Our lives become the stories that we read and see in media. Exposing us to larger than life size imagery and narratives, cinema is particularly influential in helping us making sense of our lives in and through the stories of others. In Cinema Appreciation students explore cinema as both a means of artistic expression and a communication medium which shapes our social world. To understand cinema as an art form, students learn to unpack various cinematic elements such as moving images, makeup, lighting to better understand how they shape our interpretations of the stories we see in cinema which reflect the world around us and even influence how we see ourselves. Students learn film theory, film history, and film analysis as they explore cinema representations of a range from identities and identifications such as race, sex, gender. Given the impact of such mediated representations, students learn the importance of critical analysis of cinema. The essay featured here “Curated Lives and The Truman Show “by featured scholar Sebastian Gonzalez effectively demonstrates the relevance of critical analysis of cinema. His essay suggests we ought to ask critical questions about our engagement with mediated texts such a reality tv and its ongoing pressure to conform to a curated view of the “ideal life.”
English composition and literature endeavors to teach students critical writing and reading skills needed to communicate to a variety of audiences. This demonstrates a mastery of essential course concepts but moves beyond composition into critical/rhetorical analysis guided by literary theory drawing on the concepts of thinkers like Marx, Saussure, Freud, Lacan, and Foucault. Many students, at first, resist theory, finding the language of theory to be strange and uncomfortable to them; however, students are able to see theory at work deconstructing and establishing relationships between the “literary” and the “theoretical” as they read scholarly criticisms and produce their own. Sofia Forte’s work here demonstrates the spirit of criticism. Her essay is honest, different, and well thought out. Sofia wrote about a subject she loves—music and used it to analyze subjectivity in Black Mirror, “San Junipero.” Exploring the director’s musical choices and their connection to subjectivity, she hopes people understand music as a universal language, a distinctly human language that connects us and defines us.
While the term “rhetoric” often signifies “empty speech” or words over action or substance, students of rhetoric learn to appreciate rhetoric for its substantive contributions to socio-civic life. As of form of symbolic action, rhetoric moves audiences to act often by first inviting them to be, shaping or re-shaping identities by drawing on pre-existing identifications to suggest new ways forward. Students of rhetoric in speech communication are taught to be critically engage with speeches because of the power of the spoken word and imagery to shape/constrain thoughts and actions. The scholar featured in this section, Luis Ravelo, demonstrates the complexity of such critical engagement with his analysis of the rhetoric of Hugo Chavez. His works weaves together a complex hybrid analysis combining concepts from classical Greek rhetoric to contemporary rhetorical theorists Kenneth Burke, Michael McGee, and Maurice Charland to critically evaluate Chavez’s attempts to reconstitute Venezuelan national identity in response to increasing pressure from the United States.
In what follows you will find four attempts at philosophical critique. Philosophical critique is different than literary and rhetorical criticism. In philosophy we do not necessarily need a text or speech to analyze. We can, but we can also analyze ideas, concepts, institutions and practices. The critiques included here do just that. Nicky Bueno's essay analyzes behavior patterns in urban areas. Rafael Rojas analyzes the development of artificial intelligence. Kevin Cajina analyzes the history of philosophy and the development of science. Greta Medina analyzes the confluence of individual psychology and ethnic identity. In every example the goal is to think more critically about common principles, assumptions, and activities to often accepted without analysis.