In listening to the podcast for this class, I think the part that stuck out to me most was the conversation of Leadership Studies not being a “safe” major. As Dr. Bezio explains, people typically hear Leadership Studies, and in my own experiences, seem to be confused and often ask what I am even studying with that major. I would be lying if I said that I’ve never worried about getting a job with this major, for even this past spring as I’ve been applying to internships, there’s not typically any box that Leadership Studies fits into; however, I think it is this uniqueness of Leadership Studies that interests me the most. With this major, we can learn to a greater extent than most other majors how to think for ourselves, how to make ethical decisions, and ultimately how to be leaders, a skill that is fundamental to any career path. With most majors, you learn the facts of the field, such as in chemistry memorizing organic chemistry or in political science memorizing different governmental institutions and laws; instead, Leadership Studies has taught me not only how to be a leader, but also more soft skills, such as evaluating the ethics of a situation. Using these skills, we will be able to confront issues, such as social justice issues and inequality in the workplace, in the future, for we have learned both how to think for ourselves, and how to evaluate a situation that we see as being unequal, or more generally, “wrong”. Thus, I think it is important to recognize how a Leadership Studies major is indicative of our desire to make a change and will give us the skills, experiences, and even greater desire to succeed and make formidable improvements to our society.

           In watching these music videos and doing the readings, the most interesting aspect to me was the conversation about the yellow dress that Beyoncé wore in Lemonade. This conversation begins by describing how the director of the Lemonade music video Jonas Akerlund insisted on having Beyoncé wear a yellow dress to “balance the destructive action of the video with an undeniably feminine color” (Ford 193). In watching the music video, however, many black women saw the yellow dress as a symbol of Oshun, a Yoruba deity who is represented by the color yellow and is known for being strong, but also vulnerable enough to love. To many black women, Beyoncé wearing this yellow dressed symbolized the power, but also the ability tone vulnerable, of Oshun, a figure that is rooted in African “diaspora spiritual and cultural vernacular” (Ford 194). In this scenario, the yellow dress for Akerland intended to symbolize femininity among the destruction, and while some of the audience likely saw it this way, another subset of the audience, primarily black woman, tooth yellow dress to symbolize Oshun, an important cultural figure, and a symbol of power and vulnerability. I think this scenario is interesting because it highlights how the same thing, like the yellow dress, in the same circumstances can be interpreted in vastly different ways due to individuals’ own beliefs, background, or knowledge. For Akerland, he most likely embraced the symbol of femininity from the metal flower from Rist’s doing, while the black woman interpreted the yellow dress as a symbol of Oshun due to their cultural and spiritual background. An individual’s personal experiences, background, culture, and understanding of the world can lead to different, varying interpretations of the same symbol or situation.

            In reading these differences of interpretation, I thought largely of my experiences in high school and a bit in college, wherein reading a novel or watching a film, treachery often pointed out symbols; however, in interpreting these symbols, there was often a “right answer” tone found. For example, if there was water falling on an individual in a scene, it was the “right answer” to interpret this as a symbol of rebirth and renewal. After doing this reading, however, I question whether this way of thinking about interpreting symbols, that there’s a “right answer”, is the right way to think about interpretation. By boiling a symbol don to a single, “correct” meaning, this way of thinking ignores the individual background and experiences of the individuals, in this case, students reading a novel or watching a film, and instead assumes that ever an individual has the same background and that every symbol has the same meaning to everyone. Thus, I thinker this reading, it is important to take away the idea that when interpreting symbols, it is important to recognize that individuals’ background and experiences can lead to different interpretations of the same symbol. 

In the Podcast, Dr. Bezio discussed the idea that there is no such thing as “just entertainment”. By this, she meant that all forms of entertainment, whether it be books, movies, music, art, etc. have some sort of message that it is trying to convey, and it does this through how it is drawn, the words used in writings, etc. I think this idea is interesting as it could be applied to our last conversation about the importance of pop culture. In the forms of entertainment as espoused by pop cultures, such as through its music, movies, writings, etc, there are messages, for as forms of entertainment, they carry messages. I think having The Yellow Wallpaper as an additional reading with this podcast is interesting. In this story, the aspect I found most interesting was the narrator’s constant return to describing the wallpaper and saying how it is ugly and peeling and disgusting. To me personally, I interpreted the wallpaper as being a reflection of the state of the woman, for in between her descriptions of the wallpaper, she describes how her husband has diagnosed her with “nervousness”, and the acts of him to dismiss her potential illness and instead take her to the house and spend time there. It is in this reflection that I see the wallpaper as like the woman; both are starting to wither away, neither is being helped, and instead of being ignored and left alone to themselves. Thus, in the entertainment of this writing in describing the wallpaper and telling the story, the author creates the message of the dismissal of woman, and in the case of this woman, the falling apart of herself. This story shows how descriptions, which seem on the surface simply for entertainment, carry a strong message in the words, with their meaning and descriptions.

In listening to this week’s podcast, I think the most interesting part to me was the idea of how ideas and forms of pop culture spread. For example, in discussing the tale of Robin Hood, Dr. Bezio explained how the story began with the “common” people under the reign of King John, and how this story, with some changes and adaptations, has continued to be told into the modern-day, for the themes of the story, even in different settings, hold strong. With this, stories, like Robin Hood, can spread through both writing and word of mouth, such as through songs that are easy to memorize and spread. It is this ability to spread to different peoples at different times in different settings that interested me most in this discussion. Specifically, I think it would be interesting to look at the spreading of stories, essentially the spreading of pop culture, in the current age of social media. With social media, ideas from across the globe can be shared with individuals of any other country, religion, race, etc in a matter of seconds.

In the past, the spreading of stories and pop culture, even if it was widespread, took time, for ideas were spread through word of mouth, and through writings, which even then were often limited to certain peoples and classes of peoples. In the current age, however, technology has made it possible for people from vastly different areas, both domestically and internationally, to share ideas, and spread stories and experiences. Thus, I think it would be interesting to look at the spread of pop culture and the stories from which it develops and look at the development of these stories in the new age of technology and social media. I somewhat do this in my own research project, for I am looking at Donald Trump’s rhetoric, and the impact of technology and social media on the ability to spread ideas, and the consequences of this increased ability and access to spreading ideas. Overall, I think that, like in my research project, it would be interesting to look at the ability and access of pop culture to now spread with the aid of technology and social media.

In episode 9, Dr. Bezio discussed the study of history and its role in the humanities. During the discussion, one of the most interesting points raised, to me, was the Great Man Theory of leadership. This theory argued that individuals, or in this case white men, are born with the traits that make them good leaders. With this theory, and with the almost exclusive writings about male accomplishments due to rich white men funding many of the writing expeditions, history has come to focus predominantly on the male experience and tends to ignore the accomplishments and history of women, poor people, and POC. While listening to this discussion of the rich white male-centric account of history, I was reminded of the books and history that I – and I bet many other students – were taught growing up. Throughout k-12 public school, the majority of the books we read were written by white men, along with many of our classes focusing only on the history and accounts of white men and their accomplishments, lives, and thoughts. For example, until I was a senior in high school, I never read any book in school written by an African author about African history, and only a handful of the 400 students in my grade read that book. The focus of history and historical writings is apparent in our education system that focuses almost exclusive attention on the history and accounts of, and the writings of, rich white men.

For The Living Room Candidate assignment, I was assigned the 2004 election between Bush and Kerry. More specifically, I was assigned to look at the ads released by Bush, the Republican, in this presidential election race. One of the ads that stuck out to me was an ad in which Bush described what he saw as faults in Kerry’s approach to National Security. In the ad, Bush appears to be appealing to people’s sense of patriotism, for he says things such as “As our troops defend America in the War on Terror”, indicating that Kerry either doesn’t care or cares less about these troops. Bush continues to use this patriotic appeal by discussing how Kerry opposed different types of military weapons made here in Florida. Firstly, this continues to appeal to people’s patriotic desires, for it emphasizes how the weapons were made in the United States, in Florida, and uses an accusatory tone that appears to almost see this refusal of American-made weapons as unpatriotic and bad for the country. Additionally, by listing these weapons that. appear to have fancy, “military-like” names, the ad gives the audience a sense that these weapons are very important to the war, and not having them is incredibly detrimental, while in reality, it is likely that people watching do not even know exactly what these weapons are, or how they would help. Additionally, Bush adds the fact that Kerry opposed extra body gear for soldiers as again an appeal to Americans patriotism, for it frames Kerry as caring little for the sacrifices of the military. Lastly, as a whole, this ad does not give any information about Bush’s policies; instead, it focuses on making his competitor, Kerry, look worse, and thus Bush looks better in comparison.

In reading the article, one of the most interesting parts was the conversation about why we humans struggle to deal with problems and their long-term effects. Like the physicist and the economist, humans struggle to come up with solutions to issues and the long-term effects of these decisions. Several reasons for humans seeming tendency to think on an ad hoc basis, as well as struggle to consider the long-term effects of decisions, are presented in the article, ranging from claims of genetic programming to the “evolution that has placed on the development of the human cognitive apparatus”; however, the theory that I think is the most interesting is the one concerning male domination in our society (Dorner 6). As Dorner explains, this theory distinguishes “between ‘serial’ male thinking and ‘parallel’ female thinking and identify the latter as more appropriate for dealing with complex problems” (Dorner 6). This theory is most interesting to me because it seems to incorporate both biological and social factors in determining “better” problem-solving. Biologically, it distinguishes differences in thinking  between males and females, and socially, it argues that because males have dominated society (through the, directly and indirectly, the sexist foundation of our society), we do not have the parallel thinking of females present and thus this hurts our problem-solving abilities. I focus on this theory because if we accept it, several philosophical and practical questions arise, such as should we have mandatory representation of women in decision-making bodies where they are currently disproportionately not present, such as in the federal government? And with that, is this “parallel thinking” limited only to females, or can it be taught to others, and likewise, can this “serial thinking” be taught to women to create more balanced problem solvers in general?

In my opinion, one of the best ads is the Right Twix vs Left Twix ads for several reasons. The first is the verbal message of the ad itself, for it gives a very simple, yet very clear, slogan of “Left Twix vs Right Twix”. By making these two entities seem on opposite sides of some issues, the ad works to create, through the verbal message, an almost debate about whether the left or right side of a Twix is better. This is a good advertising movement because by creating the perfect arena for a debate, the ads encourage people, even if they are joking, to have small conversations and debates about whether one side of the candy is actually better than the other and why, and in this way the ad both uses the media to create coverage of the product and also encourages further discussion of and purchasing of the product through word-of-mouth conversations and debates.

Additionally, this ad is strong because it utilizes both the verbal message and the visual message to tell a story. The story of this ad pertains to how the Twix bar came to be, and the competition that grew between the brothers of the left and right Twix. By making the creation of Twix, and the eventual competition between left and right Twix, the ad grabs the readers attention, for we are often inclined to follow stories and also uses the visual imagery to both further the story and pull the viewer in, and also to increase the appeal of the candy bar. This storytelling through words and visuals draws the viewer in and entices them to pay attention, maybe even sparking them to purchase a Twix bar. Overall, I think this is a good ad because it successfully uses verbal and visual messages to both create a competition between the left and right Twix, and to create a story; together, these factors pull in viewers, and can potentially increase the interest of the viewers in the products.

Link: https://www.bls.gov/tus/charts/leisure.htm

The chart above displays what individuals in the United States, over the age of 15 years old, spend on each activity during their leisure time. According to this chart, individuals appear to spend the most time watching TV, followed by socializing and communicating, etc, and all together comes to just under 5 hours of leisure time per day. At first glance, this chart appears to be acceptable; however, there appears to be under the surface a number of potential issues with this data, issues that are described by Huff in his “How to Lie with Statistics”. One of the biggest issues is that this data was collected in a 2015 survey. With this survey method used, one potential issue is the idea that the sample who responded to the survey was a bad, or not representative, sample. Perhaps the individuals who responded to the survey lied about the amount of time they spent on each leisure activity, whether it be to fit what they think is a normal amount, or for some other reason. This potential for dishonesty calls into question the validity of this data, for it is possible that respondents did not respond truthfully, and thus the data is skewed from what reality is. Additionally, another issue that could arise is the issue of who responded to the survey. It is more likely than not that those of a higher socioeconomic status would respond to this survey, for individuals of lower socioeconomic status may not have as much time to respond, and could also be self-conscious if they do not have much or any leisure time. On the other hand, those of the higher socioeconomic status most likely have more leisure time, and may even be inclined to lie to indicate that they have more than they actually do. Either way, as Huff mentions in his writing, there is the potential for this survey to be biased towards people with more money and more time. There is the potential for this survey to be biased in a number of ways, particularly with a focus on the potential for dishonesty, and for a nonrepresentative sample.

I think the University of Richmond’s handling of the name changes was flawed in several ways. Firstly, I believe that, with this issue largely being brought to attention by students and faculty, these groups should have been more involved in the decision to change the names. As a university that constantly states its dedication to its students, I believe that their choice to not listen to or include students in this decision-making was an incorrect judgment on the part of the university. By not including students in this decision-making, many have been left feeling angry and disgruntled with the university, and I think it was a mistake to not include these groups in making decisions for the university that impact the living and learning quarters of these students.

With these problems in the decision-making process, I disagree with the decision of the university to keep the names of Freeman and Ryland on the buildings. The University of Richmond continuously claims that it is working to create a more inclusive campus community; however, with the long, racist history of the university, how is keeping the names of individuals who enslaved people, argued for eugenics, and overall perpetuated highly racist beliefs working to create an inclusive community? We can still see the racial issues on campus, with several blatantly racist incidents on campus last year, and continued acknowledgments of the racial segregation on our campus, perpetuated by institutions such as Greek life. Buildings are named after individuals to honor them; thus, by keeping the names of Freeman and Ryland on the buildings, the university continues to work directly against its message of inclusivity and perpetuates the honoring of racist individuals. By renaming these buildings, such as the remaining Mitchell-Freeman hall simply Mitchell Hall, and renaming Ryland hall, we can continue to remember the history of our university without glorifying individuals who maintained racist and highly damaging actions against African Americans.