In Cynthia L. Selfe’s essay, she, using a variety of examples, tells us how, through advertisements, America’s true gender-oriented society comes out. Selfe shows book covers with women being portrayed as homemakers, assistants, or seductresses, that she claims shows that despite Americas claim to equality, it is still a gender oriented country. Selfe tells us that though that there is hope to erase this gender-oriented society, though it will take much work to fix.
Selfe claims in her essay that “A good portion of our collective imagination is constructed by history and sediment in past experience and habit.”, meaning that we act how our parents, and grandparents, acted while we were growing up, or even by what we saw on TV as young children. I agree with this claim, I believe that if a woman came from a home where their mother was a homemaker that they would feel less obliged, than a person woman who came from a family where both parents worked, to find a career. We, as humans, do what we are familiar with, and though Selfe is partially right in her claims that we live in a gender-oriented society, I do not believe it is nearly as big of a problem as she is making it out to be.
On page 304 Selfe says “Our cultural experience, indeed, tells us something very different-that America is the land of opportunity only for some people”, boldly claiming that America is not a country of equality, that not everyone has an equal opportunity for success. I disagree with Selfe, I believe that there is equal opportunity for everyone in America, anyone can start a business, go to college, get a job, there are no restrictions. I believe that this article is entirely propaganda; Selfe tries to amplify the issue of gender roles, which is dying out on its own, without Selfe’s worthless propaganda. Gender-oriented society used to be an issue, but has now almost completely dissinagrated over in recent years.
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
No comments:
Post a Comment