I thought that overall our presentation went very well. One thing in particular that I think we did well was to break up the lecture aspect of the presentation with activities that involved the class, such as the reading from Twilight in the middle (as opposed to at the end) of the presentation. It can be hard to sit and listen for extended amounts of time, so I think dividing up the talking with something more involved is a good method for keeping the class engaged.
There were still some long sections of just lecture, however, which I think got a little heavy once or twice. If anything, I think more activities are better, even if they're small ones.
The class seemed to get a pretty good understanding of the theory, from what I overheard in the group discussions. What I liked when I was listening to one group discuss, after the Super Bowl commercials, was that they went outside the immediate text to look at the environment of the Super Bowl itself through a feminist lens, and also drew on other examples from television and advertisement that they thought related to the content and ideas of the commercials.
One thing that I think could have been discussed a little more by us is a clearer definition of feminism. It's not something that's easy to define as it has many different approaches and ideas (which we touched on with French and multi-cultural feminism) but I think it would have been beneficial if we had taken a little time to address some of the different impressions of feminism students in the class already had. Occasionally when listening to people's comments, I felt like there was maybe some clarification needed on what feminism is as a social movement, in addition to a form of critical analysis.
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I would agree mostly with Allison's post. I did like that we broke up the lecture part with the Twilight reading, because otherwise it would have been too much lecture. I think breaking up the lecture really helped. I do feel that it still was a little too much lecture. A lot of information was thrown at the class and I am not sure if the class was really able to retain it all. I think that for some of the information we went a little too into detail and the class would have benefited more from a little less textbook information.
ReplyDeleteI liked the Superbowl commercials. We were really trying to show that feminism affects both males and females by socially defining gender roles. I think that class seemed to understand this. I also think that it was good for the class to think outside of the commercials and maybe realize that these commercials were maybe geared towards more of a male audience since they were aired during the Superbowl. However to think that only men should enjoy football has been ingrained in many of our minds and is an example of how society determines our gender roles. I liked the commercials and when we talked with our groups I heard a lot of interesting comments. I think when we went to a larger group discussion we let it die a little. I think we should have stayed on topic by focusing on the commercials that everyone had seen and not other random superbowl commercials. I think we let it get off on a tangent and should have discussed a little more what we saw in our groups.
I do not know how we could have given a clearer definition of feminism. It overlaps so much with every other critical theory and it is very subjective to our own individual experiences. Every feminist is very different in their views of what feminism means. I think we did a good job at talking about all of these different views of feminism. We discussed the gender roles issues, patriarchy, material feminism, and multi-cultural feminism. I do not think that we could easily have given one simple definition.
Overall I think our presentation went pretty well. I think we covered the material in depth and provided a chance for the class to participate in thinking through a feminist lens with the close reading and with the commercials. We let them use the feminist theory in relation to what surrounds us today in books and the media.
As I don't want to add too much more because I would just echo my amazing group mates Ashley and Alli I wanted to add a couple of things. I would've changed the Twilight excerpt. I felt that the excerpt we chose was overtly anti-feminist and pretty obvious to show the anti-feminst strains that we were going for. The Super Bowl commercials were great because they were a non-traditional text.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I believed are group did well was adding humor to our presentation. We all know how boring it could get just standing up their and we know it is boring to listen to as well. I think by adding humor it kept the class's attention.
Overall, I think the class understood our presentation. By looking through the quick writes I felt the class gained a great understanding of the feminist theory.
I liked putting the Twilight reading in the middle of the lecture as well, because letting the class write about it helped break up time spent just listening. There was a lot of information put to the class during this lecture, but I think they understood quite a bit of it.
ReplyDeleteI liked listening to the discussion of the Superbowl ads because it was apparent that the groups had different ideas and the students in the group had varying ideas as well. It was interesting because they were able to connect the ads with ideas outside of those specific ads and looked at the Superbowl and other popular advertisements.
I liked our section of Twilight because it was so obvious that it was anti-feminist. However, it's true that the class didn't have to look very hard to see the anti-feminism and perhaps a different section would have had just as much relevance.
I think the class came away with a good concept of feminist theory.