First NCLC General Foreign Policy Post

So far I really do enjoy this class and the theory that goes behind foreign policy. Its something I think everyone can relate to, especially those of us who like to travel and then actually feel the repercussionsof international chaos. For homework the other night I read Fukyuama’s the End of History. Which I thought was kind of confusing since he jumps around a little and discusses different point of views on the US in the post-cold war world. But I do understand how it marked such a huge turning point in history, how the US went from being this defensive united actor all proclaiming a common enemy for the democratic societies in the world, to then having no one really to fear and having all that work and efforts of containment all really go down the drain and how it really changed society for awhile. But then again, the world is quite a different place now, with all sorts of ethnic conflicts sprouting up all over the place that could potentially harm the US so its very interesting to compare. I’m very intrigued with how the US is going to tackle Darfur if they do every decide to really go in there and do some damage control. I think it will all change with the new presidency.

First NCLC Mexico Relating Post- Mexico and Cuba

I found something really interesting today as I was brushing up on my knowledge of Mexico relations. I was always under the assumption that since the US was boycotting Cuba, Mexico was too, or at least that the US government would encourage Mexico to terminate relations with Cuba. This article I found presents quite the opposite. It says that the US in the late 1960s had talks with Mexico and recommend that they support Castro’s movement, verbatim it says that Mexico maintain an “informal understanding with the U.S. at highest levels to maintain relations with Cuba so one OAS country can have foot in the door which might be helpful”. The article can be found here: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB83/press.htm .

Since the US outwardly opposed Cuba at this time, wouldn’t this agreement with Mexico kind of resemble espionage? Since the US was obviously using Mexico to gain information about Cuba? I just found this really interesting since normally if you end relations with a country, you want your international image to be that you refuse to work with that country. But going behind close doors and establishing agreements with other countries to do the exact opposite of what you are actually doing, seems a little hypocritical. However I know that stuff like this between nations goes on all the time and is also a method of statecraft, and looking out for the best interests of your country.

I chose Mexico as my country because I recently stayed there on a Study Abroad for 3 weeks, it was quite an experience seeing as how I have never been out of the country before, and I found some correlations to be very interesting between the US and Mexico, I also so a great deal of globalization, understandably so though since they are our neighbors. Its too bad that Mexico is kind of stuck in this quasi-oligarchic/democratic situation though where a lot of corruption is inevitable, I’m interested to see what changes will result between US and Mexico relations.

Women and Post-war Film: Electrolux Vs. 1950’s Cooking

In today’s society women are seen the majority of the time as equals in society, upholding the same quality jobs as men and receiving the same pay if not more. Unfortunately, in the 1950’s women had one role to play which was the housekeeper and the caretaker of the family. Film particularly has been able to capture this evolution of the role of women. Old 1950’s films represent women as stereotypes with women in large dresses either with other females, in the house raising children, or at social events.  Now films show women in more of a liberal light, having their own lives and jobs, holding their own place in society without the help or the dependence on males. Therefore, it can be observed that there has been a progression of women from the Post-war era in the 1950s to the current millenium, a transformation from highly domesticated women to modernized equals of society.

To examine this evolution of women we will consult two videos, one featuring cooking instructions from the 1950s, and the other from a commercial for kitchen equipment. These video clips represents completely different portrayals of women in the media. This can partly be due to the modernization of society and also the increased development of the workforce and the overall economy. The fact that the time period of the 1950s also has a lot to do with the way women were portrayed back then since after the war there was a large period of reconnectiveness and promotion of family values, especially when soldiers returned home from the war. Since we have not experienced here in America any large scale wars since WWII (I suppose the situation in Iraq could be debated but its surely not as all encompassing as WWII was), women have been able do distinguish themselves and move away from the conventional stereotypes.

This first video: Features a newlywed young lady who has just moved into her new house with her husband. It shows him going off to work and then stating that she is suppose to learn to cook the foods just like how his mother used to do it. This reference to the desire for his wife to resemble his mother represents a stereotype of women being nurturing and supportive. Also this video represents the attire in which she is dressed in, a long dress tight around the waste but conservative in covering her legs. It also shows how this young lady does not have a job and is starting to assume her role of domestication: cooking and cleaning. When it shows the lady making an error for her first cooking experience, that shows that women do not have an inherant ability to cook, like some might assume but rather just like men they have to learn. Also this video does not show any sign of issues with time management or a rush to get the food cooked; the lady is able to take her time as if she has all day. The next video will represent a completely different portrayal of women.

Featuring Kelly Ripa, a famous actress, Electrolux is trying to sell their goods on the premise of the “modernized women” accomidating to her every need as a busy hardworking multi-tasking individual. Watch the clip here:

As you can see women in this video footage are represented as still domesticated, cooking for the kids, but while simultaneously maintaining a job and other daily activities. Also, the women in this commercial is also dressed quite differently, no longer in a dress or a skirt but pants and a shirt, which would have been highly controversial in the 1950s. There also is no mention of her husband, it is very possible that she is a single mother which would also be another target of the company Electrolux, since there are many single mothers in this day in age. This television commercial portrays women as productive, self-sufficient and in charge. These new assertive roles highly contradict the previous steotypes of women whose main focus is cooking. This commerical caters to women who dont have a large amount of time in the kitchen and works to expedite the cooking process by their new technology, judging from the scenes where in less then 5 seconds she’s thrown the kids their snacks and boiled chocolate as well as running from one thing to the next.

Ultimately, women in the media have been represented in extremely different ways from the 1950s to today. Judging from these two clips it is apparent that no longer are women except from the workplace. They do both serve the common theme that the majority of the time it is still the woman who cooks and takes care of the children but while maintaining the same role in society as their male counterparts. Their choices have expanded and the lives of women are growing increasingly hectic.

Ninth Class Reflection Post on Class 4/21

The COLD War. That was the topic of this class. I learned many things such as even though it was called a COLD War because there was no actual battle or fighting, it actually got pretty hot at some points, like with the Bay of Pigs incident in Cuba when it was very close to becoming a nuclear holocaust.

To illustrate and learn more about the Cold War from an American perspective we watched a documentary featuring Robert Mcnamara. He explained his personal experiences from workign with the US government and how their foreign relations policies changed the world. What was most interesting to me like I pointed out in class was how he had personal contact with many different presidents from different countries and how like with Fidel Castro in Cuba, he had very harsh news thrown in his face such as that it was recommended by Castro that Russia drop a Nuke on the US. I have no idea how he dealt with that news so calmly, i would have freaked out and punched him in the face, but, thats just me.

One thing, I seriously think we should implement a policy of no typing during movies. I know people will use the excuse that ‘I’m typing notes” but honestly, both the people surrounding me, typing loudly at 500 miles an hour talking to their friends on AIM does not constitute “taking notes” and it annoyed the hell out of me to where I couldnt even understand the movie. THEREFORE, please be considerate of others when using your laptops during a movie, not to mention the light is extremely distracting. Thank You.

Eighth Class Reflection Post on Class 4/14

“I have a penis” (Jeremy Boggs, 4/14/08 9:07pm EST)

This is always good to know because if not, then a little more empathy can be directed towards the male at hand.

This class we discussed some more advertisements and then World War II which is personally my favorite historical event, I wish we could spend more time on the details. In discussing different forms of remembering this event we learned that they portray the same event in different lights and show different perspectives, but they all pretty much represent the feeling of glory and celebration the US holds for this war. I have been to the WWII memorial quite a few times now, one time I went swimming in the fountain/pond which is in the middle, and I have pictures of one of my friends standing in the middle of one of the fountain things at the end, I guess this could have been seen as desecrating the memorial but it was freshman year and we were all young and stupid then. Two of my favorite movies of all time focus on one aspect of WWII, the concentration camps. I’ve seen three or more movies on this and one based on the novel Night by Elie Wiesel showed a more horrific shocking aspect whereas the other two (one most recently) called The Countefeiters, and then Life Is Beautiful, which showed positive stories about specific people involved in concentration camps over in Germany. They are both good films, the former maybe I’ll write another post more specifically about.

During this class Professor Boggs stated that during the 1920s Depression was global. I have to disagree with this based on information from my other classes. While the US and other “developed” countries were going through a depressing, other “developing” countries such as pretty much all of latin america were thriving and prospering off of our unfortunate circumstances, for them it was a time of first Export Led Growth (ELG) and then in the 1930s, Import Substitution Initiative (ISI) and hence, economic growth. So anyways, thats my take on that topic.

I just did the Wikipedia Assignment and it really wasnt as hard as I thought it would be, but since the info that was already on the stub was inaccurate and not even referenced, I deleted it because it made my work look bad. So I’ll probably get some criticism for that, but overall its kind of cool to see something you wrote published online.

Seventh Class Reflection Post on Class 4/7

     During this class period we discussed advertisements during certain time periods of history and how they differ from today’s ads. Together we discussed the origen of popular culture and who is at fault, the individual or the corporations. I argued the corporations because by their use of psychology and propaganda they target certain demographics to buy their product, like the ipod usually targets young individuals, mercedes typically targets the older/wealthier crowd, etc. So by singling out these different classes, an unsuspecting person just wanting to watch their favorite show on TV then becomes transformed into a consumer of society pursuaded to buy something they probably did not need.

     By looking at old ads such as the Kotex or the Kodak ones, we saw how they completely differ from todays’ advertisements. Back then there was more words whereas now for ads there might not be any words, just a picture, or a naked model or something. Its amazing to see how our society has evolved commercially over the years. We have transformed from a society which only dedicated their money to needs and the essentials of life, to a society which will give money to almost anything if persuaded to correctly.

Post #3: American Culture at the Turn of the Last Century

   For this assignement I chose to focus on the Mexican stereotypes throughout the ages. Mexican immigrants are extermely controversial in today’s popular culture- on tv, in newspapers and in recent legislature. Even though Mexicans are more politically correct of the Spanish ethnicity, they do not have the same stereotypes associated with them as the Spanish (from Europe) have. Mexcans have more of a negative association than the Spanish do. Throughout history, Mexicans have moved from being idolized as a macho, western and a deep-rooted civilization to being critisized as lazy, dirty and cheap.

   I did a quick survey in my workplace, and out of the four people I asked “What do you think of when you think of Mexicans?”, three said both dirty and lazy and two said poor and construction workers. To illustrate this new stereotype of Mexicans I have included this image: This image features about four or five construction workers, all of which seem to be of Mexican ethnicity. One of the controversial topics of discussion today in America is Mexican Immigration and if Mexicans are taking our jobs or not. Since they come over to America from Mexico and for the most part might not know english and arent easily issued citizenship, it is very hard for them to get high-level jobs. Therefore, many Mexicans have to settle for manual labor jobs such as construction, which explains one of these stereotypes. Contrary to the stereotype of “lazy” construction workers experience a great amount of physical stress due to the arduous tasks they have to complete each day. Another example, which I experience almost daily is the resentment of some Americans to drink Mexican beer such as Corona, since I love Corona I get a lot of negative comments like “ew you’re drinking a MEXICAN beer” as if people refuse to drink the beer because they dont want the same label on them as Mexicans do. Also, the Mexican lifestyle that is observed here in America is not the quintessential example of how they would live in their native land. These stereotypes have therefore soley emerged in the modern era out of the oppression Mexicans face when trying to start a new life here in America. Stereotypes of Mexicans were vastly different  and less negative centuries ago.

     In western 20th century films, the most common stereotype of the Mexican culture was of the cowboy lifestyle, strong and macho rebels. An image to depict this type of stereotype is: This image shows Mexican as unified on horseback in their “element” of the west. The historical movies which feature Mexicans show them as independent, which modern stereotypes would highly disagree with. The Mexican culture up until the time of the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century would portray the civilization as anything but lazy with their long work days unregulated by the government and every aspect of their life being supressed by the extremely conservative government.

    These stereotypes do not in any way correctly judge the Mexican ethnicity but instead shows how the popular perception of them changes from one century to the next. The previous stereotypes of western and cultured has changed to a more negative blue-collar connotation. Some perceptions have stayed the same over the years such as the strong family values Mexicans tend to hold in high regard. Overall these images and the meanings behind them are important to research and find out the true underlying explanation for them.

Sixth Class Reflection Post on class 3/31

This last class featured a great amount of class discussion which is good for learning since we all can engage in each other’s ideas. The main topic was the history of technology. Prof. Bogg’s main point he tried to get across was that Changes in technology reflect changes in culture and society. Technology also affects society and culture. As production increased dramatically in this time period, so didtn immigration. Unfortunately one of the consequences of this was that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. This started some uproar amongst classes but fueled government activity such as anti-trust laws, welfare and child labor laws all within this period of Progressivism.

I think there was a huge misconception in the class about the assigment of reading the wikipedia tutorials. Since we had our bibliography’s postponed one week I think some of us saw the Your_ Article_Hear tag after the wikipedia assigment for class and thought “oh that must be for next week”. Atleast this was my misconception maybe not anybody elses.

Posting the actual wikipedia article seems like its going to be complicated, especially since Suzie and I are doing the same one. It seems like everything has to be so much more technical, but I guess it opens up our minds to different types of literature. I’m just not looking forward to posting it and doing all that computer programming html type of stuff, I just liek to write, I dont really like to scrutinize sections. Oh well, stay tuned till next week.

Bibliography for “Child Savers”

Below is the tentative bibliography I have so far for my Wikipedia article topic: “Child Savers”, as Susie will be discussing the negative effects and actions of the Child Savers, I will be focussing on the positive contributions. The citations are correct in the MLA format but when arranging them in this post, wordpress wouldnt let me configure the indents and spacing properly between the citations and my explanations, an issue maybe we can discuss in class.

                                     Annoted Bibliography

“Child or Adult? a Century Long View.” PBS Frontline. PBS. 29 Mar. 2008 <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/juvenile/stats/childadult.html>. 

This online article discusses the evolution of society’s attitude towards the prosecution of children who commit serious crimes. I will use this article since it discusses the primary contribution of the Child Savers with the first juvenile court. I feel this article puts the Child Savers in a good perspective with the century’s movement to reform the juvenile justice system.

Hefner, Keith. “The Child Savers.” Prohosting. FPS. 29 Mar. 2008 <http://ice.prohosting.com/~unmediat/platt1.html>. 

This next acticle from a website focusses on both aspects of the child savers, both their negative impacts and the positive view that society has had on them for centuries including their humanistic nature. This article will help me form my basis of support for the incredibly large contribution the Child Savers had in the history of America as well as their motives methods and institutional results.

“Jane Addams.” Wikipedia. 29 Mar. 2008. 29 Mar. 2008   <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Addams>. 

Jane Addams was a famous Child Saver in the 19th century. In addition she instituted the Hull House which was one of the first settlement houses as well as a women’s sociological institution. This article will provide me with the function of Child Saver activists like Jane Addams.

“Juvenile Court.” Wikipedia. 16 Mar. 2008. 29 Mar. 2008   <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juvenile_court>. 

The Juvenile Court was the biggest contribution from the Child Savers era, the first one was established in 1899 in Chicago. It promoted the values behind separating juvenile justice from adult justice in the US court system. This will also be linked to my article when I discuss the Juvenile Court and how it is different from regular courts and therefore it is vital to my references.

“Juvenile Delinquency in the United States.”  Wikipedia. 25 Mar. 2008. 29 Mar. 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juvenile_delinquency_in_the_United_States>. 

 This next wikipedia article gives a history of juvenile delinquency in the United States, including the original treatment of juveniles not as adolescents but has adults and the problems that caused leading to the Child Savers movement.  I will link this article to mine when I discuss the behavior of children who commit heinous crimes since it provides me with the relevant information.

“Juvenile Protective Association.” Wikipedia. 9 Jan. 2008. 29 Mar. 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juvenile_Protective_Association>.

The Juvenile Protective Association  (JPA) emerged out of the Juvenile Court Committee which was also established by Jane Addams and her colleagues. It is a social welfare agency that is still going on in this day in age since its foundation in 1901. This is one of the contributions that came out of the Child Savers so I will need this article to help discuss the JPA within this section.  

Krisberg, Barry, and James F. Austin. Reinventing Juvenile Justice. Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1993. 

This book looks at both the history of the control and prevention of Juvenile Delinquency as well as the growth of institutionalization and the role of the Child Savers in these two movements between 1850 and 1900. Here I will be able to locate specific dates and incidents relating to my article, this book also provides other specific details about famous activists of the Child Savers movement. Therefore this book will help me in both areas of my article, the brief history part as well as the contribution section.

Platt, Anthony M. The Child Savers; the Invention of Delinquency,. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1969. 

This book although not very recent, provides crucial examples and testimonies from the Child Savers. It has the most information of all the sources and will help me in all aspects of writing this article.

Fifth Class Reflection Post on Class 3/17

During this class we discussed the Post-Civil War reconstruction.  This section contained many interesting events like Plessy vs. Ferguson and the Lincoln Assassination as well the Wade-Davis Bill.  What intrigued me most was the establishment of the Freedmen’s Bureau. This agency supposedly provided resources to ex-slaves to help them adjust and reconstruct their lives. They provided schools, housing and jobs. This era gave rise to the phrase “Forty Acres and a Mule” insinuating that Forty Acres and  Mule is all you need to start a life. I find the idea of this Freedmen’s Bureau very proactive and a nice gesture but I doubt it was that successfull. First of all, there were so many slaves freed that theres no possible way the Freedmen’s Bureau could account for all of them, and then also the whole mentality of racial supremacy didnt just change overnight, I’m sure there was a great amount of discrimination and prejudice within the Bureau. Therefore, it would be interesting to research the actual efficiency of the Freedmen’s Bureau. hmmm maybe extra credit?

 Anyways, I also thing that some of the greatest achievements came out of this time period including the “Civil War” Amendments. These amendments abolished slavery and gave the right to vote as well as immunity of citizenship. These are all very imporant to America’s values.

I hope everyone had a Happy St. Patty’s Day!