CulturalPolitics.Net

Ansley Eason
Gender and Pop culture
W 5 pm
The cultural politics website is very organic.  It's seems like it is meant to be functional and it is quite user friendly.  On face value, it's not as flashy as most websites and I find this appealing because it feels more academic in nature. It's very structured, but once you get to the topic of interest it becomes colorful.  Some of it seems outdated, but it's still interesting. This seems like a hearty resource to use to write papers in the future.  The articles I read were intriguing and there's plenty of art.  Perhaps my opinion will changed once we get a little further into the course.

CulturalPolitics.Net

When you click on the website the first thing I thought was boring and bland but when you start clicking on different links on the site you find out that the website is full of information and  has links to many other sights that would be able to help someone looking for information. The website in my opinion is out of date, some of the links don't work and in today's society most people are attracted to websites by flashy images and animation on the sites, this site doesn't contain either. The website is a great tool but probably not too popular.

thoughts on culturalpolitics

My first glance at this site wasn't eye catching and pleasing to my taste. The background or the top module seemed outdated or the color of ancient. After some long period of sitting behind the computer monitor and reviewing what could be appealing to me was that there are resources from many stand points and descriptive sources to browse within many cultures such as anime and manga is originated from Japan and the spread of anime interests numerous individuals. The site doesn't appeal with fond colors to attract me but I forced myself into getting well equipped to understanding what sort of links, advertisements, and references were displayed on this site. I browsed for approximately 3hrs not in one sitting. I took my time to look at the left hand module to investigate and to analyze the focus of this site as a whole. I found it interesting to look up what is popular in today's society. In my opinion, this site is useful to me in order to define and articulate society's hottest new gadgets, pop songs, fashion, and artworks. I believe I am outdated and alittle jaded because of the way I perceive the pop culture as over-daring and dramatic. I get the feeling that this site can be of help to unravel some sense of humor and inform what may be discomforting to some and open up a new soul and mind. I believe the site culturalpolitics.net is one of many helpful resources out on the internet in which can be used as an assistance to understanding and viewing pop culture in several views other than your/my initial view. "Being able to accept the traditional change into newer improved popular change." Why wouldn't we want to go there would be the queer question to ask? It wouldn't hurt to know the diverse cultures of pop culture and being able to be informed and be noticed with much pride to express there are such changes within the issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and even arguements of censorship. I haven't read all the articles on this site and by my bias selection, I selected fashion, art, music, and anime since those are the hottest topic to discuss amongst colleagues and business associates.

culturalpolitics.net

Upon first look at culturalpolitics.net, I was confused as to how this could be helpful at all.  From what I see it is a collection of links to other sources for additional information on the various topics and issues on the site.  As I dove deeper into the site its’ usefulness became apparent.  Instead of having to search for sources on each of these different topics the work has already been done for us.  Pages and pages of resources for us to use for research on different forms of media, different issues and what appears to be some solid, credible research.  As a communication major I believe this site would have been useful in many of my communication classes for research and will probably be very useful for this class as well.

Pop Culture website

I agree with Amanda as far as my initial response to the website. When I think about pop culture I expect it to be bright and entertaining. But the site seemed very plain and slightly lack luster; however, it does give a very adequate initiation to all things pop culture. The prompts to the left of the home page screen lead you on a guided exploration of the various topics. Guidance is important when dealing with the internet (because it's very easy to get lost, frustrated, and give you things that aren't of any use), which is why I feel that this site could be helpful to us during our research.  

     Initially when I visit the site it does not grab my attention. As far as the information it provides, that is where the bait is thrown to me. The site is arranged by all the genres of pop culture, forms and issues, as well as examples of each with sites and articles to expand. The site also magnifies the history and overviews of pop culture throughout the cyber world, society, and the environment. We would definitely want to go to this site in order to research and find references regarding any territory of pop culture. For the mere fact that there are hundreds of articles, books, references in general, etc., it is in fact useful. Personally, I love visuals and this site lacks that, but it has information of purpose so I can say that supersedes my need for flashiness and videos. I am sure we'll be using it quite a bit throughout the semester so I guess I should get used to it, huh?

Space, Place, and American Studies

To me, American Studies is a very broad term for a diverse mix of topics that range from human sexuality to geography to arts and music to “place”-all in the context of how these things interact with one another to form the texture of American culture. It is the study of how a very dynamic culture assimilates and creates different types of people, places, ideals, values, and subcultures.

The concept of “place” is equally complex, its definition broad. While Cresswell defines place as “a meaningful location,” (Cresswell, 7), political geographer John Agnew defines it in three parts: physical location, locale, and the emotional attachment or “sense of place” that people assign to a space (Cresswell, 7). From this, I conclude that the difference between “space” and “place” is a matter of assigning emotional value to an area, be it through personalization, memories of events that have taken place there, or hope for future events to occur in that space. This closely follows Yi-Fu Tuan’s definition that “what begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value…The ideas ‘space’ and ‘place’ require each other for definition” (Cresswell, 8).

The idea of landscape in relation to place is interesting, because it is created by the different viewpoints and meanings assigned to a space by people that inhabit its surrounding place. Landscape “combines what we see with the way it can be seen” (Cresswell, 10). I think of it like this: I have never been to Venice, but when I view Joseph Mallord William Turner’s “Venice The Rialto,” I am overcome with feelings of romance, excitement, and kinship with the gondola passengers. I can feel the breeze, smell the water, and hear the paddles cutting through the canal. Obviously, these feelings are fantasy, and stem from the way Mallord sees and subsequently portrays the landscape of Venice in his work. Still, it invokes an emotional reaction to a space I have never visited; by the definition I explained earlier, this makes it a “place.” However, it is important to note that the context and meaning of this “place” can and likely would change were I to visit myself, as I would assign different meanings and develop different memories from my visit than those portrayed by Mallord in his painting. From this I conclude that the concept of “place” is also dynamic; as events occur and memories are made, so shape the definition of that particular “place,” and different places can take on different meanings to others, so the definition of a specific space likely has several different “place” distinctions.