ANNOUNCEMENTS & PLANS FOR FRIDAY, JAN 22, 2010

Tomorrow, FRIDAY, JAN 22, 2010, I will quickly show the 10minute film, 'F Word'.

Thereafter, I plan to provide you with a structured space to accomplish three things in small groups, with large group report-outs.

1. I will have you do an 'ice-breaker' exercise. We will spend about 15 minutes introducing one aspect of our first journal reading response (which I will return to you).

2. You will review primary documents which I will provide to your group and think collaboratively about issues of gender and power, and answer questions as individuals and as a group.


3. I will also introduce a primary source (from one of my current projects) and ask you to contemplate the uses of science, technology, politics, race, gender and media in the production of a postcard image.

For now, I am re-scheduling some activities on the syllabus, due to a time re-arrangement that the Librarian had to make with me due to her recent illness. I am currently scheduling two mandatory library experiences for you. The first will take place next Friday.

So, yes, I am going to re-schedule the film: "Race: Power of an Illusion" for a different day next week, in order to provide you the full class period next Friday to be spent with the Library staff.

Please update your syllabus and calendars accordingly.


--M. Tamez

POP QUIZ: LIBRARY SKILLS ASSESSMENT

All:

As promised, I am giving you a 'quiz' which helps me to assess your library research skills.

CAN YOU FIND THIS JOURNAL ARTICLE USING WSU LIBRARY TOOLS?

Instructions:

1. Click on this link to see this book review: Kellogg, Susan.
Women in Ancient America, and: The Women of Colonial Latin America (review).

2. Keep this window open to help you search using the details provided.

3. Open another window. Copy and paste this link into your browser: http://www.wsulibs.wsu.edu/.

4. Locate this article in its pdf form through the WSU library system.

5. When you find the article, save a copy of it to your desktop, or copy it to your "My Documents" folder, or email it to yourself, or save it to your personal disk/jump drive.

6. Bring a copy of it to class on Friday or Monday (latest).

7. On a separate sheet of paper, write down the steps that you took to find the journal article.

8. IF YOU CANNOT FIND IT, SEEK HELP FROM ONE OF THE REFERENCE LIBRARIANS! They will help you walk through the process. This is a trial and error process. Keep moving forward, don't stop.

Film Response Form: To support your critical thinking and writing

(This is also linked on the sidebar: 'Documents you need'

200-300_FilmResponseForm

CIVIL RIGHTS CAMPAIGNS IN WASHINGTON STATE: ORAL HISTORIES, PAPERS & DOCUMENTS

The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project is an EXCELLENT website for examining the contexts, texts, and legal sources from impacted communities, community activists, and the historical record on issues related to CIVIL RIGHTS (as opposed to constitutionalist rights=privileges based upon ideologies of race, class, gender, sexuality, religious preferences, and geographical continents of origin). Here you will find oral histories, original key documents, papers, and much more. For example, see Dorothy Hollingsworth, a social worker. Notice that she brought forth aspects of the anti-hunger campaigns of the Black Panthers, that the U.S. government appropriated as the Head Start Program. When we trace the history of that program, we are guided to the Black Panthers, migrant workers, and Indigenous peoples who are the originators of the U.S.' first urban anti-hunger brigades.

WASHINGTON STATE'S KKK WOMEN: GENDER & POWER

KKK gathering at the Crystal Pool in downtown Seattle, March 23, 1923. Photo: Washington State Historical Society

Ku Klux Klan Gathering at the Crystal Pool (2nd and Lenora) in Downtown Seattle, WA. March 23, 1923. Photo courtesy of the Washington State Historical Society. Copyright (c) reserved.

WASHINGTON STATE'S KKK HISTORY: GENDER & POWER

From the Civil Rights & Labor History Project

Klan super rally near Renton, July 14, 1923.

The cover of the Washington State KKK's monthly publication, "The Watcher on the Tower," from July 21, 1923, is devoted to one of the massive Klan super-rallies, or "Konventions," held in the Northwest in 1923-1924. The events were largely staged as spectacles and entertainment to bring masses of people, not part of normal Klan activities, into contact with Klan members and ideas. This was the first Konvention in Washington State, and brought between twenty and fifty thousand spectators. Digitized courtesy of Microfilm and Newspaper Collection, University of Washington Library. Copyright (c) reserved.

CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS IN WASHINGTON, ca 1920s: PUTTING A CRITICAL RACE & GENDER LENS ON CONSTITUTIONALIST PRIVILEGE CODES

"KKK Wedding" in Sedro Wooley, Washington, June 16, 1926. Photo: Skagit River Journal

Though Klan weddings were uncommon, the Klan did much to incorporate their own rituals and regalia into traditional rites of everyday life. This photograph of a Klan wedding in Sedro Wooley portrays the attempt to link family, religion, and civic life with the Klan. Courtesy of the Skagit River Journal. Copyright (c) reserved. Source: http://depts.washington.edu/labpics/repository/main.php?g2_itemId=755&g2_GALLERYSID=TMP_SESSION_ID_DI_NOISSES_PMT, (accessed January 15, 2010).

The above is a sample of a primary document research exploration. The primary document is the photograph.

I applied some key words of the historical and contemporary contexts for the upcoming Martin Luther King 'holiday' (etymology: from 'holy days'; 'sacred'), for example, 'Black History', 'racism', 'oppression', 'violence', 'white people', 'black people', 'lynching', 'extra-legal violence', 'U.S. history of racism.' I applied these to the history of 'Washington State' as an intersecting category of analysis.

My curiosity? To examine the public history-telling of Washington elites' codification of 'whiteness' and white privilege as de jure legal practice. The following questions arose in this brief examination of the photograph:

How do the race-gender lenses applied to 'white women's suffrage' and 'equality' with white males and white male power structures (economic, social, political) take on new meanings in this photograph?

How do the 'first wave' and 'second wave' feminist 'movements' become entangled in colonialist ideologies of racial superiority when we examine the complicated ways in which different groups of European-American women--in Washington state--were endowed with certain social, economic and political privileges in relationship to their legal and social racial designation --'White'-- through the state's constitutionalist structures?

In the Pacific Northwest, what were the specific histories of Euro-American settlement, economic development, conflict and challenges in local, national and international markets? How are these tied to the economies which, at the time, were deeply connected to race and gender in Washington's codified race laws?

Why was it important for such a significant number of white women in Washington State to hinge their suffrage and sense of freedom and equality (well-being) to racial domination and oppression of groups codified as non-white?

What do we learn about the connection between gender (masculinity, femininity, identity) as it interlocks race in the photograph of the wedding? How are religion, social gatherings, collective identity, and the 'customariness' of everyday life utilized and leveraged by 'white' women and 'white' males to shape constitutional laws?

How did white women, in Washington, use the constitutionalist system to reinforce systems of oppression already deeply entrenched in the U.S. economic structure (built upon so-called 'surplus' slave/ free/low wage labor/ disenfranchised people of color/ capital/ land-tenure)? How is this photograph an important document and archive of the patriarchal structure against which numerous oppressed groups fought to disrupt?