DIGITAL RECORD SLEEVES
Students in my course “Hip Hop: The Politics of Culture” (UCSD) created digital record sleeves that related to course themes on the politics of race, gender, and authenticity in hip hop. They justified their original artwork and song lists in a curator’s statement on our course blog. These are examples of their digital record sleeves.
DUPLICITY
This record was curated as a lyrical exploration of the depiction of women in hip-hop. From its conception, hip-hop music has been a largely male-dominated field, with the presence of female rappers seeming to diminish over time. Has popular hip-hop created or reflected an environment unwelcoming to women by a normalized subjection to toxic masculinity? How much variation exists within hip-hop in regards to the attitudes expressed towards females in popular songs? Is there much effort to change a rampantly negative and hyper-sexualized narrative by rappers often dubbed “conscious”?
Click here to view this group’s entire “Curator’s Statement.”
STILL HERE
Still Here reflects how the Black communities in America are still in a state of unrest in 2016 just as it was decades ago. There is a myth of linear progress that suggests our nation is far removed from the oppression of black bodies by the hands of police who are supposed to protect them.
Click here to view this group’s entire “Curator’s Statement.”
INTERNET MEMES
Students in my “Asian American History” (UCSD) course created internet memes and other digital artifacts that present critiques of historical and contemporary problems in racism and immigration policy. Below is an example of an educational short video.
EDUCATING STEVE KING
Many people, like Representative Steve King, only think of European and Western history for the development of civilization. But when King does this, he encourages the erasure of certain events and emphasizes others, misconstruing the reality of history. His view of the world becomes a mediated account. It credits the West with innovations that originated from these so-called “other subgroups”.
Click here to read this group’s entire critical explanation of their video.
AUDIO PODCASTS
In several of my courses, I train students to create audio podcasts document stories of people from the local community. Compared to video documentaries, I believe audio projects easier to learn and edit. Below, students from “Asian American History” (California State University, Long Beach-High School program) created a story on gang violence in Long Beach, presenting a solution to help fix it.
DOMESTIC WORKER WEBSITE
In my course “Filipina and Latina Transnational Labor” (UCSD), with my consultation, Gitanjali Das designed this beautiful and informative website on the plight of healthcare access for domestic workers in the United States. Click here to view her full website. Below is one of the various graphics she created for her website.
VIDEO COMMENTARY
As a teaching associate in the University of California, Irvine’s Humanities Core Course, I had the pleasure and honor of teaching very bright and creative first-year students. One of my students, Claire Bantilan, won the highly coveted UCI undergraduate research award for her capstone research project in which she produced a film that investigated the racial and gender politics of the Broadway musical Miss Saigon. Her video is below. You can read her reflection on the project by clicking here.
Mark Redondo Villegas, Ph.D. 