Third Quarter Feedback!

1. what connections have you seen among all the imaginative representations of gender and technology that we’ve looked @?

It’s been really interesting seeing the agency of gender. In Metropolis, Maria had a lot of power, and seemed to be the primary motivator of the workers. In The Handmaid’s Tale, it was a society centered around women but no one actually seemed to have any power. And in Watchmen, I wasn’t sure WHAT connections to draw between gender and power; certainly sex was used as a weapon, and sexuality, but I wasn’t sure who was powerful or where that tied into gender.

I think the big thing is that gender and technology are both used as tools in these stories, and that depending on the shape of gender, which technologies are useful, and how they are used, changes. For example, in HmT, the shape of gender says that women shouldn’t use anesthetics for birth; this is just one of the ways in which gender and technology interplay in these stories.

2. how do these works contribute to your understandings of gender, technology or the relations between them?

In terms of gender and technology, I think The Handmaid’s Tale had the biggest impact on me, and it was interesting seeing a society in which the very methodical control of both could wholly paralyze civil liberties. It makes me speculate as to how each attribute can be manipulated in order to affect the other, and demonstrates some rather frightening conclusions.

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 did like the small groups. I actually really liked the dynamic created by splitting up into groups by major, though maybe I just liked my personal group. If we’re to do random groups, I think they should be switched with some regularity. I do question whether Watchmen was really informative for the purposes of gender and technology; though I got more out of it than I expected to., I just believe there are probably other texts more worthwhile. Otherwise, I think things have been great, and it’s been really exciting talking about these works.

4. what concrete suggestions do you have in particular about wordpress functionality? (Laura and Anne have started a log here….)

I’ve had a few issues posting pictures directly to the page recently (as opposed to in a link), but I think I’ll survive – I haven’t looked into it deeply enough to even know if I’m going about it correctly.