On Gold Mountain questions for March 13

March 13, 2012 by

Image provided by Metro Transportation Library and Archive, and used under a Creative Commons license

1. On Gold Mountain begins by focusing largely on the story of Fong See. Is Fong See the most important person in the book thus far, or are the stories of other people more important to the narrative and our understanding of the family’s experiences?

2. Larry Sells and Lisa See have noted that “While many people initially read On Gold Mountain because they’re interested in learning about the Chinese-American experience, they often become more attached to the stories of the white women—Ticie, Stella, and Carolyn—who married into the See family.” Do you think this was Lisa See’s intention? Do you think See herself is more fascinated by Ticie’s and Stella’s experiences than those of her other relatives? (Explain your answers.) What are the opportunities and liabilities engendered by readers’ fascination with the white women in the story?

3. Is there a moment when the See and Fong families became more American than Chinese? If so, when? (Consider this question from three perspectives: their own conceptions of their identities, Lisa See’s implied ideas about identity, and your own estimations.) What decisions did individual members of the family make that made them lean more toward one culture than the other?  Did gender seem to influence their understanding of ethnicity in the western U.S.?

4. We have spent a significant amount of time this semester discussing photographs. How do the photographs included in On Gold Mountain influence your understanding and perception of the Fong and See families? Explain.

5. In 2001, the Smithsonian Institution put together an exhibition inspired by On Gold Mountain. The 11-year-old digital manifestation of this exhibition remains online. Does the information presented in this exhibit capture the most important aspects, in your opinion, of the Fong and See families’ experiences as Lisa See presents them?

6. Technology now allows for considerably more flexibility in designing online exhibits. Imagine the Smithsonian commissioned your group to revise the On Gold Mountain exhibition website.  What suggestions would you make?  Consider exhibition content as well as technology and format.

Filed Under: Online exhibits, Photography, The Chinese experience in the West

Digital interlude

February 24, 2012 by

Please explore and consider the following digital exhibition sites for class on Tuesday, February 28.  Be prepared to talk about which elements might be useful to us as we construct our final project.  Think specifically about how the site is organized, the relative weight of content on the site (e.g. images and artifacts to text, teaching materials to research material).

Making the History of 1989

Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives

Laurie Herrick: Weaving Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

 

One more thing: Here’s an essay on the history of a particular craft.  I thought it was a nice example of the genre.

 

Filed Under: Online exhibits

Dorothea Lange questions for February 16

February 16, 2012 by

QUESTION 1

Lange’s photographs, as well as those of other photographers working for government agencies or the military during the 1930s and 1940s, were at times deemed too political.  At the same time, as Gordon makes clear, the FSA (as well as other agencies) used photographers to make a political argument about the use of government resources to help or hinder particular groups of people.  Take a look at some of the following collections of 21st-century photographs from government agencies:

A pool of government agency photos:

The USA.gov photostream on Flickr  (you can also browse this collection by tags)

Some individual agency photostreams for your consideration–but you’re welcome to seek out others instead:

What individual or collective arguments, if any, are these agencies making with their photos?  Are photographers used by the U.S. government today in the same way they were in the 1930s and 1940s?  How and why do women and/or families figure in these images, if at all?  Explain your answers.

QUESTION 2

One of the developing themes in this course is mobility—or the lack of it.  Lange used highways. “Okies” migrated west. African Americans migrated to Oakland for wartime jobs. Japanese Americans were interned. To what extent did these shifting mobilities in the American west affect women’s roles and opportunities?  To what extent do Lange’s photos capture these effects?

QUESTION 3

In what ways did women photographers’ experiences of government employment differ from men’s, and what do their differing experiences reveal about women’s lives in the era under consideration?

QUESTION 4

In Chapter 16, Linda Gordon shares the phenomenon of photo-textual books and describes how each author-photographer pair approached its book differently.  Regardless of whether you are sitting with your final project group members or not, discuss with your fellow students what you envision to be an appropriate relationship of texts and photographs in the online exhibition we will build.

Filed Under: Japanese-American internment, Online exhibits, Photography

Online exhibits for your consideration

February 7, 2012 by

1. Explore and discuss the following online exhibits.  What do you most appreciate about them, and why?  What about them is least interesting or attractive to you, and why?

2. Look over the exhibition framework handout, then answer these questions.

  • The exhibition framework asks you to evaluate physical exhibitions in four categories: comfort, engagement, reinforcement, and meaningfulness.  How relevant do you think these four qualities are to online exhibitions?  Explain.
  • If you were to come up with four essential qualities by which evaluators could judge online exhibits, what qualities would you choose, and why?

3. In your opinion, which of the three exhibits listed in Question #1 comes closest to “best practice” in online exhibition, and why?  (Refer to your revised exhibition framework.)

4. What characteristics or qualities would you like to see in the online exhibit we will build for this class?  Why?

Filed Under: Online exhibits