Engaged Reader
Reading techniques that helped me be an engaged reader.
Engaged Reader
“Practice metacognitive reading of a variety of texts, both public discourse and academic discourse. Develop habits for engaged reading” -- Haas (course objective)
During week 2, we were assigned our first reading and video assignment. We watched a lecture by Kilbourne that argued the public pedology of advertisements are "Killing Us Slowly" as the title of her lecture implies. We were also assigned to read an essay by Haas and Trapedo, which talked about Disney films and how they play an important role in teaching gender roles, although these lessons have changed throughout the years.
While doing these assignments, I learned how to be an engaged reader because I was forced to make annotations as I read, or watch the assignments. Through the lecture, I learned how to identify important ideas throughout the lectures, which helped me write my paragraphs about the concepts developed in Kilbourne's video at the end of the week. Through the essay, I learned how to make connections to my life. This allowed me to connect to the text and the same technique helped me write my discussion for the end of the week as well. These techniques helped me understand the text better and helped me understand why they related back to the central question of the class, how does public pedology affect our concepts of beauty and gender roles.
Advertisements and society often emphasize that only thin girls are beautiful; “On the deepest level, the obsession with thinness is about cutting girls down to size”(17:14). Kilbourne mentions this to reveal why advertisements are killing us, it is causing girls to go to extreme lengths to become nothing. -- Vivian Vu (myself)
This is annotation from Kilbourne's lecture, Killing Us Slowly. I chose this annotation because it was a idea that Kilbourne presented that stood out when I was listening to her lecture. While hearing this, I had a sad realization that what she's saying was true, girls were striving to be nothing and it was something that I could relate to.
Hi Vivian, I really like the excerpt you added in the middle of the blog. I never thought of using something like that, but it definitely adds to your blog as it makes it visually amusing.
I have the same feeling as you when I doing this week's assignment and I think this is super helpful that made me become an engaged reader even I have not there yet. I also annotated the Killing Us Softyly film because I think this is a nice video that talks about the gender role in society.