Blog Survey Address for WST320

Dr. Mo has forwarded the address where your survey re: 320 blog assignment is located. It is at the following address: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=311472968898. Mo would appreciate your feedback.

All Done Da Blogs...

Hey, WST320, congratulations on finishing up your blogging assignments. Now you need to choose a few for grade. Be sure to find those directions for the blog assignment, and choose your entries while considering the guidelines. Over and out... c-ya on the 30th.

Announcement: "Wikid Cool Feminist Buttons"

WST431 has made some "wikid cool feminist buttons" and will be distributing them in SUB on Wednesday, the 22nd, as an act of resistance. The buttons are of the "pro-consent" variety, and any donations received for them will be given to the Sexual Assault Centre on campus. (I don't know about you, but I could use a button or two... or some pants even!)

Feministeppin' CRITICS Finally Surface:

Dear WST320, -just received an email from Jordan. It appears that a feministeppin' critic, a great sentinel of proper education (who is also worried you'll be serving coffee for a career), has posted a response to Jordan's feministeppin' youtube account. The comment and private message are as follows:

COMMENT: "Girls, read about feminism a bit more, and you will realize the stupidity of Modern feminist thinking."

PRIVATE MESSAGE: "Grow up. If the school didn't waste time on idiot things like Feministeppin you would have a better chance of succeeding in the workplace because you would of spent your term preparing for it. By the way, liberal arts colleges are a fast track to serving coffee. Empowering is about education, not feel good exercises that waste time, resources... and eh, everything else put into them. Thats all. Anyway, looking forward to a reply..."

(Note: I don't know about the rest of you 320ers, but I'm laughing that feministeppin' has become, it appears, rather threatening...:-)

Ziners Unite Tonight

-Just a note to send good vibes your way during the zine production phase of 320. I sincerely hope you all get loads of work done tonight and that you have a fun time doing so. Be sure to check your email accounts because I have given you instructions to email me or to phone me tonight if you have any questions. Forgive me, but I didn't want my home phone number posted on my blog. nope. Well, I look forward to your zines and your presentations on the 16th. Zine on! -but don't forget to blog on as well. (damn, this course expects a lot outta ya.)

Alteration to WST320 Syllabus:

Dear WST320 Folk, I've just been informed that I will be flying to Victoria on the 23rd of November on professional business. Therefore, I have had to consider alterations to your syllabus since your blog presentations are due that same evening. Obviously, there will be no class on the 23rd of November. Your blog presentations and hard-copy blogs, therefore, will be due on the 30th of November. Unfortunately, you will have to pick up these graded assignments on a date (to be determined) in the main office of Women's Studies since the class I had set aside for returning your work and conferencing has had to be altered.

Flagging a Post-Midterm Reference:

"A subversive reading emphasizes a marginal voice or position and brackets off the dominant context that presumably holds it in place, or it demonstrates how the marginal voice exposes the contradictions of the dominant context within which it emerges" (White 192).

REMINDER: "Anything You Ever Wanted to Ask a Transsexual"

David Harrison, actor and playwright, speaks and takes questions from the audience regarding transsexuality, today (Thursday, October 26th) from 3:30 - 5:00 pm in 7-152 Education North. Everyone is welcome.

Specific Midterm Format Announced...

Your midterm examination has been produced. With regard to the specifics of the format, the WST320 midterm will consist of 10 questions, 2 questions per page, each question worth a possible 10 points total. (And, yes, partial credit can be earned.) There were simply too many concepts to include in a shorter section as I had imagined previously. When studying for the exam, you will probably want to keep these strategies, which are included under "directions" on your exam, in mind: 1) outline a cogent understanding of each argument referenced. 2) Recall and include concepts pertaining to each question and article referenced. 3) Include your developed understanding of these concepts in your answers. 4) Use specific examples from the text with which you are engaging. 5) Write in a clear and concise manner. 6) Ensure your writing is legible. 7) Use only permanent ink. 8) Use only the space provided between questions to answer.

FeminiSteppin' Disrupts/Interrupts UofA Tory Atrium...

Congratulations, WST320!! You are the (official?) founding feminist practitioners of the groovy popular-cultural practice called feministeppin'. I'm just posting to let you know that I am so very proud of all of you; not only did you step, you STEPPED UP, People!! Thank you for a fabulous evening. (Ah, ya did me proud.)

FeminiSteppin' Sistahs be in da Howse...

Tonight is da night, 320 Folk. Be pom-pom-stompin' ready. Tory atrium, 7pm. Watch for the thumpin', bumpin', stompin' of The Shrivelling Auras, The Banana Split(s), The Steppin' Cunts, and The Awesome Interpellations. C-ya at the Atrium!!

We Interrupt this Program with 2 Messages from your Instructor...

Dear WST320 Folk, 1) I have just finished reading your blog entries for the 14th of October, and I wanted you to know that I was particularly impressed with this grouping. I couldn't help but notice that, while your heads seem to be hurting beyond any immediate repair, your blogs represented reflection, not perfection. Your cyberspace narratives, in other words, speak back to the Baudrillard piece in that they represent a practice in reflection and significance, as opposed to a speedy cataloguing of simulacra. These narrative spaces you have produced and the ruminations that fill them are not necessarily deemed valuable in western culture, so I was wondering if we might consider Kipnis's argument regarding a re-working of value here. For the time, effort and THINKING that you're doing in these spaces is a knowledge-work, yes? 2) and speaking of Kipnis, both her article and the Rhodes piece read earlier in the term speak to political practices representative of existing political struggles, regardless of how provisional. Your objective, then, for your remaining blog assignments will be to incorporate BOTH the cultural studies theory you've read (and thought about) for 320 and your knowledge of feminism gained from such courses as WST201. In other words, what I'll be looking for in your remaining blogs is how you negotiate an understanding(s?) of a feminist popular culture. (NOTE: The picture above is meant to trump Kelly Mac's picture that John found so frightening.)

Them Boots are Made for FeminiSteppin'...

Dear 320 Folk, tonight (Oct. 12th) represents the last of any class time to be spent on your feministeppin' performance. My hope is to groove on through some hyperreality and a bit of left popular culture before checking on each group's status. Just so you know, your judges have been selected, and the 7 of them are very excited to witness the first (ever) feministeppin' competition in the HISTORY OF THE WORLD. But, then again, history doesn't exist. ??? C-ya tonight.

"Anything You Ever Wanted to Ask a Transsexual"

The Women's Studies Program, Inside/Out, and the Canada Research Chair in Gender and Sexuality invite you to attend "Anything You Ever Wanted to Ask a Transsexual." David Harrison, actor and playwright, recently in the film Transamerica, takes you through his personal journey from female to male. His story is not merely how girl becomes boy, but also illuminates the complexities of when gender and sexual orientation intersect and shift--and all the possibilities that open up as a result. Since most people don't know a transsexual, or think they don't know one, here's an opportunity to ask anything you want. Personal questions are encouraged!!! Thursday, October 26th, 3:30 - 5pm, Room 7-152, 7th Floor, Ed. Bldg. North

Campus Lecture of Possible Interest...

On September 28 2006: Jess Cadwallader, PhD candidate, Macquarie University, Sydney 3:30-5pm Humanities Centre L-2 Suffering, Memorialising and Forgetting in/the Flesh Jess Cadwallader is in the final year of her doctoral studies at Macquarie University in Sydney. Her thesis uses a Levinasian ethics, as well as the works of Foucault, Derrida, Diprose and Merleau-Ponty, to examine the construction of the experience of suffering, and its place within discourses of bodily modification. Cadwallader writes, "In the context of the rapid development of a variety of technologies that alter bodies - surgery, growth hormones, pharmaceuticals, (the promise of) genetic alteration - it is unsurprising that concern about their use has been voiced from a variety of positions. Many of these positions draw on an implicit notion of the 'natural' and 'normal' body, notions which set in place normalising assumptions about bodies which are then embodied. Such assumptions can cause suffering. This paper explores a technique for marking the ethical consequences of various forms of modificatory interventions, with a particular focus on the place of suffering within such discourses and practices. The weaving together of threads of Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida in the work of Diprose on corporeal generosity offers an ethico- political framework that acknowledges the corporeality of subjectivity and the subject's responsibility to the other (in his or her alterity). I utilise her concepts of the memorialising and forgetting of gifts as politically and ethically significant, extending these ideas in order to explore the way that the corporeal gifts given by the other are memorialised, forgotten and attested to in different bodily forms. By exploring the ethics of various modificatory practices - including intersex surgery, growth hormone use and Modern Primitivism - through this framework, I mark the ethical and political significance of each, given current cultural logics."

Concepts Covered on September 21st

• Enlightenment tenets
• Liberal Feminism (tenets/alterations)
• Deconstruction of Enlightenment Subject (as feminist)
• Classical/Orthodox Marxism (Adorno and Horkheimer)
• Dialectical (Historical) Materialism (Marx)
• Commodity
• Exchange Value
• Use Value
• Automaton
• Alienation
• Ideology (Classical Marx/British Cultural Studies)
• Base/Superstructure
• Economic Determinism
• Consciousness Raising (Adorno/Horkheimer/2nd Wave F)
• Women as distinct Class (2nd Wave F)
• Culture Industry
• "True" Needs
• Popular Culture/Mass Production
• False Needs
• Standardization
• Formulaic Repetition
• Negation of Resistance/Veiled Exploitation
• Emancipation of Consumer Consciousness
• Pluralism and Demystification
• Uneven Development
• Hegemony
• The Ideological Subject
• Ideological Problematic
• Emphasis on Practice: (representation and meaning)
• Structure
• Tension as Interdependence
• Viewer as Commodity and Consumer
• Television: Apparent Naturalized Unity
• Self-Reflexivity or Self-Referentiality (intertextual and extratextual referencing)
• Reappropriation

Feministeppin'

For all of you WST 320 Bloggers: Be sure to wear or bring a pair of sturdy shoes for this evening's class. I'll be assigning you to your feministeppin' groups... and you may have time to practice!!

My dear 320 People,

Enough with the blue mountains and those purplish flowers. What was that? A tree-hugger's bad trip, I say.

Enough!

Blog on, my People. Blog on.

And check Tap's 320 House for any messages regarding class this term.

Later.