Author: Josefina Lima Tufiño

I chose to work on option 5, which was to restructure your essay and discover new ideas in the process. I already had ideas for what I wanted my paper to include so it was important for me to focus on the order and structure to put in these ideas. Especially as I already chose the quotes and subtopics that I was interested in working on. The exercise helped me also get a better understanding of how my paper would end up looking, as I was able to put all these ideas and evidence in a singular document. It also helped out as I got to see how they flowed together and make edits on what to add on or what to remove from the paper. My main concern as of now is adding more of my own writing and analysis to the writing. I have an idea for each subtopic, along with now which evidence I will be focusing on, so I now need to focus on how I will be analyzing this evidence for the subtopics. 

1. The connections Reed makes between the 1978-1992 “retrenchment period” at CUNY and the Covid-19 pandemic is how the decrease of funding for CUNY led to the layoff of many workers, including that adjunct professors, as well as negatively affecting the students of CUNY. For instance, during the “retrenchment period,” students were losing the “recently won ethnic studies classes” and there were “threats to close new CUNY colleges,” which would ultimately negatively affect the students taking these classes and those in these colleges. In 2020, “1 in 2 CUNY students already food-and housing -insecure” were now facing “increased unemployment” and the “danger of eviction.” In these two incidents, the lack of government funding to CUNY, caused a negative effect to not solely the staff and faculty that were facing unemployment, but also the students who were facing a decrease in their access to education and their access to security. 
2. Reed uses the term “death cult” in this context as meaning the downfall, or negative effects, that underfunding and ignoring the needs of CUNY has on the city, workers, and students. As neoliberalism grew in the city, the negative effect it had was its disregard in advancing the progress being made in CUNY. This ultimately led CUNY advocates to work even harder in the past decades to try to create a school system that will help out the faculty and students the best they could. The “death cult” then would be allowing the education in CUNY to falter in the face of a lack of resources and assistance. 
3. The Latinx Student alliance campaign to decolonize the Lehman College English curriculum stems from the fact that the vast majority of the undergrad students at the college are underrepresented in the current core English texts and curriculum. They described how they came to make this decision as they tried different ways to help the students be able to have access to texts that reflect them and their experiences. For instance, having a book club, but realizing how being able to have access to texts that represent and reflect them should not be so hard to find in an institution that they pay to attend. Therefore, reaching out and having this campaign that allows these texts to be able to be readily accessible for all undergrad students, not solely to those who need to take a specific class in order to read these stories. 

Idealistic CUNY:

https://jamboard.google.com/d/1-8a_eoPndjXy2ipkbA0VX5OxJPZS-Gij-9KtBGo0KgI/edit?usp=sharing

According to Taylor’s article, the “limits of representation” refer to how having minorities in positions of power does not guarantee that they will also represent other minorities. The article focuses on how in American politics, many minorities and low-class people are not given the same opportunities and have trouble trying to improve their conditions. Politicians also feed into this as over time they have either backed stereotypical rhetoric of marginalized people or have made promises during election season that never actually become a reality. Taylor also explains how simply having a black vice-president with Kamala Harris, does not guarantee that progress in representing Black Americans, especially Black women, and the problems they face in the American society will occur. This is because there have been incidences in the past where minority leaders did not support others once they reached a status of power. A cause for this has been prioritizing other parts of one identity, such as social status. A person in power may start supporting capitalistic ideals and laws as it would support the new life they are living. Which in turn, leads them to turn their back on working-class people who are often the victim of many capitalistic ideals. Therefore, the “limits of representations” of the article are that having representation does not guarantee progressive action for all those represented. Having one person being represented, such as having a high-ranking leadership power, does not mean a change to helping others also reach this level will occur. 

For the research paper, I chose the 1992 film adaptation of “Como Agua Para Chocolate” (“Like Water for Chocolate”) as my art piece. The artwork is a Mexican magical realism movie taking place in the early 1900s, directed by Alfonso Arau and written by Laura Esquivel. The protagonist, Tita, is the youngest of three sisters who, by family tradition, is not allowed to marry as she is to take care of her mother until she dies. When Tita falls in love with Pedro, who asks for her hand, her mother rejects the proposal because of the family tradition. Therefore, Pedro marries Tita’s sister in order to be near her. As Tita struggles with her family relationships and romantic relationship with Pedro, her emotions are translated into the food she cooks. Those who eat it feel and act on the intense emotions that Tita feels at the time of making them, such as grief or lust. This aspect of the food is the main example of magical realism within the film. 

The film focuses on many themes and ideas, especially as it leans into the time period. As it is set for the most part during the Mexican Revolution, the film touches on social and political values, such as rebellion against tradition, violence from wartime, and gender roles. 

I chose this film as I wanted to particularly focus on how gender roles, specifically female gender roles, and feminism have evolved in Mexican history, as depicted by the three sisters. Gertrudis would symbolize the independence of women and feminism during the Mexican revolution; Rosaura embodies the dangers of trying to uphold gender roles for the sake of tradition; Tita symbolizes the strength of maternal caretakers. A potential thesis could be that Esquivel and Arau’s “Como Agua Para Chocolate” depicts the various faces of Mexican feminism through the three de la Garza sisters, Gertrudis, Rosaura, and Tita.

Greg Bordowitz “Pandemic Haiku” is able to use its rhetorical properties to contribute to its meaning by using the haiku format to construct these small glimpses of time. Each haiku seems to highlight different moments of the pandemic, especially at the beginning of it, from mask-wearing to getting the vaccine. I thought this was really smart to do for a collection piece as it makes each haiku unique but cohesive to one another. There is a lack of any unnecessary flourishes as Bordowitz uses the haiku minimalistic poem design to highlight simple and realistic day-to-day life experiences and events during the pandemic. The text resonates with present social concerns as everyone has had any experience with dealing with the pandemic. That is also how this minimalist approach succeeds in connecting with people as many may relate to these events, or similar activities, or even simply the mood created of this moment in time where we stayed at home during a worldwide pandemic. Simply how art can connect people by their experiences, fears, and struggles about political or social concerns, can be a conclusion that one can draw from the text. The ongoing pandemic has made a continuous effect on all of us and it may be difficult to process everything that has occurred. Therefore, by using art, people may find it easier to process all that has occurred during the past years. This, in turn, can help the public collectively acknowledge their social and political concerns and they get to know how to move on together. 

To be quite honest, I was not as surprised by the results. The only part that surprised me was there were 2 simple sentences, which I thought would be the least. I know that I’m pretty wordy, especially when it comes to essay writing like analysis, therefore, I did expect there to be fewer simple sentences. I think the overall results do support how I’ve seen my writing, as trying to add a lot of information into each sentence, whether that ends up being the most efficient way varies. It also might have been since it was a draft I was trying to get a lot of my ideas and information on paper, so it might have added to it. I would want to look over what is written and see if the way they are written is truly helpful or maybe rewriting them in a different sentence-style will help improve the overall message. Therefore, it will help me be more conscious of how exactly I’m writing as some sentences might benefit being, for instance, a compound sentence, while others might be better as a simple sentence.  These edits go with how I plan to revise my draft as I want to review it and try to make sense of how to organize the information for it to make the most sense. This goes with the sentence revision as maybe it would make more sense for me to change the order of the information or reword it so that the overall message makes the most sense. 

Recently there was an attempt to rezone Industry City in Sunset Park around 2015 but was rejected in 2020. This was mainly because many of the people who lived in Sunset Park was opposed to the idea as rezoning Industry City would be yet another attempt of gentrification in the area. 

The rezoning project was an attempt at neoliberalism in Sunset Park that led the people that lived in the area, mainly minorities, to actively speak out against it. They ended up succeeding but even when they did, what they faced was similar to what graffiti artists faced in Dickinson’s text. During and after the rezoning process, rhetoric by the media was used to create a specific narrative that benefited neoliberalism. 

The media when speaking on the decision would focus on the loss of job opportunities and the overall misfortunate failure of the rezoning. While the decision was a victory for many of the residents who wanted to help protect their neighborhood by stopping the continuing attempts of gentrification in the area. Especially as many of the development in Industry City would not be aimed at the neighborhood’s demographic. Gentrification is also a serious issue in the neighborhood as Sunset Park has already been recognized as a neighborhood in NYC that is undergoing gentrification. 

The usage of rhetoric, especially about neoliberalism in the city, is important as outsiders will learn on the issue based on the media. Therefore, focusing only on how the loss of neoliberalism means the loss of jobs while ignoring and disregarding the negative implications it will have on the neighborhood and its residents, leads outsiders to side with neoliberalism, even if subconsciously. Similarly to how the media in the city would try to criminalize graffiti artists while praising neoliberalism as the savior of the city at the time. 

Hello, my name is Josefina Lima Tufiño and I am a freshman at Baruch with an intended major in Computer Information Systems.

The piece of art that I chose is the film “101 Dalmatians” which came out in 1961. I grew up watching a lot of shows and movies with “101 Dalmations” being one of my favorites that I would watch almost every day. Even today I love to watch different genres of shows and films and I am always open to new suggestions. I would watch this film on VHS so there’s a lot of nostalgia for me thinking of when I would manually rewind it to see it every time as I tended to be lazy to do that when I last watched it. The family relationship in 101 dalmatians also resonated with me growing up, especially with the dalmatian puppies, as I grew up with many siblings so having a large family was something that I connected with. The music in the movie, especially with Roger being a musician, also was an important part as in my household there was also music. Seeing their house filled with music and instruments reminded me of my own. Therefore, “101 Dalmations” is a piece of art that I would choose to represent me as it encapsulates a nostalgic time in my life as both a film I enjoyed and as one that leads me to reminisce on what it was like watching this movie and the memories I made during that time.