WWW www.habermas.org

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: October 18, 2005
Latest Update: October 18, 2005
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Topic of the Week:Thinking About Our Need to Be Aware: Proposition 65 Warning

Our adventure with Propositon 65, passed in 1967, has led to adventures like guelphs in Guelphland. We've discovered Proposition 65 warnings on chidren's toys, halloween favors, cups in our campus bookstore, plastic cups in Rite Aid, and, would you believe, a cup on the desk of an official in the Health Department. A friend had given it to him, and my call prompted him to lift it and look underneath. Just like the white rabbit in Guelphland, there was a Proposition 65 warning sticker!

I'll recount my adventure in detail shortly. But meanwhile, suffice it to say, Dear Habermas now has a program for developing community awareness of the dangers of toxic chemicals in many of the daily products we seek, especially at low prices. We'll all need to know what the law is and how it has been so sorely neglected. Citizens, take care of yourselves. Our government is preoccupied elsewhere.

More soon . . . jeanne

NEWS, Announcements, and

Current Events Discussion Topics:

Revised Syllabi for jeanne's Fall 2005 Classes
Instructions for Tutoring Requests and to Upload Learning Records

New Discussion Index, starrted with Rebekah's review of American History X and Life Without Parole.

• New Yahoo Group: Transparent Learning Measurement

  We have created this site for students who have questions, would like someone to help by reading over their work, would like some practice in using the site, aren't clear on a specific concept and would like one of us to explain it in different words, etc.

  This is also the site on which you should ask me to put up a specific Message No. that you would like to use for your learning record. This'll make it much easier for me and Susan than trying to pull your messages for learning records from the general discussion.

  For instructions see Tutoring:

• Revised syllabi for jeanne's Fall 2005 classes, given registration problems. The lectures will be rearranged by topic. The notes by date given. The texts by text. But I won't be able to do that until Friday.

• Learning Records for jeanne's classes, Fall 2005:

  Rosters for Learning Records
  Updated to Late Add List - everyone should be on roster this time - jeanne

  • Learning Records for Statistics, Sociology 220-01, Fall 2005 Updated October 15, 2005.
  • Learning Records for Moot Court, Sociology 370-01, Fall 2005 Updated October 15, 2005.
  • Learning Records for Sociology of the Helping Professions, Sociology 386-01, Fall 2005 Updated October 15, 2005.
  • Learning Records for Special Topics: Love 1A, Sociology 395-01, Fall 2005 Updated October 15, 2005.
  • Learning Records for Graduate Special Topics: Love 1A, Sociology 595-02, Fall 2005 Updated October 15, 2005

• Instructions page for joining transform_dom and transspan

  • Link for joining transform_dom: Fixed this link. jeanne

    
    Click to join transform_dom

Famous People and Concepts We Should Have Heard Of, But Often Haven't.

People


• Names to Know when Reading about Postmodernism, Postmodern Therapies, or PMTH Good quick reference list.

• Susan Brownmüller
• Catharine MacKinnon
• Modigliani - Italian artist of lengthened silhouettes.
• Botero - Artist from Ecuador of broadened silhouettes.

Concepts:

• Rape as violence - Brownmüller
• Rape as sex - MacKinnon

Jeanne's Lectures for Fall 2005

• Lectures, Lecture Notes, Text Lectures

  Fall 2005:

  • Fall 2005 Letters to My Students: jeanne's World and Welcome to It
  • Application Lectures on Current Events in Chronological Order
  • Lecture Notes in Class Order
  • Text Summaries in Text Order
  • Self Tests in I. Activites Order; II. Class Order and; III. Text Order

  Self Tests Posted Week of October 9, 2005

  • On Making a Box
  • Family Control and Child Violence Meanwhile seeIndex and articles on issue.Will revise as soon as I can catch up. jeanne

  Lectures Posted for Week of October 9, 2005

  • Lecture 18: Program Disorder At Clinic, Hurdles to Clear Before Medicaid Care By Richard Pérez-Peña Backup. On the backup I have been highlighting passages. We want to talk about the issues raised there and in the rest of the article. jeanne

  • Lecture 17: Making a Box Only one question for all classes on this one. Read the opening introduction for considerations. Why on earth would you want to make a box, and how on earth does that relate to sociology, social relations, leadership in agencies, love 1A, or statistics?? What does any of this have to do with outreach to our community?

  • Lecture 16: Art as a Stimulus to Discourse on Social Issues Questions not up yet.

    Hidden in Plain Sight: Unity, Cloaked in a Web of Camouflage Article by Roberta Smith in NY Times, Friday, October 7, 2005. Backup.

  Lecture Notes

  Index of Lecture Notes for Fall 2005

  • Lecture Notes from Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, October 4, 5, and 6, 2005

  Text Lectures

• Index for Text Lectures

  • Up soon.

  Visual Sociology

  
  Photography by Cisco Dietz © of the
  Chiapas of Day of the Dead.
  • History of Day of the Dead AZCentral.com. Good source, suggstions for arts and crafts.

  • What do Mexicans celebrate on the "Day of the Dead?" by Ricardo J. Salvador. I found this on the school websites of Iowa State University. One perspective of Day of the Dead.

  • Van Gogh's Drawings
    

    Van Gogh's Vestibule of the Asylum
    From New York Times, Art section, Friday, October 14, 2005

    I know this isn't art class and that most of you are not artists. But learning to see as an artist sees will help you see sociologically as well as aesthetically. Remember the rows of chairs. Whether you consciously notice them or not, they deliver status and power messages, and your unconscious mind processes all those messages. (Bruce Lipton, Biology of Belief)

    Notice that Van Gogh, even though he was greatly influenced by Japanese painting with its blocks of color, does not use solid blocks of color. He draws or paints in lines that give depth and color variation, adding the complexity of learned technique. Look closely at his technique here. Try it with some of the things you decorate. Look at how I used a pattern on this week's painting to add the same kind of depth and textural interest. You could use a stamp for that purpose. Try it.

  • Little Nemo in Slumberland, just published reproduction of a comic from 100 years ago. Marvelous reviews.
    

    

    What are you going to remember of the world of color and line and stories 50 years from now?

    Little Nemo in Slumberland The just-published book by Winsor McCay at Sunday Press Books. I was delighted by the long legs of the cranes and the wonderfully imaginative idea of doing a dream sequence. This is the first time I've ever seen Little Nemo, but I thought many of you with kids would like it. Maybe you could use that technique in some of your art work. Making the legs really long. Exaggerating width or length is typical of many artists' techniques. Modigliani, long. Botero, wide.

  • Learning to Use Art as a Tool for Discourse

    • Index of Art Techniques for Naked Space Exhibits, Virtual and Real

      • Index of Art Techniques for the Computer that you can use for the naked space exhibit

      • Index of Art Techniques that jeanne knows and that you can use for the naked space exhibit

    Our Naked Space Exhibit on Love 1A is now started on the Internet. Visit it by clicking on the hot links on the image map below. Remember, you can determine a hot link by running your cursor over the image until a hand appears. Click where the hand is. And start thinking out of the box.

    

    Invitation and Image Map for The Naked Space Exhibit for Fall 2005 Love 1A

    You might want to look at the Spring 2004 Exhibit Online:

    Invitation to Naked Space Exhibit

    
    Link anywhere on the invitation to enter the exhibit.

    • Hypertext Poem, Freeing the Feminine Other, Spring 2004
    • Table of Links to Contents

  Academic Support and Resource Links

  • A Range of Sources on Global Info

    Left/Right Perspectives - Cursor - New York Times - The National Review
    Arts and Letters Daily - The Economist - The Sierra Club - The Guardian
    Wall Street Journal - The Weekly Standard - The Nation - The Cato Institute (Libertarian)
    BBC NEWS | Americas - truthout - Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles
    Los Angeles Times - Chicago Tribune - La Opinion - The Washington Post
    Cursor's Al Jazeera Archive - Ha'aretz - Palestine Monitor - Palestine Report

    Indymedia - Mother Jones - BBC News - New Profile - KPFK Progressive Radio
    Progressive Sociologists Network Environmental Working Group - Mirror of Justice

  • Mentoring

    Graduate Exams Study

    • University of Chicago Prelim Study
    • Revised Syllabi for jeanne's Fall 2005 Classes
      
    • Instructions for Tutoring and Learning Records Requests

      Some older files not yet revised for Fall 2005, but useful.

    • How to Navigate the Web Site
      
    • Mentoring Help for New Students with Frequently Asked Questions
      
    • Mentoring Help for Returning Students with More Frequently Asked Questions
      
    • Shared Reading Suggestions
    • Learning Styles

    • Home Page for transform-dom You can read all the messages on Transforming Dominant Discourse from this page. Just click on messages in the left hand frame. You can read the messages, even if you're having difficulty signing up.

    Preparing for Graduate Study:

  • Test Prep Preview Joshua L. Stewart, recommended this site because it has free practice tests. If you're thinking of taking the GRE, the LAST, or any other graduate entry test, this might be a good place to gather some early information. Joshua suggested it for Praxis Practice, but a quick first look suggests they don't mean by praxis what we do. Check it out, anyway, if you have some spare time. jeanne

• Resource Literacy

  • Urban Legends Reference Pages. They post rumors and scams and phony e-mails circulating, to offer you a quick check. It worked for me. I entered "Fat Boy" as a google seacrch, and when I saw the Snopes.com link, I knew it would help, and it did. To not check your sources is as grievous as to plagiarize someone else's information and writing. the-artists.org Good quick reference site with many of the artists, art schools, and visual approaches to present social issue that we discuss. Added April 8, 2005.

  • Plagiarism Watch www.streetgangs.com site. The intelligent and effective use of resources means that you have to be careful not to plagiarize other people's material. We have several files on plagiarism, but I think the one that might make the most sense to you is this complaint on streetgangs.com. They give you samples of sites that have taken their material without citation, even at colleges, and they also give you examples of sites that have used their material with proper attribution. I find the irony poetic, and hope that their message will get through to you the importance of attribution. Dr. O'Connor on his Mega Criminal Justice site led me to streetgangs.com and noted that others frequently hack into the site. For that reason I have created a backup copy for your use in case you cannot access the actual site. Please be sure to attribute any citation to streetgangs.com. jeanne Backup.

Using Academic Language Effectively

Merriam-Webster Dictionary Search:

and Careers

• Resumes:

  • College Journal Resume Suggestions . . . Backup

• Letters of Recommendation:

  • Letters of Recommendation: How to get me to respond to your request. Many of you need letters. If you will follow this format, I can do them quickly and make them good.
  • Dog Letters If you do not give me adequate information, but do manage to get my attention, you may end up with a dog letter. That is a letter that says that you work well with people, that you are enthusiastic, that you persist at getting things done, and that everyone likes you. Of course, my dog gets along well with people, brings his ball to them, is enthusiastic, and persists at getting them to take his ball. Everyone likes my dog. That's a dog letter. It's so general it could be about my dog. jeanne

• Career Options You Might Not Have Considered

  • visual media and their interdependence with other means of knowing to understand that we are not totally rational creatures deciding things apart from our feelings and values. Wolfowitz (new President of the World Bank to aid developing countries AND principle advocate of the Iraq War) might feel very differently when he is exposed to visual and aural images of the poor developing countries that have not before been his primary concern. So we want to know how best to present those developing countries visually. And we might find that we can have a career doing that sort of thing, so it does reflect on us as individuals. Added April 2, 2005.

Sneaky Strokes and Flying Good Dogs

Flying Dog is also a painting by Zhang Kai. Best I've ever come across to illustrate our site with magic numbers and unicorns and whipped cream cats and now, flying dogs:

• Index of Nice Things We've Said to Each Other

• Flying Good Dogs: Whenever something happens in class that works out well, that inspires you, that helps in studying, whatever, take a few minutes to send us an e-mail. We'll post it where all of us can learn from it, including other teachers.

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