kara's blog

the final portfolio is really under "Kara's Portfolio" (the midterm portfolio revised)

my video collage

My video collage was based upon the poem "A Blessing" by James Wright. The video collage acts as a visual narrative to enhance the lyrics of the poem, but hopefully it expresses several important themes as well. The first third of the video portrays the two ponies as lonely and disconnected from humans--longing for their attention, as seen from the lines:

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.

Going through my video collage, I noticed that my poem "A Blessing" by James Wright has themes of transcendentalism in it. As I was trying to gather images to portray the ending to this poem, I was curious as to how and why transcendentalism actually came about. The following website had some helpful information: here

There are several ways to explain the transcendentalist movement. For one, Americans had been freed from England's rule for several decades, and decided they wanted literary independence as well--something unprecedented and fresh. A group of mainly New Englanders were the ones to ignite this change.

When I signed up for this course, I was expecting a cut and dry elaboration and exploration of several "Great American Authors." In my mind, I imagined reading works by Hemingway, Frost, Emerson, and others, and then writing essays and evaluating these works. However, starting from day one, I was introduced to an entirely new way to approach literature. By experimenting with different types of technology, my classmates and I have been able to express our thoughts on literature in an innovative way. The application of technology to literature has been challenging at times because I am not familiar with all the mediums of communication, such as blogging, audio recording, sound editing, html format, and others. So while my work is not of expert quality, I feel more confident in my ability to use different media for the expression of my ideas and thoughts.

Advertisments such as the Russell & Bromley ad on page 341 often raises questions, sometimes concern, about the presentation of women in ads. Last semester, I did a research project on how the ads from the magazines Cosmopolitan (a popular women's mag) and Maxim (men's mag) portrayed female models (nudity, beauty type, body positioning, and facial expression). I only used full page ads and there were 112 from Cosmo and 71 from Maxim. The results are attached below if you're interested, and the results from the degree of nudity is most interesting to me, with Cosmo having 32.2% of their models "partially clad" or "nude" and Maxim having 78.9%, respectively.

Here's the 3rd (and final?) revision of Holden's profile. Not much changed from the 2nd one except for a few suggestions from Dan and a few format things. Let me know if there are any suggestions.

Since we've been talking about art and ways of expressing ideas and messages through principles of design, color, contrasts, lines, shapes, etc., I've become more aware of the messages that the pictures in chapter 12 are trying to portray. I feel that I have a starting point now from where I can dissect the meaning.

Picasso's The Frugal Repast stood out to me because of its obviously dreary and depressing tone. The title of this drawing could not say it any better. The situation in the drawing involves only a scarce portion of bread, 2 small glasses, and the frail couple--clearly demonstrating a frugal repast.

I loved this story because it was just very striking. The way the author portrays the speaker and his observations is captivating, mostly because the speaker is so enthralled by the girls that come into the store. Given the speaker's description of the "Queenie", however, I sensed that she may have been over-confident. "with the straps pushed off...kind of prim face...held her head so high her neck, coming up out of those white shoulders, looked kind of stretched" Possibly Queenie was portrayed this way by the author in order to inspire an alternative feeling in the readers, a feeling of "serves you right" when the manager looks down on her and suggests she wear more clothes. I know that's the way I sort of felt. But the way in which the speaker is so captivated by Queenie and her friends almost makes the reader sympathize for Queenie on the behalf of the speaker and his feelings for her.

hey, here's a possibility for the song, just a suggestion if yall still havent decided on one! :)
Lyrics

Song Clip

Robert Frost- "The Road Less Traveled"

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.