Status Update

Transmissions from Camp Trans
1.) Claim- The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival provides a great opportunity for women to bond with each other, while enjoying a relaxed and safer atmosphere that is created by the absence of men.
2.)Classical argument


Dark Webs Goth Subcultures in Cyberspace
1.) Claim- Online communities are not trying to take the place of or misrepresent the real world, but instead they actually contribute to keeping different subcultures alive and supplementing them.
2.)Rogerian argument


The Truck Stop as Community and Culture
1.) Claim- The similarity between truckers and cowboys runs deeper than clothes, but is also proven through other shared characteristics.
2.)Toulmin argument


House for the Homeless
1.) Claim- The homeless are very similar to the author, and cannot all be generalized and thrown into the category of being uneducated. They all have various reasons for why they are homeless and the major reason lied not in the problem of unemployment but mainly in the need for self-reliance.
2.) Classical argument

In my paper I am currently still in the process of doing research to learn more about my subculture. Unfortunately, I have chosen a subculture that is not too willing to speak with me and give me more information about the subculture. This leaves me only with the option of relying mainly on literature analysis of previous research done on the psychic subculture. I still have to find the social norms, beliefs, and values of the subculture. Since I have not found out what these things are I have yet to develop my claim. At the peer review group I would like to know if I'm developing my claim in an effective way, and also other ideas of a potentially better claim to make about the subculture.

Fieldsite Study

I nervously walk into Psychic Readings by Amanda, with the foolish mindset that television has influenced greatly, thinking that when I walk in I will hear someone say "I've been expecting you". As I step foot in the door and take a look around the first thing I notice is a prayer session taking place. Both the psychic and the client are down on both knees next to the "reading" table, with the spiritual advisor leading the prayer. So as not to disturb the session, I remain quiet and inconspicuous while I observe the environment. There are lots of celestial pictures decorating the four walls and the aroma permeating the air smells of aromatic candles. I observe a lot of pictures of single eyeballs that are blended in with other images, it can be described as being analogous to the hidden image games placed on the back of cereal boxes where they ask you to see how many of a particular image you can find. There are a few shelves that contain different types of candles and also things for sale that are supposedly to rid clients of their bad luck or evil spirits. I also see tarot cards and different types of crystal balls which are props that are used to read people's pasts and futures. By this time the spiritual advisor is now aware of my presence and proceeds to head over in my direction. She asks me if I would like a reading done, and I tell her that I am just there to do an assignment for my college English class. At this point, she displays a look of disinterest and is clearly apathetic about my needs to complete my assignment. She then tells me she is not interested, and I walk out very slowly and reluctantly just to irritate her as much as she had just irritated me. As I walked back to my car, head hanging low ashamed for some reason from my rejection, I searched my thoughts for an explanation. The only thing I could come up with was that she must have been a fraud, a scam artist, a preyer. And as I thought of these reasons for why I was rejected, I made sure I yelled every explanation that I had come up with aloud to her at the top of my lungs before I proceeded to get in my car. Then I realized that she had actually helped me find another focus for my paper...PSYCHIC SCAMS!

Act V

1.) What makes this a good fieldsite?

The actors are playing the role of a man who is "pondering a violent crime and its consequences" when they are actual violent criminals themselves who are living out those consequences.

2.) What observations does the author make about the subculture to give us a better understanding of it?

The background information about the prison actors, pre-performance rituals,

3.) What interviewing techniques does the author use to help us understand this subculture?

He asks the inmates how their prison surroundings influence how they play their parts in the play and also to compare the character they play to life in prison.

4.) What are the norms and values of this subculture?

Understanding the character that they play and what the lines actually mean.

Psychics

1.) Dziobek, I., Rogers, K., Fleck, S. In search of "master mindreaders":
Are psychics superior in the language of reading the eyes?
Brain and Cognition 58, p. 240-244, July 2005.

2.) Maxwell, L.F. Small Mediums at Large: The true tale of a family of psychics. Library Journal 129, p. 95, 1 Nov. 2004.

3.) Evans, RD., Forsyth, CJ., Foreman, RA. Psychics accounts: Self- legitimation and the management of a spoiled identity. Sociological Spectrum 23, pp. 359-375, Jul. 2003.

4.) Josephson, BD. Scientists and psychics. Scientific American 288, p. 15, Jun 2003.

5.) Schwartz, SA. Lives of the psychics: The shared worlds of science and mysticism. Journal of Parapsychology 65, pp. 421-424, Dec 2001.



The psychic culture to me seems like it would be a really interesting phenomenon to research. It is something that I really have no knowledge of and that I think would be beneficial to learn some things about the culture and also the people that the culture is comprised of. I enjoyed reading a little bit of Psychic accounts: self legitimation and the management of a spoiled identity, because it talked about the real experiences of real psychics. They discuss how they got into this occupation and discuss what it's like to be psychic. My interest in this subject partly comes from being able to research and discover whether or not this is real or not. Before having to do this assignment, I was skeptical about whether or not people could really predict things that would occur in the future. Now that I am researching the topic, I will be able to find the answer to my question.

Pirandello

Pirandello was born in Girgenti, Sicily in 1867, to a wealthy father. He got his start, at age seventeen, when he published his first short story in the newspaper (Jewinski). He was a teacher, critic, and fiction writer. He began his writing career as a poet, in 1889, when he published the poem "Joyful Pain" (Jewinski). Not until later in his life did he become a playwright. His work showed that he seemed to have a very dark and negative perception of life and of human nature. This dark perception of his view of life was thought to have come from the hardships he had faced in his own life. Some of the problems Pirandello had experienced in his life were issues with his wife's health, World War I, and his father's financial dilemma. In an effort to rehabilitate his wife, she was placed in an institution for decades because of her severe mental health issues with paranoia. He struggled during the time of World War I because of the fact that his two sons were enlisted in the army during this time. In 1903, when Pirandello was thirty-six, his wealthy father went bankrupt from his support of Pirandello's "elegant literary style of life" (Hornby). These personal difficulties not only sculpted his view of life, but also aided him in making himself a well-known author. His wife's mental health problems inspired his play "Right You Are (If You Think So)", which was the story of two women, one of which was mentally ill (Hornby).

The Scoop on Tricia Rose...

Tricia Rose is quite the advocate of hip hop culture and of the African-American race as a whole. Her literature seems to be mainly focused on one of the two topics, or even both of the topics combined. She has written three books, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, Microphone Fiends: Youth Music and Youth Culture, and Longing To Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy. Along with these books, she has also written numerous articles that have appeared in black culture magazines. Her credibility is well-developed due to her extensive experience with writing about the African-American race and culture.


To find this information about Tricia Rose I searched the internet for her background information. I first typed, in the search engine, books by Tricia Rose. I wanted to know what other books or different types of literature that she had published besides the one book of hers that I am familiar with. When the results showed up, I went through all the books that were listed as being written by Tricia Rose and read the brief description of them. By reading the description of her other books, I was able to see a pattern in her writing style and the types of things she
wrote about. Next, I just typed her name into the search engine. I wanted to see what kind of other information would show up about her, regarding other things she had done in her life. Among the results from this search was her biographical information. This included the degrees she had obtained and a brief history of her works of literature and how she got her start.

An advantage of looking in the places that I searched is that it was convenient and it didn't take much time for the results to appear. A disadvantage was that the results that I found were not written by Tricia Rose herself, so there is no way to tell what information I found is actually true.

Black Noise

Black Noise is a book that was written by a woman who had grown up in the era where hip hop was just emerging. The author, Tricia Rose, has written several articles on black culture, rap music, and contemporary pop culture. Her credibilty comes from her extensive research that she has conducted about the culture and the music. The fact that she has observed the culture firsthand from when it first began to develop to modern day hip hop, also adds to her credibility. Her fascination for hip hop is what drove her to follow it so in depth and for so long. She became an expert on the culture, despite the people that doubted that hip hop would be around for so long and wouldn't just be a passing phase.

In her book, she analyzes hip hop music and the artists that create the music. The different ideas that the artists use to create their music, are pointed out in the book. She talks about the contradictions that rappers make against their beliefs and also the things that the strongly stand for. I think this book may be interesting because she points out the beauty and creativity that rap music displays. I am a part of the hip hop culture myself, and it is nice to have someone speak positively about the culture. Most of the time, literature written about hip hop culture is negative and suggests that it is not real music. Rose, however, digs deeper into the culture and takes into consideration the many elements that hip hop is comprised of. Another reason I may be interested in reading more of the book, is that she summarizes the things that the rappers talk about in their songs. She listens to the words behind the beat, which is something I don't do often, and finds the meaning of those words. Her analyses seem effective in describing the hip hop culture.