This week I was only able to attend class on Tuesday because I was in Georgia for basketball… On Tuesday Professor cummings was there and talked to our class about Bourdieu. I have to say that I did not enjoy this class as much as class when Rog is there. No offence to Dr. Cummings but how she started class off and how she taught the class was not as interesting/exciting/fun as rog makes class nor was it taught in a way for us to have a better understanding. Having this class with a different professor really helped me to realize how happy I am to have Rog for a professor for this particular class and how much easier he makes things make sense just by the format of class as well as explaining and how he relates things to different ideas that I am more familiar with. Anyways… Dr. Cumming started class off first by giving a little background information on Bourdieu. She told us that Bourdieu argues that judgments of taste are related to social positions. She said that Bourdieu is a social scientist and he what he wanted to do was combine interviews, social science and methodology. He is listed as the second most cited author in the humanities, but he is a social scientist. It She said that is primarily because he is a public intellectual. And then explained that a public intellectual is someone who is recognized in actively engaging in public discourse. Bourdieu is recognized for his activism of Humanities( English primarily, philosophy, history) and social scientists ( sociology, anthropology, and political science.
After she gave some background on Bourdieu she then talking to us about how Bourdieu looks at TV and what it tells us. Dr. Cummings said that, “TV tells us what we already know and that is why networks like NBC,ABC, and CNN are as successful as they are. “ She then went in to discussing tropes and how tropes are made up of compacted information. After our class had this discussion I realized that what Bourdieu says also relates a lot to what barthes says and how he talks about tropes and how he also talks about structuralism. Boudieu can relate to Barthes notion of structuralism when he tells us that it is because of systems why we have censorship.
Overall I think that the structure of this class was different from previous classes we have had this year of how we learned the information and again not anything against Dr. Cummings but I am very happy for having Rog as my professor for this class because it makes me realize how this subject could perhaps be not as fun if it weren’t for Rog and how he approaches our class discussions with lots of spunk and questions that help us get more involved rather then just reading information to us.
1 comment:
Even though Tuesday's class was different from how it has usually ben you still show a good understanding of the material and it would be great to see you connect Bourdieu's thoughts to the other theorists we have covered this semester. Also, since you weren't in class for Derrida, make sure you get the notes from Thursday's class since he is a dense author by himself! The final is in about a week or so, so if I were you I would start to revise all the theorists now. Don't forget that the focus will be on the past few theorists we have covered since exam 2 but you will still be given a couple of quotes from the rest of the semester. We'll discuss it more in class, but good blog! :)
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