Blog Post Guidelines
The course blog is designed to serve several functions. 1. To give you a chance to write and think about the texts we are reading in a less formal manner than you might in your graded essays. 2. To allow you to throw out idea, take risks, and try out controversial positions 3. To give you the chance to bring in outside material, including painting, photography, film, video, and so forth. I am asking each of you post on the blog twice and to respond to someone else’s post twice during the semester.
For your blog post there are only a couple requirements. Your post should be in some way related to the reading that is assigned that day. And your post should take advantage of the multimedia possibilities of the blog. This might mean posting a song, a video clip from a movie, a piece of visual art, or an article you’ve found, and discussing how it relates to the assigned text. It might mean filming yourself delivering a rant or a spoken-word poem or doing an interpretive dance. Please feel free to be as creative as you want, but do try to get across your feelings or thoughts as precisely as you can. We will be having an ongoing conversation about culture in this class, and the best way you can contribute to that conversation is by sharing with the class different examples and forms of culture that you have found or that you have produced.
You are required to post twice and respond twice, but you can post and respond as often as you like during the semester. We will be looking at the blog fairly regularly in class and discussing it. I will not be giving you a formal grade on your blog posts, but I will be considering them as I determine your overall class participation grade. (And for those of you who are nervous about talking during discussions, this is a great opportunity for you to nudge your participation grade upward). In all of your posts, please respond to the reading that is assigned on the date that you are posting. And when you have completed your post, please look on the schedule send an email reminder to the person who is due to put up the next post.