In Shekhar Desphande’s essay “The Confident Gaze”, the photographs in National Geographic magazine are the focus. Desphande starts by introducing issue of celebrating India’s 50th Anniversary of Independence. An Indian child with his face painted red graces the cover. Desphande claims that National Geographic magazine has the power to report the “issues [or] situations… [but at the same time] sanitize and even beautify the blood and the gore of the conflict” that the country is experiencing (par. 12). This claim is significant because he argues that this magazine is praised for educating America about the world and its culture but the photos that are included do not portray the reality. He also claims that although we admire photographers and what they are able to give readers, in terms of culture, “we forget that the photographs and contexts…represent a very conscious effort by the editors to make the world…a happy place especially for the Western eye” (par. 9). This is significant because it emphasizes the idea that although photographs are something that our society treasures, we may be cherishing the wrong values. Desphande argues that this is because “the photographs are rich in their content, but entirely dishonest in their relationship to the environment” (par. 13). Another point of Deshpande’s was the concept of the “Third World” and how National Geographic portrays it as “represent[ing] the backwardness in time and accomplishment to the West” while also “providing images of what ‘would have been’ if” they had not taken the steps toward being more Western (par. 15). This text concentrates on the power that photographs, especially ones in National Geographic, have on us as Americans. We depend on this magazine to inform us about the world through photographs, but if it is unable to provide us with legitimate and truthful images, it is not doing its job.
Welcome!
Welcome to our Eng 100 Blog “Conversations Beyond the Classroom”! The title of this blog refers to the community of active readers & collaborative learners we are creating by sharing our academic writing for Eng 100 with each other + a larger group of students, instructors, academics, and just about anybody who chooses to follow our blog! When you write and post your reader responses here (and, later, as you write your essays for the course), I encourage you to use this audience to conceptualize who you are writing for and, most important, how to communicate your ideas so that this group of academic readers and writers can easily follow your line of thinking. Think about it this way: What do you need to explain and articulate in order for the other bloggers to understand your response to the essays we’ve read in class? What does your audience need to know about those essays and the authors who wrote them? And how can you show your readers, in writing, which ideas you add to these “conversations” that take place in the texts we study?
As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! We encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…).
Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!
--Mary Hammerbeck, Instructor of Eng 100
As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! We encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…).
Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!
--Mary Hammerbeck, Instructor of Eng 100
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