English 1102: Television and Feminism

Dr. Casey Alane Wilson • Georgia Institute of Technology

Category: Intro Post (Page 5 of 5)

The First of Many

Hello readers! My name is Michael Zimmerman Lemus, and I am an aerospace engineering major with an anticipated graduation in 2022.

In high school, I took a wide breadth of english classes. I took everything from  traditional literature classes to Future World/Dystopian literature and creative writing classes. This has allowed me to learn a lot about myself as a writer and reader over the past few years. Thus, I’ve learned that I can do quite well when it comes to some aspects of communication, and not quite as well in others.

I’ve found that I’m quite comfortable when it comes to analytical writing (sadly, that doesn’t exactly mean I enjoy it…), public speaking, and visual/technological communication. However, when it comes to aspects of writing creatively, I tend to encounter some hurdles. I often have trouble getting myself out of the “analytical writing box” and into the “creative” one. Over the years, we’ve been so trained to analyze someone else’s writing that, when it comes to creating our own from scratch, I often run into trouble pushing myself to take a different perspective. Nevertheless, I hope that in ENGL 1102 this semester, I’ll be able to push myself to merge both analytical and creative writing to do assignments such as these upcoming blog post assignments, and I hope to push myself beyond my analytical limits.

I’ve definitely had my share of TV shows which I’ve binged and fallen in love with (Breaking Bad, Stranger Things, 3%, to name my favorites..), but I don’t consider myself a TV fanatic. If I get into a TV show I tend to find it difficult to put down, but I haven’t exactly had time to put myself in that position these last few years so it’s been hard for me to get to that point. I guess, in many cases, I’ve tried to avoid getting into that position out of my desire to focus on other things.

The TV show I have chosen to watch is called Westworld. The show is about a futuristic amusement park where high-paying guests go to indulge in their wildest fantasies without repercussions. I chose this show because I have always enjoyed futuristic literature and television, and I know HBO tends to produce high quality stuff. I’m excited to start!

(Here’s my senior picture which apparently doesn’t look like me..tough)

Adventures of a sOpHoMoRe bY cReDiTs

Hey guys! Its ya boi Sunny Singh, back at it again with another youtub- I mean blog post. I’m a Mechanical Engineer and I am expected to graduated in 2022 but we all know that’s probably not gonna happen.

This is actually my first English course here at Tech, but I am super grateful that I got such an interesting theme (television and feminism) instead of the history of snails or something. I did take AP English Language and English Literature in high school and those really helped me hone my oral communication skills through the various discussions throughout the years. I feel most adept at communicating verbally because it allows for actual conversations and allows both persons to express their first and most natural thoughts on a subject. However, the element that I struggle with most is written communication. I feel that my ideas get lost in my thoughts before I am able to get them down on paper. This results in my writing being all over the place and simply not flowing. And besides not flowing I feel like writing is also the form of communication that I am most afraid to initiate. I don’t know what it is exactly, but maybe the thought of actual words being written down with pen and paper makes the ideas seem so permanent. I think this psychs me out because I feel like it must be perfect and then I end up not writing anything. So, I definitely hope to work on improving that element of communication this semester but I also want to refine my non-verbal skills because I feel like they can be a major sign of respect or disrespect so it could never hurt to make them better, or well try to at least.  

I was a very inconsistent TV fanatic in high school but I will say this last summer before college I did attempt to redeem myself. After dinner me and my brother would watch a few episodes of Gotham before going to bed and some nights those “few episodes” will turn into half a season and a bag of Takis mixed into a bowl of popcorn for the perfect spice-to-butter ratio. I prefer comedy and action TV shows but generally I will start a TV show, binge watch up to the latest season, forget about it, and then start over again with a new series.

I have chosen to review Fresh Off the Boat, which is basically about an immigrant kid trying to fit into American culture. I picked this show because I find the premise of the show to be extremely relatable and I think Randall Park is just hilarious. I’m excited to start watching and can’t wait to see what underlying messages the writers try to poke at through the comedy of the show! 

How I feel about getting to watch another TV show for class

Woman Up! Intro to Me ENG 1102

Hi, I’m Angelina Kim, a current Public Policy major with a minor in Spanish, and I plan to graduate by 2022.
This is my first English class at Georgia Tech. My other English classes have followed a more “traditional” route, meaning reading books, writing essays, and the occasional class discussion. I think the emphasis on developing writing skills in my former English classes brought me to become more comfortable with written communication. Writing is something that I’ve been practicing for quite some time, and I definitely enjoy expressing myself through it. The mode of communication that I feel most uncomfortable with is probably oral. I’m a naturally introverted person, so any form of oral communication requires a lot of preparation and practice from me. This is probably the one form of communication that I would love to improve this semester.
As for my TV experience, my parents cut off the cable around second grade, so my childhood was mostly deprived of TV. Thankfully, Netflix came into my world and filled the void. I had hours of free time everyday this summer, so Netflix was my best friend. I binged so many TV shows and definitely dropped quite a few of them. Usually I need to watch TV shows season by season as they come out or I start to lose interest or the motivation of continue. My favorites from this summer on Netflix were Tabula Rasa, Dark, and The 100.
I also watched Big Little Lies this summer which I think really fits with the theme of Television and Feminism. Definitely became one of my favorite TV shows along with True Detective. Unfortunately, it falls short of the minimum episode requirement for the shows to review, but I highly recommend it regardless. Great direction, cinematography, characters, script, editing…Basically everything you could want from a TV show.
The TV show I’ve chosen to review is The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt about a girl who chooses to reclaim her life after being rescued from a cult by going to New York City. I don’t really venture into comedy shows, and the ones that I’ve tried like The Office and Parks and Recreation have yet to capture my interest (BUT I’m very willing to give them another try). I think The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt could be a good leeway into comedy shows, so I’m very excited!

So excited to start Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt!

WHO AM I

Hey! I’m Frank Ketchum, a BME major here at tech. I’m looking at graduating in 2021 if I keep up the current pace.

I took English 1101 here last spring because I made the mistake of skipping out on AP Lang/Lit in high school. In the past, English courses have been like pulling teeth for me, which was a big part of my reasoning behind this choice. I’m in the STEM field for a reason- I don’t do well with digging into deeper meaning behind works of writing (just tell me what you mean!). I have to say I didn’t hate English 1, which was unexpected considering how much I usually dislike English classes. It forced me back to the roots of the composition process and allowed me to be a lot more free and involved in composition than English classes in the past, which I appreciated. I also enjoy how English classes here break away from the mold of traditional classes and focus on new things.

Me in high school English classes >:(

When it comes to communication, I’m pretty lacking. I especially struggle with written communication. Sometimes I can’t even bring myself to read over what I’ve already written because I hate it so much. However, this semester, I’m looking forward to improving all of my communication skills. Specifically, I want to improve on my oral communication. I enjoy speaking and talking with people, but I also feel like my oral communication skills could use some work. A proficiency in oral communication is very impressive in my opinion, and it would help me out a lot in the future.

Having an English class on television is going to be interesting, to say the least. I used to watch a lot of TV when I was younger, but more recently it’s lost its effect and television just hasn’t been doing it for me. I can’t find a series that keeps my attention for more than a couple episodes. I think this has to do with the fragmentation of the television industry and the move away from larger, higher-budget channels to more smaller networks, like Netflix. I’m also pretty new to feminism- I get the general idea and I’m down for it, but it just goes so much deeper than I initially expected. There are so many things to consider through the lens of feminism that I had never thought of.

I’ve chosen to review Fresh Off the Boat for my blogs this semester. It’s been on my list of things to watch for a while now, so this is the perfect opportunity to force myself to go ahead and watch it. It seems like a pretty funny and entertaining show, and I think it’ll also provide me some insight on how my experiences have differed from others’ based on my upbringing.

The Abridged Katie Chronicles

Hi – I’m Katie Roberts, a first year Biomedical Engineering student. I’m currently planning on graduating in 2022, but check back in 4 years to see if that actually happens.

My experience thus far with English classes has been typical – I read a lot, I annotated a lot, I analyzed a lot, and I mastered the formulaic 5-paragraph essay. I truly love reading and my Goodreads history will prove it. English 1102 – Television and Feminism will be my first GT English experience and my first class focused around a central theme where everything is interconnected. I really enjoy written communication, partly because its what I’ve practiced the most, but also because it allows me to reflect and then revisit my arguments. However, even though it is my favorite form of communication, I believe I can still become better at it – especially with more creative pieces. I really hope to strengthen my oral communication, as I dread speaking in front of crowds. I’ve made a lot of progress from when just commenting in class turned my face red and caused my entire body to shake, but I need to improve my ability to convey my arguments clearly through words.

I’ve watched TV my entire life – from the Disney Channel as a child to my current frequent Netflix binges. My TV habits encompass a wide variety of shows – from Madam Secretary to Parks and Recreation to Below Deck. Unpopular opinion: I love spoilers. I cannot watch an episode without stalking the wiki page or reading reviews online. This prevents me from watching shows live because I must know what happens before I watch it. I haven’t watched shows on a physical TV for over 4 years; I watch everything through my laptop. Furthermore, I definitely consider myself a feminist and try my best to stay well versed in everything surrounding that topic. My introduction to feminism stems from a gender studies unit two years ago: it opened my viewpoint to intersectionality and the important aspects of feminism that I had never considered before because I had never experienced them.

I have chosen to review The Mindy Project. It’s been in my personal queue for a long time and I’m excited to finally watch it. This show focuses on a New York based OB-GYN and her struggles within her practice and personal life. I’ll admit my primary motivation for choosing this show is because I’m thoroughly obsessed with The Office, and I’m hoping this show’s writing will fill my sassy humor quota. Also, based on my love of Greys and Scrubs, I evidently have a fascination with medical shows. To sum up: Mindy Kaling + medicine + comedy = strong contention for a new favorite show!

A picture of me at my first time visiting Georgia Tech’s campus

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.

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