which can you identify?

this week in AMS 301: practice of american studies: public stories, we began a discussion of memes. what are the atoms of culture that we can identify in a capitalist, post-industrial, consumer-oriented society?

first i showed a slide of three examples of local flora. the students had to pass these elements of the landscape in order to get into our classroom building. one tree routinely scrapes against our classroom window.







i queried: who can identify these? one student confidently responded, two are deciduous and one is coniferous. the other students marveled at her vocabulary. but who could name them? some could reach deep and came up with a tentative, maple? no one could come up with names for the others, but the same woman who observed the difference between deciduous and coniferous noted that the is a branch from the offending interloping tree. (well done! she earned the tip of the hat for the day).



then we turned our attention to heidi cody's piece from 2000.













two of the 26 icons were tough: the H and the X seemed a little elusive, but we nailed them down in quick order in a few moments.