Nancy Rourke's We Came, We Conquered

Stephanie Coontz is a teacher, historian, author and a scholar activist. She has also very indulged in the world of public debate on families, this mostly due possible because of her extensive skills to study modern families as well as historical patterns. In her book The Way We Never Were, Coontz presents a historical look at the family and how it has changed over time. Her interest in the subject comes for her need to understand how families functioned in the past and present, and what lead to notion and definition of family nowadays.

This question is honestly the most difficult to answer. The entire book was intriguing from start to finish. I would say that what I liked the most about this book is all the pictures he placed on there. He captured every image with so much meaning. It is as it’s said, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” I got to see the faces of the fellow heroes in Fallujah.

The focal point of the painting is the woman with infant. This is shown by the lighting in the painting being directly on her, the bright red that she is wearing, and the circling of the putti around her figure along with the majority of their gazes being directed at her. The bright light directly behind her and the infant could possibly be coming from the sun behind the clouds in the sky, the putti to her upper right holding the torch, or it could be symbolic in that it is the infant’s halo and representative of his divine nature. The overall piece is not overly dark but the lighting seems to be most focused on the woman, infant, her other children, and the flying putti. This is an example of tenebrism.

"Battleground America," written by Jill Lepore, provides a strong history of guns and the way they have changed in the eyes of the American through the years. She proves her point with strong evidence throughout her article, sprinkling it with opinion and argument that is strongly supported. She presents her argument to convince her audience that the open availability of guns allows citizens to undeservingly purchase them by displaying the credibility in her sources, using negative connotations in her speech, and the strength and objectivity only a strong logos appeal can provide.

How do you build to the next issue she addresses, though? Surprisingly, you meet it head on the way the author chooses to, but unlike the Mexican culture works up to it. Anzaldúa has no qualms in exploring her homosexuality and the male/female identity. Raised a Catholic, she made the choice to be homosexual, she declares. She recognizes that in some it is genetically inherent and that can be understood, but her Catholicism makes it a choice.

Seeing Voices is a profound novel that was written by famous neurologist, Oliver Sacks in 1989. Seeing Voices is a book that delves into the history of Sign Language and expresses a genuine meaning behind what language truly is.  Oliver Sacks is an engaging and fascinating writer. Being able to explore outside what he is used to, he can expand his knowledge about language. Being knowledgeable on psychiatry can help him get a better understanding of cognitive ability in the deaf community and the importance of why keeping Sign Language away from Deaf children is not beneficial for them in the hearing world. Like many of his books,

Nancy, I believe, perfectly represents teenagers, past and present. Nancy shows that we don’t have the slightest clue who we truly are. That is why our teenage years are so important. These are the years in which we begin to find ourselves, beginning with our signatures (heart or no heart?). There are so many people who expect us to know what we will do with our future when, in actuality, we are only beginning to discover our likes and dislikes, nowhere near deciding what we will be doing for the rest of our lives. So many of us teenagers (and some adults) are trying out different handwritings, or ideas of what we want to do with our lives, before we settle on the one type of calligraphy that we will carry with us forever. Throughout my life, my handwriting has changed drastically, as have my aspirations. As a child, I would write in big loopy letters, which perhaps represented the loopiness of who I wanted to be at the time (a princess). Over the years, as my letters became more refined and smaller, so did my aspirations.

“The world of Deaf art encompasses a multiplicity of media, philosophies, and expressions, as well as a unique way of experiencing the world.” (Holcomb, pg 171). A very well known component of Deaf art is De’VIA, (Deaf View Image Art). De’VIA explores Deaf experience on a personal cultural or physical level using formal art elements. Proposed in 1989, the concept of De’VIA aimed to increase the visibility and focus on the uniqueness of works by Deaf artists.

The story that spoke to me the most was “Don’t Eat Cat”. I identified with Owen, in that I know what it feels like for a loved one to wrong you and leave your life due to their wrong doings. On the surface it was the loved one who was at fault, while it was he and I who were wronged. Yet deep down we both knew that there was more we could’ve done. We knew that though they were wrong, we weren’t right. I felt like this story was Owen finally feeling the panic of knowing he would never see Marci again, and that it’s his fault. He came to that epiphany only after discovering his time was running short due to cancer. I feel like until that point though he grieved her, he never really let himself fully realize that she was gone forever. He recognized

Louise E. Jefferson, her father was a calligrapher for the United States Treasury taught her his craft. During the Harlem Renaissance, Jefferson attended the School of Fine Arts at Hunter College in New York where she became an active member of the artist community. In 1935, she joined Augusta Savage, Aaron Douglas, Selma Burke, Gwendolyn Bennett, and Jacob Lawrence as a founding member of the Harlem Artists Guild.

In 1930 José Clemente Orozco, a famous mural painter known for his radical art depicting the Mexican revolution in interesting new ways, was asked to paint a mural in the college Pomona. This is when and where he painted his mural titled “Prometheus”. In this work, Orozco’s use of scale, monochromatic colors, and emphasis help to depict the dreadfulness of the troubling time at war that it is inspired by as well as the peace that was expected, and that came, from these times.

During the early 1900s till now, women have been discriminated against and have been battling for equal rights in the United States. In 1960s America, the feminist movement was growing rapidly, bringing out influential women and protesters who were starting to get noticed by the majority of the population. One of those influential women, author Adrienne Rich, published an essay that talks about how women are treated differently. In the essay, “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as a Re-vision”, Rich argues that a stereotypical and prejudiced male society represses women. She demonstrates these views through the use of literary history, her personal experience towards women’s discrimination, and the potential women have to

For the Formal Analysis Essay, I have chosen the following artist and work of art to discuss: Faith Ringgold (African American, b. 1930), God Bless America, c. 1964, oil on canvas, approx 31” x 19”. The subject of Faith Ringgold’s God Bless America (Figure 1-22) is to inform us about the physical and emotional torment of African Americans prior to and during the Civil War. The painting symbolizes a white woman portrayed as a racist who is denying “blacks” to vote. The painting also shows the American flag, with the stripes symbolizing bars, and the star symbolizing a sheriff's badge. The woman herself is also symbolized as a prisoner of her own bigotry. The medium for God Bless America is oil painting. Faith Ringgold uses the technique

Queer Theory is the best approach by which to examine Angels in America because using Queer Theory allows us to see/ illuminates the difference between socially constructed gender and sexual acts based on sexual identity. Queer theory argues that gender is a cultural construct, that the social norms of men being masculine and women being feminine were manipulated as a culture to be seen as normal. In Angel in America, Roy Cohn is an attorney with power in his work place; he expresses a strong masculine character with “clout”, strong political power. He mentions that he is a powerful man and how with only a few phone calls he is able to get a hold of the president. These are expectations of how a masculine male is supposed to act, with power, confidence, and without fear. Being a man of politics, Roy lives up to the expectations of what society believes a strong man is supposed to be and how he is supposed to behave. When he goes to see his doctor and he is told that he has AIDS, Roy refuses to admit that he has AIDS and Homosexual. Roy tells his doctor, Henry, “You Think these are names that tell you who someone sleeps with, but they don’t tell you that.” (Pg. 51) He argues that his identity is not homosexual because they do not have “clout”; that he is a man of clout and has a lot of it. Roy states, “Homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows. Who have zero clout.”(Pg. 51) An example of Queer Theory, Roy tells his doctor that labels like Homosexual, Gay,

There is a single gallery exhibition showing at the Art Institute of Chicago, presenting Bridget Riley’s works. Gallery 294 is exhibiting three paintings and one installation in all. Riley is a British artist who dominantly engaged in a short-lived art movement called Op Art in 1960s and since then she developed her works from abstract black and white paintings to colorful stripe paintings. Riley inherited the legacy of Abstract Expressionism. She used simple geometric shapes in her paintings and arouses viewers’ complicated sensations but also provides viewers’ virtually optical experiences.