Warm-up Writing

• Spend five minutes writing about your thoughts on the Dawes and Nguyen readings.
• Were you familiar with Riot Grrrl before?
• Did these readings change your perspective about the subculture?
• In her video, Nguyen offered a way to move the subculture forward without being exclusionary. Do you think her Zines are a good solution?

Lesson Objectives

1. Students will be able to discuss the problematic and programmatic aspects of Riot Grrrl
2. Students will be able to describe solutions to exclusionism in historical popular culture
3. Students will be able to identify key ways to write a history paper
4. Students will be able to define the Anthropocene

Agenda

1. Warm-up Writing
2. Lesson Objectives and Agenda
3. Small-group Discussion
4. Break!
5. How to Write a History Paper
6. What is the Anthropocene?

Small-group Discussion

• In groups of three to four, discuss the Dawes and Nguyen readings
• Assign a note-taker (to turn in as Exit Ticket)
• Assign a presenter (to explain your findings to the class)

Discuss the Following Questions

Dawes’ “Why I Was Never a Riot Grrrl”

• In what ways was Riot Grrrl exclusionary?
• How did its definition of “womanhood” exclude some women?
• What is Dawes’ definition of “womanhood,” and how does it differ from that shown in Kathleen Hanna’s The Punk Singer documentary?

Nguyen’s “Art Now Ep. #85”

• What solutions does Nguyen provide for the exclusionism of punk?
• What are Zines? How does Nguyen use them to be more inclusive?
• What are her other projects, and how do they work against the exclusionistic nature of older punk?

Short Assignment 3/Short Assignment 4

• What subcultures have you noticed are/were exclusionary? How so?
• What are some solutions you may have for the issues in those subcultures?

Break!

Homework

• Read Kathryn Yusoff by Thu. November 9 @ 6:30 pm
• “Preface” (3 pg)
• “Writing Geology for the Storm Next Time” (5 pg)
• From A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None
• Post to Discussion Board by Fri. November 10 @ 11:59 pm
• Brainstormings/ideas on Short Assignment 3
• Feel free to give other ideas to your peers!
• Write Short Assignment 3 by Tue. November 14 @ 11:59 pm

Writing a History Paper

Writing a History Paper

• In Western academies, history considers itself apolitical
• Yet, as we all know, everything is political
• Discourages first-person perspectives and experiences
• Ethos based in credentials, not experientiality
• Pathos based in Western knowledge and narrative, not empathy of audience
• Uses APA style
• Focus on the date of writing, not on the identity of the author

Writing a History Paper

• Focuses on narrative
• Argument = what is the correct narrative?
• Politics may become important here
• Writer selects moments important to a certain narrative
• For example…

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William Cronon’s “A Place for Stories”

• Chronicle (i.e., simple list) of the American West
• Five centuries ago, people traveled west across the Atlantic Ocean. So did some plants and animals. One of these-the horse-appeared on the Plains. Native peoples used horses to hunt bison. Human migrants from across the Atlantic eventually appeared on the Plains as well. People fought a lot. The bison herds disappeared. Native peoples moved to reservations. The new immigrants built homes for themselves. Herds of cattle increased. Settlers plowed the prairie grasses, raising corn, wheat, and other grains. Railroads moved people and other things into and out of the region. Crops sometimes failed for lack of rain. Some people abandoned their farms and moved elsewhere; other people stayed. During the 1930s, there was a particularly bad drought, with many dust storms. Then the drought ended. A lot of people began to pump water out of the ground for use on their fields and in their towns. Today, Plains farmers continue to raise crops and herds of animals. Some have trouble making ends meet. Many Indians live on reservations. It will be interesting to see what happens next.

William Cronon’s “A Place for Stories”

• Chronicle (i.e., simple list) of the American West
• Writer simply chose what he believed to be most important
• Impossible to write true chronicle (i.e., everything that ever happened in the American West)
• Sunsets, births and deaths, trees falling over and being felled…… ad infinitum
• Rather: tell a story about the American West
• Cronon posits two possible stories
• Improvement
• European settlers move in, tame the land, create agriculture, build cities and roads, improve health of selves

William Cronon’s “A Place for Stories”

• Chronicle (i.e., simple list) of the American West
• Writer simply chose what he believed to be most important
• Impossible to write true chronicle (i.e., everything that ever happened in the American West)
• Sunsets, births and deaths, trees falling over and being felled…… ad infinitum
• Rather: tell a story about the American West
• Cronon posits two possible stories
• Improvement
• European settlers move in, tame the land, create agriculture, build cities and roads, improve health of selves
• Decline
• European settlers kill Indigenous peoples, destroy native ecosystems, kill and relocate native plant and animal species

William Cronon’s “A Place for Stories”

• However compelling these stories may be as depictions of environmental change, their narrative form has less to do with nature than with human discourse. Their plots are cultural constructions so deeply embedded in our language that they resonate far beyond the Great Plains. Historians did not invent them, and their very familiarity encourages us to shape our storytelling to fit their patterns. Placed in a particular historical or ideological context, neither group of plots is innocent: both have hidden agendas that influence what the narrative includes and excludes. So powerful are these agendas that not even the historian as author entirely controls them.

What does this mean for you writing a history paper?

• What narrative will you choose to write?
• How does your positionality affect what you consider to be true? How do your political opinions affect what you consider to be true? What beliefs do you already have about this historical topic?
• Will you follow conventions of history paper as genre?
• Will you use first person? Will you use personal experiences?
• How will you implement ethos/pathos?

Free Write

Spend five minutes writing about possible answers to difficulties of writing history papers.

What is the Anthropocene?

The Anthropocene

The Anthropocene

• The concept is interdisciplinary
• Blends science with history and literature
• Been discussed in Western scientific circles since the 1700s (European Industrial Revolution)
• During 1900s, most Westerners considered human impact negligible compared to broader canvas of Earth’s history
• Led to rise of fossil fuels throughout 1900s
• Yet, many activists still worried about it throughout this time
• Rachel Carson Silent Spring (1962) or Leslie Marmon Silko Ceremony (1977) for example
• Late-1900s to early-2000s saw a popular interest in global warming/climate change
• “Anthropocene” coined in the year 2000
• But… all this is from a dominant, Western perspective!

Black and Indigenous Futurity (in the Anthropocene)

• Kathryn Yusoff (who you are reading for Thursday) and Kyle Whyte (who you are reading in two weeks) problematize the concept of Anthropocene
• Yusoff calls it “White Geology”
• “Sudden concern with the exposures of environmental harm to white liberal communities… in the wake of histories in which these harms have been knowingly exported to Black and brown communities…”
• Colonized peoples have been experiencing environmental crisis since colonization
• It is only in the last few decades that (primarily) white, upper-class Westerners began paying attention to environmental crisis
• Yusoff questions how to include Black feminism in the Anthropocene, and a way forward for Black and brown people who have been subject to colonization and the massive environmental changes of settler-colonialism