Feb 6-8: "Megarhetorics," Networks, & Global Development
Dear All Good Folks,
Where We Have Been
Link to your parables here.
Where We Are Going
As we begin a new unit on Tuesday, I encourage you to review our progress since Day 1! From my vantage point, it seems we have our work cut out for us. LuMing Mao's challenge to "begin to read the 'Other'" takes on new significance for us in the next unit. We will start by considering Scott and Dingo's dilemma of "megarhetorics," before considering that concept at work in some cases related to global development, including Stephanie Black's film Life and Debt, the Girl Rising movement, and more. We'll pay special attention to how our theories of network and delivery do (or do not), or can (or cannot) translate when moving across cultural interspaces.
On Tuesday, we'll watch the first part of Stephanie Black's film, Life and Debt, and discuss how our readings thus far can inform Black's notion of "human rights" and "global development." In advance of Tuesday, you might be interested to know a bit more about the International Monetary Fund and the historic Lome Convention (two events mentioned in Scott/Dingo's article, and two conflicts driving this film). You might also be interested to learn more about the film. For content, interviews, films, slicks, and press kits, visit the film site and feel free to explore!
As always, I'll ask you not only to respond to the film and think interestingly about it, but also to look for its critical challenges:
Here are two spaces in which we will work over the next couple of weeks:
See you on Tuesday!
-Dr. Graban
Where We Have Been
Link to your parables here.
Where We Are Going
As we begin a new unit on Tuesday, I encourage you to review our progress since Day 1! From my vantage point, it seems we have our work cut out for us. LuMing Mao's challenge to "begin to read the 'Other'" takes on new significance for us in the next unit. We will start by considering Scott and Dingo's dilemma of "megarhetorics," before considering that concept at work in some cases related to global development, including Stephanie Black's film Life and Debt, the Girl Rising movement, and more. We'll pay special attention to how our theories of network and delivery do (or do not), or can (or cannot) translate when moving across cultural interspaces.
 |
| Life and Debt cover, c. 2001, licensed under fair use, Wikipedia. |
As always, I'll ask you not only to respond to the film and think interestingly about it, but also to look for its critical challenges:
- What questions does the film inspire you to ask?
- What questions do you think we should be asking if we are not already?
- Who controls the film's narrative histories and who is left out?
- What key concepts are complicated or illuminated by the arguments of this film?
- What clues does this film give you about how corporate humanitarian discourses get delivered?
- What role do we play a role in the delivery of these discourses, even if we don't think they are "ours"?
- Any new realizations or complications to the idea of "human rights as a rhetorically distributed construct"?
- Anything else we should consider?
Here are two spaces in which we will work over the next couple of weeks:
See you on Tuesday!
-Dr. Graban