Some Summarizing Stuff: “Fashioning” the Post Gendered Society

In the article: His & Hers: Designing for a Post Gender Society by Suzanne Tick the author argues that because of the human cycle in which social progression occurs naturally, we now live in a post gendered society and its time that our industries market accordingly. Corporate America and its industries have always been predominantly male, and therefore is primarily marketed for men and not women. This male dominated corporate hierarchy is also not conducive to including or marketing to those who don’t strictly in one kind of gender based demographic. Therefore, in order to progress with the social changes, an industrial change needs to occur also. The modes in which these changes need to occur are based on design, whether that be as general as architecturally or as personal as fashion. Some architectural changes Tick implores society to make architecturally for example would be public bathrooms and offices. Public bathrooms have always been gendered and as of recently due to the more widespread acceptance of gender fluidity and openness unisex bathrooms are being built. As far as fashion goes which is very individualistic, designs are being made to be more gender neutral in that designers are creating unisex lines or are taking clothing items that perpetuate gender norms such as skirts for women and military wear or suits for men, and turning them upside down. For example prominent young celebrity Jaden Smith wearing a skirt in an highly publicized ad for Louis Vuitton, and the creation of make up lines for men and women alike.  I think that in a fantastical world this way of thinking and this article would be conducive to enacting change. However we do not live in a post gendered society in the least bit. Gender norms are still inherently apart of our culture as much as enforcing aid gender norms are. The only differential from the early 1900s to now is not the amount of people who do not identify or specifically feel as if they fit into a gendered norm, or the level of acceptance of these people, but the fact that it is more apparent in day to day life. In a world where society was post gendered an article petitioning corporate or industrialized america to be more inclusive and market towards a demographic of people to whom which gender is completely applicable wouldn’t be necessary. This article, (although hopeful in prospectives) would be much more efficient if Tick showed some regard for the state of society as it is now, and then called for some sort of action based on where we are now. Although social change is naturally human and progressive change is upon us, these things occurs over years and in step by step processes.

 

Exterior Engaging Encounters: Built Environment Description of Cabbage Town

An alley in the very eclectic Cabbage Town Atlanta.

Its 2:30 in the afternoon and the sun is shining down on the concrete road. Cars drive up and down the two way street separating the shops, boutiques, and old ward Atlanta housing from the Oakland cemeteries brick walls. The sound of birds calling, the indiscernible chatter of humans. I walk past a coffee shop called octane, boutiques and technology companies line the streets, the entrances to each of the shops not facing out towards the streets but in a partially shaded alleyway. Streets are cracked and worn, and the paint discerning left from right lane are faded. The buildings lining Memorial Ave are all some sort of business offering a service and architecturally are urban contemporary save for the refurbished brick buildings.Directly behind these buildings housing businesses or offices, old, A-frame houses line the streets, met at the end by a chain fence separating the homes from a very loud freeway. Some of these old homes are remodeled, keeping the same air of the traditional, wrap around porch home, but painted over and refurbished. Other homes are visibly original in build as well as landscaping upkeep. Cabbage town houses a mixture of businesses and residential area.

 

Actually An Annotation: Rebuilding Urban Neighborhoods

Keating, W. Dennis, and Norman Krumholz. Rebuilding Urban Neighborhoods: Achievements, Opportunities, and Limits. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1999. Print.
Highly renowned Emeritus professor of Urban Studies and Law  Keating, and Krumholz an esteemed tenured professor of Urban Studies  also at Cleveland State University write in Rebuilding Urban Neighborhoods on the social implications behind communal revitalization and gentrification stating that: “The books in this series look at cities from a multidisciplinary perspective affording students and practitioners a better understanding of the multiplicity of issues facing planning and cities and of emerging policies and techniques aimed at addressing those issues”(xi). This book acts as an expose or on the insidious social implications for people in an urban setting, focusing on section 8 housing or living in ghettos made by rebuilding communities. This book, written by esteemed researchers in the field of urban studies solidifying this piece’s logos, thus is written for other researchers as a secondary source on the topic of urbanism.  This is useful for academic scholars to come to an understanding on the implications of communal revitalization in an urban setting.

Actually An Annotation: Neighborhood Commercial Rehabilitation

Levatino, Adrienne M. Neighborhood Commercial Rehabilitation. Washington: National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials, 1978. Print.
Adrienne M Levatino an esteemed member of the Illinois Department Of Financial and Professional Regulation, Loyola University of Chicago School of Law graduate and author of Neighborhood Commercial Rehabilitation writes in her book about the methods of gentrification and neighborhood revitalization used by local governments in order to increase communal property value and revenue. She relies heavily on government documents and first person accounts of the changes occurring within a neighborhood. Levatino’s purpose of writing this was to educate scholastic readers on the gentrification and revitalization of communities and its result on its lower socioeconomic inhabitants. This book is useful because it gives an insiders look into the government process of gentrification and revitalization process in addition to the social implications behind it.

Tic Tac Tech: A Tutorial On How To Enable Comments On Your Blog

Hi aspiring techies, Im making this post in order to help you enable comments on your blog, if you so chose. This will allow people who want to comment on your content to do so uninhibited. To allow this, first you will go to your dashboard after logging into your site@gsu.edu. Next you will scroll down the menu bar on the left hand page of your screen until you reach settings; click on “settings”. After clicking settings an additional drop down menu bar should appear with “Discussion” as an option. Click “Discussion” and scroll down until you see “Enable Comments” with the description that now anyone can comment on your blog without having tone prepared by you.

Tic Tac Tech! Now you’re free to receive all of the awesome comments from your peers and classmates.

My Google Doc: A Pondering.

I received a lot of good feed back via Google document from my Professor, Ms. Arrington. Not only is the use of a Google document to allow real time correspondence and positive critiquing and feedback extremely efficient, but also very tech savvy which goes along with the curriculum of this class that emphasizes digital literacy. In regards to the feedback given to me specifically about my reading summaries, I found that the critiquing was very positive and very constructive. Not only was feedback given on how well i interpreted and then summarized the material, but I was also given step by step examples of how to improve (such as how to improve organization) but also resources like the face to face help from my Professor in order to really know what she’s looking for and be able to utilize her advice to improve my writing skills. Based upon this I plan to schedule an appointment with my professor to more in depth go over what I need to do in order to improve my summary writing.

Tic Tac Tech: How to Cite Images in MLA and APA

Mother with Children

 

If the image, sculpture… etc is from a library database:

MLA:

Artists last name, first name. Italicized Title of Work. Date or the Acronym N.D is there isn’t a date. name of institution that houses the piece. City location of said institution.Name of Database. Web. Day you viewed the piece.

Lange, Dorothea. Migrant Mother. 1936. Library of Congress. Washington D.C. Farm Security Association Black and White Negatives. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998021539/PP/. 5 February 2016.

APA:

Artist/Photographer. Year then month of publication. Title of piece. City, state of publication: Location of piece (Museum)/Publisher.

Dorothea Lange. 1936 February/March. Migrant Mother. Nipomo, California: Washington D.C Library of Congress.

Cabbagetown: Annotated Bibliography.

Annotated Bibliography

 

Hannah, Gina. “Cabbagetown, Atlanta: What It’s Like to Live Here.” GAC. Great American Country. Web. 28 Jan. 2016.

 

 

Gina Hannah, Great American Country writer, writes about the rich southern Appalachian history that makes up the foundation of Cabbagetown District, Atlanta in the name of her article titled: Cabbagetown, Atlanta: What its Like To Live Here. Hannah mostly utilizes the primary source by using the dérive form of collecting information about a place and sharing it with the world by going to the place itself with the purpose of sharing her experiences of the town. The purpose of this article is to describe Cabbagetown District Georgia, and encourage prospective travelers to visit the area. The prospective travelers who are considering visiting Cabbagetown; make up the intended audience. This article proves to be useful because it describes Cabbagetown, Georgia in a positive light, encouraging and resulting in an influx of tourists.

 

Some Summarizing Stuff: Not Enough Space: A Look at Nessarova Piece.

Tapestry of Space: Domestic Architecture and Underground Communities in Margaret Morton’s Photography of a Forgotten New York written by Irina Nessarova from Illinois State University is a secondary source accounting on Margaret Morton’s works: The Tunnel: The Underground Homeless of New York City and Fragile Dwelling, both of which capture and explore the realities of homelessness in the United States inner city, specifically New York.

Nessarova explains how “homelessness” as we know it is not truly the “absence of a home” but in actuality “the absence of a stable home.” This distinction is key because homemaking is a huge part of the human identity, and because of this homeless are as much apart of homemaking as those who live in an apartment, condo or even a mansion. Homeless people build/make homes out of the discarded materials and the abandoned places where other members of society are not. This is a prime example of the homeless identity. However because of restrictive laws about homelessness in the inner cities of New York (such as closing off the tunnels in which many homeless New Yorkers sought shelter as captured by Morton) society is further perpetuating its fear of poverty and taking away a crucial part of the human identity (dehumanizing) from the homeless: a solid, identifiable, stable home.

In exploration of Margaret Morton’s means of conveying the dehumanization and realities of homelessness in inner city New York, one has to consider the reality of humanity at the time. While Morton was a derive artist, meaning she set out with a purpose when she captured her art and told the stories of those homeless on the streets of New York, she set out to show the realities of homelessness- an ugly an widely ignored issue- in a world where mass media reigned over what people saw and accepted. Morton sought to use her work as an anti-capitalist backdrop to show the people what they refused to see. As an international situationist using derive form of “understanding the environments psychological impact” Morton was able to see directly how the environment affected her even as someone merely passing through it and attempting to capture its truth. This along with interviewing the members of the communities themselves really cemented her ability to accurately convey the effects of the environment on the daily civilian. Another form of capturing the environment around oneself is flaneur where one loses themselves in the environment that they are observing. This form of field work is very hard to do, but this allows one to not put themselves in the shoes of the homeless who live the tunnels and shanty towns of inner city New York City, but simply capture the picturesque qualities of that reality.

 

 

 

Some Summarizing Stuff: Architectural Exclusion

The Architectural Exclusion piece by Sarah Schindler: Architectural Exclusion: Discrimination and Segregation Through Physical Design of the Built Environment was not only deeply insightful and thought provoking, but also maddening. In this piece Schindler breaks down exactly what architectural exclusion is and how architecture is used to alter the behavior and abilities of the people within or surrounded by said architecture, and even how it is purposely constructed to exclude.

Schindler describes architectural exclusion as “a man made built environment with specific features that make it difficult for certain individuals- usually poor people and people of color- to access certain places”. Some of these exclusionary architectural pieces are obvious, such as walls or gates, others such as bus stops and traffic signs are more insidious in their purpose of denying unwanted people into suburbia or other places of higher socioeconomic status. Lawmakers and civil activists have catalyzed progressive change in acts of exclusion towards minorities or those living in poverty such as rezoning, however when it comes to architectural exclusion many things such as lack of streets signs to allow for people who are unfamiliar with the area (people of lower socioeconomic status who couldn’t afford to live there) to be able to get around efficiently, thus discouraging people who don’t live in the neighborhood to travel in that area.

Another example of architectural exclusion given by the author is the placement of bus and train stops. It doesn’t usually come to the attention of the minds of people who don’t use public transportation, however to those who utilize public transportation, they are affected directly by the decision made by suburban predominantly white areas to blocked transportation stops from their areas. This keeps out undesirable people from living, visiting and working in their areas. This form of exclusion not only acts to keep people of lower socioeconomic out, but also inhibits them from acquiring higher paying jobs if not jobs at all. Schindler provides an example of how this form of built environment has even proved to be dangerous for those trying to escape the confines of the environment they live in. Cynthia Wiggins, a 17-year-old girl African American girl had to walk across a 7 lane highway to walk to work, and got struck and died. She was on her way to work at Walden Galleria, a suburban upscale mall. She was forced to cross the highway every time on her way to work because her bus route did not cross Walden Avenue, a street that split two cities. Transit stops also prevent those in a lower socioeconomic place from getting jobs in that they can’t get to the jobs. However money isn’t the problem. Some areas with higher socioeconomic stature will readily raise the minimum wage to encourage older people and teenagers already living in the area to work. Further proving the blocking of transit is really to architecturally exclude.

This article really shocked me in that our society has even more insidious ways of enforcing institutionalized racism and peniaphobia. Schindlers piece on architectural exclusion breaks down the many ways that we do that, and reveals how subconscious America’s exclusion of those who are not of a certain culture or socioeconomic stature really is.
http://www.yalelawjournal.org/article/architectural-exclusion