Obviously, I’ve stepped away from the blog for a few weeks, trying to complete some other writing projects and forcing myself to stay off the Internet. Meanwhile, I’m still here in spirit, fighting the good fight, as you can tell from this outfit, which is a fortuitous mixture of mine and Iraya’s mind-melding thrifting. I do have plans for upcoming posts (including some book reviews, interviews, and guest posts!), and I’m also teaching my Politics of Fashion course next semester, so I’m hoping to somehow integrate assignments for that course into this platform. Any suggestions?
threadbared 
There’re certainly many fashion and personal style blogs that unthinkingly endorse the dominant political paradigm – feminity, whiteness, thinness, youth. A blog by students dedicated specifically to recognizing and identifying those assumptions, as well as recognizing how they play into the patriarchal discourse would be great. No need to call out individual bloggers though.
THAT is a great point. As a style blogger myself, I’m going to have to consider any possibilities of my content playing into that. Thanks!
Yes, something along these lines — I usually have them write weekly responses to the readings on our campus’s version of Blackboard, and respond to each other there as a part of dialogue-building, but perhaps I’ll change up what these writing assignments look like and have them post to a blog and respond to these weekly posts too. But how to craft these blog posts so that possible other readers will be able to follow along?
You might take a page from something like Rob MacDougall’s 20th century history course, which uses a course blog to do pre-class-meeting reading discussion.
I’ve pointed people to this post via Twitter and am hoping you’ll get some good suggestions that way.
Ask your students to write thoughtful responses to select articles and post them as comments 😀
Or, alternatively, have them collaborate on multimedia projects of their own with regards to their area of interest. Could be a blog like this one, layered written pieces, or some other kind of production!
I’m loving the scarf, by the way.
Scarf, nothing! It’s the gigantic turtleneck on a whole, long-sleeved shirt! 🙂
That, is awesome. I love it when looks are deceiving.
The Politics of Fashion…I would take that course, if it were offered online.
The way I’ve set up my WP site for my class this semester doesn’t make it conducive to others reading–I had hoped to do more of that, but it didn’t work out.
I set up a WP network–a multi-user site–because I’m teaching writing and I wanted them each to have their own site as a kindof portfolio-building project.
However, I think that if they readings they’re doing are open access, you could link to the readings in your own blog post that contains the assignment and ask them to craft “response papers” in comments. You could also have them craft independent blog posts about a given reading–use the public-ness of WordPress to talk about audience: how would their blog posts be different if the readers HAD read the piece in question? What about if they HADN’T? Should their responses include summary, or not?
I’ve had some interesting times with WordPress this semester–feel free to ping me offline and I’m happy to talk more about it!
Welcome back. How is it that you look that sexy and I can only see 10% of your face!?! Digging the sweater.