English 1102: Television and Feminism

Dr. Casey Alane Wilson • Georgia Institute of Technology

Month: August 2018

English 110Who? Meet Yasamin!

Hi! My name is Yasamin. I’m a first year Public Policy major, and I will be tentatively graduating in 2022.

Here’s a recent picture of me. (Sorry about the random girl in the background.)

English 1102 with Dr. Wilson is my first English course at Tech. It’s also the first time I’ve ever really looked at the subject from a multimodal point of view. In high school I took the standard AP Lang and AP Lit, but both of them focused heavily on analysis and discussion of written literature. I’m very excited to take an English course this semester that isn’t structured around passing an AP Exam. Despite being in a television oriented class, I personally love written and oral communication. There’s a strange beauty in the ability to evoke compelling visuals through written word; the best books take advantage of their written medium so beautifully that they paint a literal picture in the reader’s imagination. Additionally, I’m in awe of orators who through the power of rhetoric are able to captivate hundreds of people with spoken word alone. I’m personally no master at oral communication (English is hard!!), so I sincerely hope that I can improve upon that medium using the skills I learn from this class!

I don’t think there was ever a point in time where I remember not following a TV show. From being a kid and watching soap operas with my mom (she’s never missed an episode of The Bold and The Beautiful in 30 years), to binging shows like Pushing Daisies, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Channel 4’s Utopia, I’ve always found a way to occupy my time with some form of televised program. A few more of my personal favorites include Gilmore Girls, Parks and Recreation, The Good Place, and Arrested Development. As for the other theme of this class, feminism, I’m not the most well versed in it but I am trying my hardest to become educated and aware!

I have decided to review the show Search Party. It’s currently available to stream on the TBS website, but fair warning, the show is a little explicit. Search Party follows a group of four friends in search of a missing acquaintance from college. (If you think Scooby Doo would have been really cool if it was rated R, this show is for you.) I was instantly attracted to the show because it was so different from anything I have recently watched. I also have to admit that I binged the first season in less than 24 hours. Search Party has such a compelling premise and such great representation across its characters, so I’m excited to delve into analyzing it!

See? Major Scooby Doo vibes.

HELLO and WELCOME

Hey I’m Amanda McAuley and welcome to my blog!! I’m a Chemical Engineering major on track to (hopefully) graduate in 2022! Here is a picture of me considering this is an introduction blog post!

This is me #reppin’ #gatech

 

            This is my first English class at Tech (well it is also my first semester), but last year I took AP Lit and LOVED dissecting books and making arguments. Over the years I have become better at communicating verbally and emotionally. I can make a point and provide evidence, but I can also read people’s emotions to ensure that those are considerations in how I’m communicating. On the opposite side of communication, I’m a terrible listener. I love to talk and inject my opinion, but this year I need to focus on thinking about the things my peers say instead of focusing on what I want add. If I can learn how to listen to others, then I can further develop my ideas and consider more options.

             As far as my experience with the course topic, I have plenty. I’ve had my fair share of binging sessions like everybody else, but more importantly I was brought up in a family that valued Feminism. My dad is the biggest feminist I know, which in my opinion is super cool. He has always exposed me and my sisters to ideas of female empowerment and encouraged me to be aware of discrimination so that I can avoid just standing and watching it happen. I’m super excited to further shape my beliefs and ideals from what we read and discuss in class about Feminism and Television.

        For my blog, I have chosen to watch Fresh off the Boat! It is a series that focuses on an immigrant family in America during the 1990s and their struggles to adapt to a new lifestyle (with humor of course). This sitcom is about embracing the new and retaining the old and I think that I will really enjoy it! I’ve also had multiple people recommend it to me, but I haven’t had time to watch it yet, so I’m planning on killing two birds with one stone! I also really love shows and movies that are based off books/memoirs, so this show also appealed to me from that angle also !!

This makes me super excited to start watching the show because who doesn’t love an American                             Gothic spin off

 

Hot Topics Blog

By: Kate Stelzel

All About Me

Welcome all to my first ever blog post! Thanks for tuning in, I am so excited to share my experiences with you all. So, I am a psychology major at Georgia Tech (C/O 2022!!) and I am super excited to be enrolled in ENGL 1102 – TV and feminism.

In high school I was a part of the IB program and was enrolled in IB Lang HL for 2 years. This class involved a lot of speaking, writing, reading, and analyzing. This was especially hard for me because almost once a month we had to give some type of speech on a paper that we were analyzing. Now, I had no problem analyzing the paper, but being able to speak in front of my peers and talk about it scared me to death. Although it is something I got better at, it is still my weakest point and defiantly something that I am nervous for in ENGL 1102. I know that in this course I will be able to experience an English class a little differently in the fact that I will be dealing with all the factors of W.O.V.E.N and hopefully that will allow me to branch out and become more comfortable doing things I’m not as used to!

BUT something I am used to is the topics of this class and it’s one of the main reasons I am so excited to be in this class. I am a huge feminist and honestly, I was a little scared to take this class because I thought I might go crazy feminist on everyone… but I’m controlling myself so far! Also, I am defiantly a huge television fanatic, I love binge watching a full series… yes, I have a problem and no I will not fix it! And the show I am super excited to start very soon is New Girl. I have heard so many good things about this show, but I just kept not finding time to watch it. And now it’s my homework to watch it so I guess I don’t have an excuse anymore! I have seen so many memes and gifs about the characters in New Girl and honestly, they are so relatable.

I cannot wait to start the show and I hope you all stay tuned for my next blog!!

Peace Out

The Will Marchant Story: Abridged and Stuff

I’m Will Marchant, and I am a public policy major that will graduate in 2022. English courses tended to be my favorite classes in high school, and this is my first and sadly last English class at Georgia Tech. I imagine my ideal minor would be english or screenwriting related. My favorite form of communication is that of the individual or small group conversation. Currently, I am paid to speak with voters about a political candidate, and a good conversation with a voter makes my day. Similarly, making a few people laugh will do the same. When the group is larger however, I become nervous, especially when I am directly addressing a crowd or class. That is something I must improve with.
I imagine I have watched more TV than most of the class. This is not bragging. Trust me. This is not bragging. Atlanta, Ballers, Master of None, Opposite Sex, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Fleabag, House Hunters, Chopped, House of Cards, The West Wing, Veep, Silicon Valley, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Queer Eye, Ugly Delicious, F is for Family, Bojack Horseman, The Good Place, Big Mouth, Ozark, Last Chance U, Unbreakable with Kimmy Schmidt, The Office, Parks and Rec, Arrested Development, Workaholics, The IT Crowd, Mad Men, Luther, and anything with Anthony Bourdain all come to mind as shows I love. I notice some trends in what I have watched. Serious shows, unless they are really good, tend to not hold me in. There is no way I am going to watch another crime show, but I loved Luther. I love funny TV shows with smart writing, and I also like Stand Up which is on TV sometimes and meets the funny and smart writing criteria. I also do not know many people who have seen many of those, so if anyone wants to talk after class about any of them, I’d love digging up my thoughts on all of those shows. I also watched shows like 30 Rock and Red Dwarf when I was young, and those shows might have been the ones that turned me onto valuing funny people and funny shows as much as I do. I cannot laugh at plays or musicals, and I feel like enjoying such pure comedy so early could be blamed.
I have chosen to review Broad City because I have seen a few episodes, but I know it is meant to be better watched in order because of its clever writing. It stars some of the funniest people in TV as they play regular dysfunctional friends in NYC, which does not sound original but somehow is.

See the source image

This is Abbi Jacobson and Llana Glazer from the show Broad City.

A Bit About Me including Sweeping Metaphors, Elevated Vocabulary, and Ample Alliteration

My name is Jadah Peters, and I am majoring in chemical engineering. With finger crossed, I anticipate to graduate the year of 2022. This class is my first and last English class at Tech. In high school English classes, I did well, but I found them boring. In terms of the WOVEN forms of communication, I’m best at written and visual. The main benefit of writing is that I have significant control what voice I use. Most of the time for formal essays, I write in a completely different voice that is sort of pompous and dramatic. That voice has actually served me very well in several language arts writings. I find it humorous to write papers on thematic elements of literature because it’s my style to use sweeping metaphors, elevated vocabulary, and ample alliteration that would be utterly ridiculous to communicate in that way face to face. Another writing benefit is that I can edit it to make it as perfect as possible. With oral communication, when the words are spoken they can’t be erased. Another thing that is not easily erased, but is sometimes editable is visual communication. I took photography through high school; it became my main mode of expression. Every picture I created was a part of me. With other visual methods like posters and infographics, I have a god eye for color combinations and am very meticulous placement and details. On the other hand, I need to improve my oral and electronic communication. I’m very self-conscious when speaking in front of most people. I’m always afraid of saying something stupid, mispronouncing words, and being misinterpreted. However, I am fairly good at speeches because I have adequate time to prepare for them. Though, with day to day conversations or even interviews where I am unsure of what might be asked, I tend to fail to say what I want to. With writing that almost never happens. The mirror side of writing is reading which is what I tend to do instead of watching TV. Since I must watch TV for this class,  I have chosen to review The Bold Type for pretty superficial reasons: it was one of the only series that I had heard of before, it didn’t have too many episodes, and it seems like the characters will probably be relatable. Because  I wanted my opinions and analyses to be my own, I didn’t want to read too much about the show before watching it. Instead, I watched a portion of the pilot and it seems like the show will be a basic story about three best friends starting off their careers, attempting to adult, and following their dreams or something. From just 10 minutes of the pilot, I can already tell that the show will be very feminist forward and liberal leaning in its coverage of issues. I am looking forward to analyzing this show, and I may even be able to incorporate some sweeping metaphors, elevated vocabulary and ample alliteration.

This is a picture I took of myself for my photography class. I put my DSLR camera on tripod and then set a timer.

Welcome to English 1102!

If you’re in sections H, I, or W this fall, you’re in the right place! This blog is going to be our home for all television reviews and public-facing research documentation this semester. Go ahead and make yourself comfortable–I look forward to reading your work this semester!

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