You will find assignments, readings, and prompts for all written work here. See below for evaluation criteria. Posts are due by 9am on the due date. Comments on 2 others posts are due by 9pm on the due date. Don’t forget to categorize your posts!
Blog Post 3: Food and Fashion due Nov 6
What food do you wear regularly? Do you have a pineapple shirt? Strawberry socks? The Food and Fashion exhibit at the FIT Museum taps into a flourishing vibe that food themes and motifs in fashion now and historically display expressions of our cultural identities. Vogue recently highlighted this trend in food design: “Before there was Tomato-Girl Summer, There were Tomatoes on the Runways.” The exhibition Food and Fashion explores how food design comments on “critical topics from luxury, gender, and consumerism to sustainability, social activism, and body politics.”
In this blog post, briefly discuss (300 words, say) your perceptions of how fashion expresses cultural representation–you can choose a designer from the exhibit to introduce us to their aesthetic or values, or choose a theme from the exhibit to highlight how food design reflects larger cultural, political, or social issues.
Reading Response 4: Ching Chong Chinaman due Oct 18
A copy of the play is available for you on Blackboard, see course documents on menu.
Lauren Yee is a playwright born and raised in San Francisco, and she currently lives in New York City. She received her bachelor’s degree from Yale University and her MFA in playwriting from the University of California, San Diego. Lauren’s plays, which include Ching Chong Chinaman, Cambodian Rock Band and The Great Leap, have been performed at theatres all over the Unites States.
Her plays explore Asian American identity in all its diversity. Much of Yee’s work takes a critical stance towards questions of American belonging against the backdrop of cultural assimilation and internalized racism. Ching Chong Chinaman takes up these questions. It is intentionally irreverent as The Wong family defies stereotypes of Chinese Americans.
Choose one prompt:
- Focus on one character’s journey in the play that surprises you and changes your own perspective by the end. Analyze at least three moments: scene, actions, dialogue, that altered your experience of the character’s and their role in the family.
- Although the play is a comedy it includes dark subjects, such as indentured servitude. How does Yee balance humor and unpleasant family or cultural dynamics in the play. Choose a specific scene to analyze the byplay of the comic and offensive in the play.
- What meaning do you find in the family conflicts or the personal struggles of the characters over desires, aspirations, or gaining the American Dream. Focus your analysis on one family conflict or personal struggle that raises in your mind a larger or related conflict or struggle in the US or another country today.
Writing Criteria
Evaluation:
- 5 points: Excellent. Evidence of serious attention put towards assignment; the writing demonstrates a focused main idea, organization and analysis; supporting examples cited in the post; on-time submission
- 4 points: Very Good. Evidence of serious attention put towards assignment, the writing demonstrates a main idea, organization and analysis, few supporting examples cited in the post, on-time submission.
- 3 points. Good. Evidence of engagement with the assignment, the writing at times lacks focus on a main idea, organization or analysis, few or no supporting examples cited in the post, on-time submission.
- 2 points: Fair. Assignment called for more work or intellectual investment than demonstrated; the writing offers little focus, organization or analysis; no supporting examples cited in the post; on-time submission
- 1 point: Poor. Assignment is late and/or does not demonstrate an adequate engagement with the assignment.
- 0 points: Assignment is more than 2 days late or not submitted.
