Portfolio Summary

Credit to this website

At the beginning of the semester, I took this class because I thought it would be interesting, but I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. Looking back, I'm so glad that I took this class. I learned so much about multiple intersectionalities and marginal identities and it really opened my eyes about the social inequities that are still around today. If there's one thing that's been made clear through this semester, it's that although there's been much progress, there's still a lot of work to be done.

I tried to cover a range of intersectional and marginal identities, along with topics that we covered in class. This includes issues of race, gender, class, and sexuality.

I didn't really go for a specific structure or order for my blog posts. I wrote about whatever I found interesting or appealing when it came to examples that excluded personal experiences. This included some examples from TV shows, such as Parks and Recreation and All-American, and some interesting YouTube videos that I found. In order to change up what artifacts I used, I also picked out a political cartoon.

My TV show examples tackled issues of race and gender: All-American discussed racism and police brutality in a specific scene during the first season, while Parks and Recreation discussed hegemonic masculinity that one character portrays throughout the show's run. Personally, these artifacts proved to be easier for me since I regularly watch these shows and media studies is something that I want to focus on later in my academic career at CNU.

The two artifacts that focused on articles were more rounded in my opinion. One article discussed the Virginia Values Act that was recently passed and it's protections for those in the LGBTQ+ community, which related to topics of sexuality and gender identity. The other article discussed the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team's fight for equal pay, which related to topics concerned with gender, such as the wage gap.

To me, the one artifact that stands out from all the others is the political cartoon that I wrote about. This proved to be the hardest artifact to write about because I found it difficult to reach the word count about a political cartoon that was pretty straight-forward in addressing white, male privilege.

For my other examples, I included two personal experiences, one from my friend and one that I took note of when I was in high school. Both of these personal experiences could be considered topics that involve race since one deals with controlling images within a diverse environment, while the other discusses issues of cultural appropriation and color-blind ideology. Another artifact analyzing a Nike ad aimed toward women athletes and how "doing gender" plays a role in sports communities. One artifact was focused on a homeless community in Los Angeles and discussed the inequality and inequity of lower-income communities, which related to concepts regarding class. The last artifact that I discussed was the model minority myth. For this artifact, I focused on a TEDx Talk that was given by an Asian American woman who highlighted the effects of stereotypes on Asian Americans, specifically in the education system.

After submitting all 10 of my posts, I realized that while I tried to cover as much ground as I could when it came to intersectionality, I only scratched the surface. I hope that within my last two semesters at CNU I take more classes like this in order to learn more about social injustice.