washington Post extended editorial by Zack Linly is a biting, bracing discussion of his experience as a community organizer doing anti-racist work. What I liked about this is Linly’s pitch that folks who struggle for racial justice– particularly people of color– don’t need to achieve universal “white validation” for their efforts in order to […]
This song comes from a not-so-great solo album from Travis Morrison, the lead singer of an absolutely great band, The Dismemberment Plan. It is about the feeling of justice felt when hearing about a mistreated animal that does the ‘natural,’ inevitable thing and lashes out at its captors. I had been on the fence about posting […]
On Wednesday we’ll play a game called “The Thing From the Future” produced by Situation Lab, a group of game designers and tactical media practitioners. Here’s another of their projects: Nature Pod. Check it out, and keep in mind that tactical media are often artistic interventions meant to draw our attention to deeper ideological structures– […]
Here’s a pretty long-form article about humanities in higher education. Since our class is squarely in what I’d call “the environmental humanities,” I feel it’s worth the read for those of you who find close cultural study, arts, and literature relevant— or for those who don’t. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/09/02/meet-the-parents-who-wont-let-their-children-study-literature/?utm_term=.cc99477a22b7
Ok folks, so I’m being the worst and posting two links without thoroughly reading and checking the sources, but I just ran across a smattering of news stories pushing “toxic masculinity” to a whole new level. The links below show research that students consider eco-friendly actions (mostly individualized actions like recycling) are gendered feminine while destructive, consumptive […]
We did not get a chance to go look at the pioneer murals in the library, but when we talked about them, this is what I thought of. This supercut from Parks & Recreation uses values dissonance to show the way the town depicts their history, subverting some frontier myth ideas through satire. Something to think […]
