It is common for a National Geographic to be one of the many magazines that everyday folk have on their coffee tables. It is a way to learn about other countries and cultures without have to ever leave the house or travel thousands of miles. Shekhar Deshpande wrote an article titles “The confident gaze” with the purpose to try and clean “National Geographic’s misty lens” (subtitle). Deshpande makes claim after claim about how the magazine twists and distorts what is actually going on in third word countries by publishing flawless pictures. Poverty in India has been one of the most popular topics and frequently the sole reference for Americans. Is it really a reliable source of information though?
Deshpande states that “the photographs are rich in their content, but entirely dishonest in their relationship to the environment of the context” (par. 13). He is saying that the photographers set up each and every photograph with perfect placement, and then the photos might still be cropped down before being in the magazine. It is because of these methods that a fake or false idea is portrayed. When I looked though a National Geographic I saw several photos that seemed “staged”. These photographs appear as though they were just a snap shot of ordinary life but after looking deeper you can see that they were set up.
It’s not that National Geographic wants to lie to us as Americans, but rather “transform the most repulsive results of human actions around the world into images that are digestible” (par 12). National Geographic wants their magazine to be something that everyone will want to look at. Some traditions in other countries are too disturbing for younger viewers so the photographers tone back the intensity. This makes sense to me but like Deshpande states, its being “dishonest”. I have never been a subscriber of National Geographic and after studying Deshpande’s article and a few magazines I doubt I ever will.
Welcome!
Welcome to our Eng 100 Blog “Conversations Beyond the Classroom”! The title of this blog refers to the community of active readers & collaborative learners we are creating by sharing our academic writing for Eng 100 with each other + a larger group of students, instructors, academics, and just about anybody who chooses to follow our blog! When you write and post your reader responses here (and, later, as you write your essays for the course), I encourage you to use this audience to conceptualize who you are writing for and, most important, how to communicate your ideas so that this group of academic readers and writers can easily follow your line of thinking. Think about it this way: What do you need to explain and articulate in order for the other bloggers to understand your response to the essays we’ve read in class? What does your audience need to know about those essays and the authors who wrote them? And how can you show your readers, in writing, which ideas you add to these “conversations” that take place in the texts we study?
As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! We encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…).
Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!
--Mary Hammerbeck, Instructor of Eng 100
As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! We encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…).
Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!
--Mary Hammerbeck, Instructor of Eng 100
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