Reflection

I particularly enjoyed Dr. Smith-Shank’s presentation today. I really liked how she took the approach of “what do you want from me?” This is something that I felt was lacking from a few of the lecturers throughout this semester – it was very nice to have someone who was willing to cater their presentation to our needs and questions. It was interesting to think of the fairy tale as the key to our research paths, but the way that she broke it down it was really insightful and helpful. My favorite moment was honestly the point of taking advantage of your community resources – asking for help, advice, and input from colleagues, classmates, professors, etc. 

Colloquium - Dr. Deborah Smith-Shank

Dr. Deborah Smith-Shank
Storytelling

METHODOLOGY - theory is not methods!
Action Research - going into a situation and intending to have an impact/influence on those you are researching (vs. "old school" - you should not affect or interact with what you are studying)
Mixed Methods - qualitative plus quantitative; in Ramya's case, mixed qualitative methods only; postmodern approach to research. Whatever works best for the problem at hand.
Arts-Based Research - you make stuff and the making is part of the learning and reasoning process
Participatory Action Research - ethnography
Case Studies - applying qualitative and quantitative
Narrative Inquiry - autoethnography, reflecting on your own experiences but not so self-serving that it doesn't benefit anyone else
Arts-Based Research/Narrative Inquiry/Collaborative Storytelling - community of inquiry
Autoethnography - "non-masterbatory" - whatever you're talking about needs to have a relationship beyond yourself
Conceptual Comparison - thinking about things conceptually by comparing them together; reading and writing; HISTORICAL RESEARCH
Collaborative Forms of Inquiry - collaborative action research
Feminist - 
Semiotic - Charles Sanders: "You can't know anything fully because you only have your perspective to look at it. In order to understand things more fully, you pull a community of inquiry together to know it more richly. But you can never know it totally because you and your community are finite, but you can come to understand it more fully."

STORYTELLING
Stories are vehicles for teaching and learning... and entertainment.
Can you imagine life without its narrative qualities??
- You don't remember people without their narrative context
Vladimir Propp (1895-1970): Morphology of the Folktale
- Russian structuralism: pre-post-structuralism; pre-post-modernism

Universal story lines in fairy tales:
Person goes away/sent away from home to complete a quest
Person meets obstacles: wickedness/opportunities for growth
Person gets help (talisman): goodness or learning
With struggle, person completes goal / or not
With struggle, person returns home / or starts over

Little Red Riding Hood - multicultural constant
Artist representations: what does trouble look like?
- so "beautifully scary"
- Spinning Interpretants
- Helper or Hinderer?
You will wake up in the middle of the night with these wonderful insights. But if you forget to make the notes, you will just wake up and they're gone.
Take advantage of your community - people will help get you over - or kick you over! - your hump.
- Accepting help from outside sources
- Communative Inquiry
It's important to surround yourself with peace.
Consider your options. Nobody is going to give you the answer, but you have to listen.
- We have to listen to everybody before we can actually proceed
Consider new options... and listen to advice.

What is magic? Is it other people? Other things? That "aha!" moment?
- Magic shows up in all cultures
- Magic is condemned or magic is applauded
What do you give up? What do you gain? What do you lose?

The Struggle - you never can get there without the struggle
- What do the images say?

LAURIE ANDERSON - LANGUAGE IS A VIRUS

Research Methods: Digital Storytelling

DIGITAL STORYTELLING                                                                                        
Bea Staley
http://www.youtube.com/user/bxs018
http://www.storycenter.org
Joe Lambert

Point of View
- meant to be your personal point of view
- why are you telling this story?

Dramatic Questions
- if you have a "reveal" in the story, i.e. who did it??, is there a way to build up dramatic tension by building suspension?

Gift of Voice
- you are telling a story in your own voice

Power of Music
- Jamendo (http://www.jamendo.com/en/)

Economy of Words
- let images do the work; 500-1000 words (about 2 pages double-spaced MAX)
- take your time reading slowly

Pacing
- good stories BREATHE 
- can change the tone of a story by changing your pacing

Creation Options:
iMovie, MovieMaker
- iMovie wants you to put in the images FIRST - it will keep the audio recording to the IMAGE (put a 5-minute image in first and layer other images over the base)

"A shitty story is still a shitty story, even if you put technology into it."
Put a lot of time and editing into the story itself
Eliminate redundant words

"Fonto" for text...?

Keep transitions consistent otherwise they tend to be distracting
MAKE SURE that all of your images are saved in ONE PLACE until the video is RENDERED/SAVED otherwise they will disappear

Reflection

After listening to Dr. Funk’s lecture, I am particularly interested in working with the material culture approach. I was surprised to learn how much this will dovetail with my architectural interests and in the concept of memory and preservation. I was interested in the “agency” approach and looking at how objects act on people rather than the more traditional how we simply interact with objects.

Material culture = popcorn, making sense of it through all five senses

Colloquium: Dr. Clayton Funk

Dr. Clayton Funk                                                                                                                             
Material Culture

What is material culture?
What objects say
The semiotics of stuff (i.e. signifiers)
Agency - whether objects innately have agency over people, what they do to you
Object Oriented Ontology
- objects can also expose lies

Choices in acquisition and/or collection... what does that say about people?

Materiality

Inclusivity of material culture vs. visual culture studies

Material Culture as Popcorn - you can make sense of it through all of your senses

Rituals attached to objects
Dramaturgy - the art of dramatic composition and the representation of the main elements of drama on the stage

Chicago: cutting though buildings to get to places faster, vs. being considered "bad manners"

"I'm not here to identify what is visual culture and what is material culture. You can go and drink beer and argue about chickens and eggs if you want to, I'm not going to get into that."

Funk's research
Within school systems/where people learn:
- architectural spaces
- artifacts

"People have always known how to read, they just haven't always read books. You read a space and know whether you're supposed to be there or not... In our country, there were very literal symbols that said 'whites only,' there were certain areas of land where Native Americans were put and told, you know, 'stay there'... Very simply, social closure is usually seen as an alternative to Marxian theory. Marx talks about struggle of socio economic forces and the struggles whereas Vader would say that inequality has never been something that is a given. We make structures that exclude people and in doing so we create inequality."

"If we know how those things were made, can we unmake them? Can we reverse them?"

"There is a whole section of history that has been left out but you can read them in the architectural spaces of a place."

Public school system = mass media, source of propaganda/curriculum

Dwight Perkins - Chicago school architect                                                                                    

- worked for the superintendent, a social Darwinist; believed that most of the people going to high school were what he defined as "backward" (c. 1908 meant that you were feeble-minded)

- Anglo-Saxons dictated where the lower classes should be allowed to work, what they had access to, etc. - these lower classes were not permitted access to the fine arts

Jane Adams and other teachers/Chicago women's clubs - resisted this, partnered with Dwight Perkins and designed schools that supported student development with adequate light and working conditions with open space ("open-plan"), allowing students to "evolve" even if they were being held back by school policies from "on top"

Foucault's "heterotopias"= little utopias; people negotiate between the different "utopias," i.e. mass media, schooling, department store shopping, etc.

Perkins = "civic architect," designed solaria and medical buildings, park recreation centers, parks, etc.
- designed Lincoln Park, Chicago, IL

Correlative Causation - to prove something without a doubt

Analogy - explaining something by painting a picture so someone who doesn't understand the terminology can comprehend; material culture does a similar thing

Colloquium: Journal Modifications

- More questions and reflective thoughts

- Be selfish! Pull out what is relevant to MY research, not so much notes in general

...she needs to sort out her priorities...

THE ALLNIGHTER

"Academia, Here I Come!"

Reflection

I am still having some difficulty in considering how to apply queer theory to my research interests. My proposal regarding Fort Hayes is largely based in practical application of planning theories rather than theoretical approaches and methodologies. I still believe that it is largely detached from issues regarding sexual deviance. However, I did find Dr. Sanders’ lecture incredibly interesting. The course that I have been teaching, Criticizing Television, heavily addresses LGBT issues and their representation across a variety of television genres (i.e. reality, drama, comedy, etc.). This lecture really helped open up a lot of doors and approaches that made these conversations in my class much deeper and more insightful for both me and for my students.