sleepcamel.net : brad weikel

A quick update on my course progress. I like doing this for the same reason I like blogging about my papers... it helps me synthesize everything and ground my current activities in a broader educational narrative.

Postmodernism
The professor for this class is possibly the most brilliant professor I've ever had. He has an incredible ability to hear all the off-topic (and sometimes blatantly incorrect) things that students say and weave them into a cohesive reading of the material. The result is a rich, student led discussion that somehow stays on course despite dealing with a huge variety of topics.

That being said, postmodernism makes my head hurt.

Researching the Visual
This class is really interesting, and overlaps pretty well with Postmodernism, as well as my Cultural Theory class from last semester. The professor runs the class pretty well, striking a good balance between encouraging participation and providing authoritative instruction. The students aren't always on topic, but there are a handful of people who really do a good job of grounding everything in the readings, which keeps us on task.

The main drawback of the class is that we are supposed to be learning visual research methodology, but we don't have to do a strong visual research project. Instead, we assemble a digital story, which is basically a multimedia / video project in which we discuss a set of images and how they operate. It's a really interesting project in its own right, and is a great supplement to the class, but it doesn't necessarily drive us to do good research. I don't think this would bother me if it was an ordinary class, but because it is a methods course, I kind of expect something that's more critically demanding.

That being said, the class is great overall, and I look forward to taking another class from him next semester.

Propaganda
This class is pretty disappointing. A typical two hour session consists of about 30 minutes of student presentations, 45 minutes of very generalized conversation about topics only loosely tied to the week's material, 30 minutes of chatter about a film screening (which never gets into much depth), and 15 minutes about the readings. Kind of makes you question whether you should spend three hours reading each week.

It doesn't help that the professor talks incredibly slow and only has a few specific points he wants to make each week, or that the class completely presupposes a vast historical knowledge of the 20th century, but doesn't provide it or acknowledge it. Most of the readings are either so abstract or so narrowly focused that it's impossible for students without a strong history background to contextualize them in any useful way.

We do, however, get to watch a lot of cool movies.