Sarah Machado
10/26/2014 09:49:29 pm
Sarah Machado
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Nicole Doniger
10/27/2014 01:11:52 am
Nicole Doniger
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Allison Stratton
10/27/2014 01:47:59 am
Allison Stratton
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Jessica St. George
10/27/2014 02:21:40 am
The article Tattoos of Epimenides was interesting. I liked all the talk about freak shows because that is something that I am really interested in. I have always loved things that make people different or even seen as abnormal. I like the part where they are talking about the fact that our society wants some kind of difference in order to separate people and it said that “freak shows filled a gap that they did not create…Freak shows were a performance of one kind of imaginary difference in an effort to assert another.” They then went on to talk about what is considered normal and what is considered abnormal. Who exactly made that distinction? What are the qualifications for being normal vs abnormal? In the article it says that over time our idea of what might be normal or abnormal usually changes.
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Jessica St. George
10/27/2014 02:22:18 am
“Breathe Upon Us an Even Flame” focuses on the mythical figure Hephaestus and the idea that we should celebrate ours and others differences. I really appreciate the idea that we should celebrate difference rather than frown upon it. Everyone has something about them that is different but a lot of people are too afraid to do anything about it or use it to their advantage. They are afraid that they are going to be looked down on by society. They shouldn’t be. People’s differences it what makes them unique and sometimes causes them to have certain skills that they may not normally have otherwise. This article specifically focuses on the idea of physical difference and how the Greek God Hephaestus was revered for his difference. This God is usually depicted as having some sort of disability that makes it difficult for him to walk. He is usually sitting in a proto wheelchair that is a sort of chariot and holding tools. This suggests that he built the chariot himself in order to make himself mobile which would be more difficult otherwise. People did not necessarily see it as a bad thing that he was lame. They instead focus on how smart he is. People found the positives in these kinds of impairments rather than only seeing the negative. For example, it said that sometimes he was depicted as having feet that point away from each other or go backwards. Instead of seeing it as he cannot walk they saw it as he could move from side to side quicker.
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Shannon Olenick
10/28/2014 08:41:44 am
I found “Unruly Bodies: The Rhetorical Domestication of Twenty-First-Century Veterans of War” by Paul Achter to be very interesting and relevant to our society today. It makes important points about the ways in which the government, media, etc can manipulate the portrayal of bodies to fit their own agenda. This is discussed in regards to veterans, but I think it can be applied to nearly any group. As we have discussed before, in regards to Trayvon Martin in particular, it is alarming to me that the content which we are exposed to can be so manipulated.
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Kailey Brennan
10/28/2014 11:04:42 am
"Unruly Bodies: The Rhetorical Domestication of Twenty-First-Century Veterans of War" by Paul Achter, gave me a different out look on bodies and rhetorics that we haven't encountered yet in this class. I am familiar with the idea of soldiers being the bodies used in war, the ones that sacrifice themselves for the freedom of the rest of the country. I have always had a great respect for the military and consider myself to be very grateful to all the men and woman who have died to keep America safe.
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Amy Pistone
10/28/2014 02:05:53 pm
Amy Pistone
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Rebecca Gagne
10/28/2014 04:26:01 pm
Rebecca Gagne
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Sarah Machado
10/29/2014 12:08:55 am
Sarah Machado
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Hailee Hurwitz
10/29/2014 12:35:08 am
Hailee Hurwitz
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Nicole Doniger
10/29/2014 12:49:41 am
Nicole Doniger
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Rebecca Gagne
11/1/2014 04:07:57 am
Critical Response: Imprisoned Bodies
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Shannon Olenick
11/2/2014 07:15:47 am
The first page of “Imprisoned Bodied: The Life-World of the Incarcerated” by Drew Leder blew my mind. The United States holds more prisoners in California than “France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Singapore, and the Netherlands combined”. This is crazy! We have five percent of the world’s population but twenty five percent of the worlds prisoners. To me, that just screams that we are doing something wrong.
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Kailey Brennan
11/2/2014 11:50:12 am
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Amy Pistone
11/2/2014 04:07:33 pm
Amy Pistone
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Sarah Machado
11/2/2014 11:19:06 pm
Sarah Machado
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Nicole Doniger
11/2/2014 11:41:47 pm
Nicole Doniger
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Allison
11/3/2014 12:55:27 am
Allison Stratton
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Shannon Olenick
11/4/2014 03:54:31 am
I have always found plastic surgery to be morbidly interesting, so I really enjoyed “Attitudes Toward Cosmetic Surgery Patients: The Role of Culture and Social Contact”. The article focuses on a study and the theories which are proven throughout this study. It looks at people’s opinions of others with plastic surgery in a few countries.
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Kailey Brennan
11/4/2014 08:48:21 am
Kailey Brennan
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Amy Pistone
11/4/2014 11:53:24 am
Amy Pistone
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Sarah Machado
11/4/2014 10:52:03 pm
Sarah Machado
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Nicole Doniger
11/4/2014 10:55:29 pm
Nicole Doniger
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Allison stratton
11/5/2014 12:57:31 am
Allison Stratton
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Jessica St. George
11/5/2014 01:29:27 am
In Unruly Bodies I like the connection that they made between the body of the vet returned from war and the body of the war itself. I like the idea that you can tell the state of the war from the injuries of veterans that are returning. So many vets come back with various injuries like missing limbs or parts of them now being deformed by one thing or another. My cousin had to come back from the war because he got a chunk of his leg taken out. I also like the idea that they want to show the pain that these vets are suffering to America. It is true that the government seems to be trying to keep us desensitized to all of the injuries and pain that the vets are coming back with. There are so many people coming back in wheelchairs and with missing limbs that now have to adjust their lifestyle to fit these injuries. The only way that people ever really know or hear about it is if they know someone or if it was briefly mentioned on the news. I personally have no idea just how many vets are being injured but I am sure there is a lot of them. Not to mention all of the ones that have died or are dying currently. But they are talking about specific hospitals for military personnel. Just thinking about the number of people that a hospital can hold is terrible, let alone thinking about an entire hospital full of injured vets. That is a lot of people. But we are lucky to even hear about one or two of them. At this point is it even necessary to keep sending soldiers over if so many are coming back in this state? What about the enemy? Do they have the same amount of people with injuries? Do they have more? Do they have less? We don’t really hear about any of these things in the media but they seem to have no problem telling us the silly little things going on in the lives of celebrities. With so many vets returning and then going around to protest the war, shouldn’t this say something? Thomas Young is one of the ones in the documentary going around criticizing the war but it isn’t just him. There are others that wrote books about it and going around touring schools and other places about it. All of the vets I know that have just come back protest it as well. If the people who love their country enough to sacrifice themselves in the first place are coming back and protesting about the war, shouldn’t we listen and do something about it? The problem is that not enough people know vets or know about the struggles that they have been having. No one knows the number of vets that are protesting because no one really talks about it. Especially not the media. It even mentions in the text that the government and media hold back these things about the veterans. They pick and choose the veterans that they use and the injuries that they have. They make vets injuries look less bad then they are so that America will not lose support for the war.
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Jessica St. George
11/5/2014 01:29:55 am
In Imprisoned Bodies I think it is interesting that mentions the fact that crime has decreased in the last nine years and yet we have seen a threefold increase in the number of inmates in a prison. That just sounds rather concerning and ridiculous at the same time. It mentions the fact that a lot of the people being arrested have to do with the war on drugs. I understand that crime deserves a punishment, I just don’t like the idea that people arrested for drugs and people arrested for murder end up in the same place. That does not seem quite fair to me. I mean the seriousness of both crimes is completely different and yet both sets of people get arrested and put in prison. I also thought that it was interesting to learn that 63% of inmates are black or Hispanic. That makes me want to know why. Are we just being racist or are they actually more likely to commit these crimes?
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Jessica St. George
11/5/2014 01:30:31 am
In Attitudes Toward Cosmetic Surgery Patients I did expect it to talk about how in general people view someone willing to get cosmetic surgery in a negative light. I mean there are some people who definitely go overboard with it. I personally think it depends on the circumstance of why that person is getting cosmetic surgery. Is it just because they feel like it? Is there a medical reason? Is there something about themselves that they absolutely hate and cannot stand? I think that if they are doing it for a specific reason then it should not necessarily be seen as a bad thing. If someone is just getting cosmetic surgery all the time just because then I mean good for them I guess but I don’t really see the point. I mean maybe they have their reasons too but they just don’t seem as justified as the other reasons.
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Rebecca Gagne
11/9/2014 11:51:21 am
Rebecca Gagne
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November 2014
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