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Third Quarter feedback

2009 April 5
by AH

1. what connections have you seen among all the imaginative representations of gender and technology that we’ve looked @?
I’ve noticed that we still tend to focus on imaginative representations of women and technology. I know that Watchmen didn’t have that many women in it, but we still discussed them more in terms of technology than the men. It might be interesting to compare Rorschach’s use of technology and sexuality (basically none really visible, more of a derision for sex in general) and Dan’s for example. Otherwise, the connection between gender and technology that I’ve really noticed is always tying women to sex in one way or another.
2. how do these works contribute to your understandings of gender, technology or the relations between them?
I think that looking at women ‘superheroes’ and a female version of Watchmen and/or graphic novel was really interesting. The bind between trying to create a female graphic novel without immediately falling into stereotypes for the character design, plot, and publicity was difficult and helped me understand a bit more about how ingrained these ideas of gender are in our society. On the other hand, it also helped me remember that there will always be some grain of truth in a stereotype for at least someone somewhere (for example, I can’t deny that I would like some comic books and graphic novels better with more romance in them than fighting).
3. any other feedback about how the class has been working the past three weeks, w/ all the small group work we’ve been doing? are there other things you’d like to be doing in class that we haven’t done yet, or that you’d like to do more of?
I like the small group work. It keeps the conversation intimate and stimulating. I feel like much more gets discussed in the small groups than ever gets presented to the class through quick answers and writing on the board, but I can’t decide whether I like that or not. I do think that distilling each conversation into a cohesive summary for the class helps us cover more ground than we do in group discussions.
4. what concrete suggestions do you have in particular about wordpress functionality? (Laura and Anne have started a log here….)
I like WordPress, but I wish that there was some way to more easily access the write a post and write a page buttons that I can only seem to fine on that one entry page before clicking the visit the website button.
5. what has your experience been with posting and receiving on-line commentary on your papers?
I find the written commentary much more helpful than the on-line commentary. Posting is always a bit iffy with whether it all works out or not in the end, but as long as you keep perfecting it in the preview window and keep a look out for accidentally deleted titles it usually works. I’m always a bit nervous that something will go wrong though and that does delay the posting of the paper at times.

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