Our discussions this week about the transformation of writing in the humanities due to the advancement of technology really got me thinking about what it means to be "media literate". Media literacy is defined as a repertoire of competences that enable people to analyze, evaluate and create messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres and forms. As a digital humanist (woah, never used that title in "public" before), I'd make the claim that I'm not as media literate as I'd like to think I am.

Ahem.

I've experimented a lot with various forms of media. Anne, unfortunately, has seen some of my efforts fall flat; this paper which I attempted to form my message through a 'talking head' video and this paper where I attempted to make a video paper. As you can probably tell, I have a place for 'lens-based' media given my background in film studies. It's interesting to look at how these projects failed however because I think that it really shows that the education surrounding media literacy today is quite lacking and thus, how can you possible attempt to rethink the ways in which academic papers are presented if the training and education to do that is so limited.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any more Dagbani language learning videos than the ones that Allison already links in her blog post (and it looks like you watched in class this week).

UCLA phonetics lab has an audio archive entry for Dagbani, but it is geared toward documenting the language not teaching a non-speaker.

I did find print resources that might be helpful... with the hefty caveat that since Dagbani, like many sub-saharan African languages, is tonal you really need to physically hear the spoken pronunciations to make progress with the language.  In any case, here they are:

• Dagbani-English dictionary
• Spoken Dagbani for Non-Dagbani Beginners

Sorry I wasn't able to locate more!

One of the major themes in our class discussions and readings thus far is that the concept of originality is bogus.  Everything we write, say, experiment, and do is just some iteration of what has come before.  I’ve been convinced.  In another one of my classes this week, a professor mentioned the idea of “evolutionary tinkering.”  Here’s a definition written by Francois Jacob posted on Larry Moran’s blog Sandwalk: Strolling with a Skeptical Biochemist:

Chimamanda Adiche’s talk “The Danger of a Single Story” spoke to the discomfort I have recently wrestled with in terms of my own upbringing as a middle-class, white girl; my battle to acknowledge the single story the media, my teachers, our government, religion and so many other facets of my life have taught me unintentionally. Whether it be on a global scale such as Adiche’s experience with expectations of a single African story and the token “third-world woman” too often noted by anthropologists or at the local level, one school to the next, via class or color, the single story does exist and is used to create structural barriers, while simultaneously allowing those in power to happily claim moral neutrality at the hands of a biased system. Lemke’s reading spoke to this juxtaposition, showing how language standardization has been assumed both necessary and desirable, creating a means to attain and justify power that is neither fair nor essential: “The policy of language standardization seems culturally and politically neutral only if we deny that differences in linguistic codes have evolved to reflect differences in the lifeways, social practices, and interests of different communities and social groups” (Lemke, 2). Lemke’s point here and throughout the article is critical, acknowledging that an emphasis on written standard English, a strain that is not spoken or used by anyone, creates a divide and gives an unfair advantage to those whose dialect is closest to the written word—typically those already in power.

Hi all :)

I was thinking about the question asked during the class today. "Would Virginia Woolf encourage you to go to Bryn Mawr?"

My answer is no. I think she will not because of various reasons that I will not list here but save them for class discussion later.

Anyways, to see what other people think of women's colleges, I put "why women's college?" on the search bar and read some articles about it.

http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2007/05/21/why_we_need_womens_colleges/

This is an article written by the president of Mount Holyoke College in 2007. She mentions Virginia Woolf (for a sentence) and the article is about women's colleges. So I thought it was pretty relevant to us!

Good night!

a digital humanities talk on Thursday!

"Geography and the Humanities: Applications of Digital Cartography to Digital Humanities"

Presented by Robert Cheetham & Deb Bover of Azavea

Location: Haverford College -Magill Library -Philips Wing

Date: January 26, 2012

Time: Tea-4:15pm | Talk- 4:30pm

Please see the poster attached for more info.

Since you'll be writing your first on-line papers next week (perhaps about Three Guineas?), I thought you might like to have a look @ two blog postings about the text, written by a BMC Comp Lit major as part of a reading blog she kept this past summer. It may open up some possibilities for you, about writing in public.....See
Arthur's Education Fund: Seeing the Public from the Private, and
The Worth of Three Guineas: Opening UP the Text, Part I.