Going into class for the first time, I had no idea what to expect from a “Reading’s in Pop Lit/Culture” class. I went with a lot of hesitations and was expecting this class to involve a huge amount of reading and writing. For me, as a pre-med student that was a nightmare. At first, the only idea I had of Melodrama was novels like Harry Potter and had no clue that we live in a world where everyone—be it intentionally or unintentionally—uses melodramatic elements all the time. I realized that after reading the Communist Manifesto from a melodramatic perspective I saw how Marx “villanized” the capitalists in order to gain support for the “victimized” working class.
Also watching Birth of a Nation helped me see the power of melodramatic literature and how it has changed throughout the history. Griffith shows black men as sexually aggressive especially towards white women and focuses on the virtuous and heroic character of the Ku Klux Klan. Also it was very interesting to see the revolt of the victimized Battleship Potemkin crew against the evil Tsarist regime.
Through making my PowerPoint presentation, I was familiarized with Anker’s point of view about Melodrama that it “categorizes everything into good or bad” and that it “manipulates its audience’s emotions, defining social boundaries distinguishing right from wrong.” I also found Williams’ view on Melodrama fascinating that “The point of trials is not to find the truth, but to instead find the story that is in fact more believable” and how many times people don’t care as much about the truth as they do about the more entertaining story and how media can build this virtual reality by using melodrama.
Then it was time for me to decide on the topic that I wanted to make my project website about. After writing about different topics, I decided to write about the current situation of Farsi-speaking Christians in Iran. I picked that topic because I lived in Iran as a Farsi-speaking Christian for 16 years and thought this topic would help the western world get a better view of the current situation of Christianity in Iran.
Writing my Research Proposal and Lit Review helped me linearize my thoughts and understand which aspects of my research topic I wanted to focus on. Moreover, writing my Manifesto helped me understand why I should really be so passionate about this issue and how it can be helpful for someone who does not know much about Christianity in Iran. After writing my manifesto, I started constructing my research hypertext by writing about more specific subtopics and describing how all of them come together to make up a cohesive entity. Also the hypertexts help me be more specific in areas that required more attention. For example, writing about Christian refugees allowed me to portray the needs of those who leave their country and the organizations help them during the process. Also in my Financial Support page, I linked a website where anyone can go and donate to Iranian refugees who need financial support.
Making my Powtoon video was one of the most fun assignments in this course. Having to sit in front of a professional microphone to record my voice and then learning the process of making an educational video was very interesting. I feel like now I might actually make more of those videos if I ever want to do an informal presentation in the future.
But at the end, it all came down to the Linear Paper. I wanted all the effort that I had put in to show in my linear paper by writing something that’s elaborate while cohesive. Although, I was not able to incorporate all the pages on my website, I used a great number of them to make my point and provide explanations. Also, since my contribution on the website was translating different Farsi news pages, I could use examples from both sides of the argument to better illustrate the different viewpoints. Furthermore, I introduced Youcef Nadarkhani as an example of someone who spent a long time in prison and my readers can look into to gain more information about Christian prisoners in Iran. I finished my linear paper by saying that even though I do understand that there are two sides to this argument and that both sides have strong reasonings, I believe that those who oppress Iranian Christians are wrong and instead of persecuting those Christians, they should try to get to know their differences better and try to make a more peaceful future.
My site compromises 24 pages with each page having 2-3 internal/external links, plus a navigation bar of 8 standard links. It includes 2207 words of my own writing—not including the Manifesto, Research Proposal, Annotated Bib and Lit Review—plus a 2060 word printable research essay based on the website, and a 7 item annotated bibliography plus 3 sources that were translated from Farsi to English from 3 different news websites.
Also watching Birth of a Nation helped me see the power of melodramatic literature and how it has changed throughout the history. Griffith shows black men as sexually aggressive especially towards white women and focuses on the virtuous and heroic character of the Ku Klux Klan. Also it was very interesting to see the revolt of the victimized Battleship Potemkin crew against the evil Tsarist regime.
Through making my PowerPoint presentation, I was familiarized with Anker’s point of view about Melodrama that it “categorizes everything into good or bad” and that it “manipulates its audience’s emotions, defining social boundaries distinguishing right from wrong.” I also found Williams’ view on Melodrama fascinating that “The point of trials is not to find the truth, but to instead find the story that is in fact more believable” and how many times people don’t care as much about the truth as they do about the more entertaining story and how media can build this virtual reality by using melodrama.
Then it was time for me to decide on the topic that I wanted to make my project website about. After writing about different topics, I decided to write about the current situation of Farsi-speaking Christians in Iran. I picked that topic because I lived in Iran as a Farsi-speaking Christian for 16 years and thought this topic would help the western world get a better view of the current situation of Christianity in Iran.
Writing my Research Proposal and Lit Review helped me linearize my thoughts and understand which aspects of my research topic I wanted to focus on. Moreover, writing my Manifesto helped me understand why I should really be so passionate about this issue and how it can be helpful for someone who does not know much about Christianity in Iran. After writing my manifesto, I started constructing my research hypertext by writing about more specific subtopics and describing how all of them come together to make up a cohesive entity. Also the hypertexts help me be more specific in areas that required more attention. For example, writing about Christian refugees allowed me to portray the needs of those who leave their country and the organizations help them during the process. Also in my Financial Support page, I linked a website where anyone can go and donate to Iranian refugees who need financial support.
Making my Powtoon video was one of the most fun assignments in this course. Having to sit in front of a professional microphone to record my voice and then learning the process of making an educational video was very interesting. I feel like now I might actually make more of those videos if I ever want to do an informal presentation in the future.
But at the end, it all came down to the Linear Paper. I wanted all the effort that I had put in to show in my linear paper by writing something that’s elaborate while cohesive. Although, I was not able to incorporate all the pages on my website, I used a great number of them to make my point and provide explanations. Also, since my contribution on the website was translating different Farsi news pages, I could use examples from both sides of the argument to better illustrate the different viewpoints. Furthermore, I introduced Youcef Nadarkhani as an example of someone who spent a long time in prison and my readers can look into to gain more information about Christian prisoners in Iran. I finished my linear paper by saying that even though I do understand that there are two sides to this argument and that both sides have strong reasonings, I believe that those who oppress Iranian Christians are wrong and instead of persecuting those Christians, they should try to get to know their differences better and try to make a more peaceful future.
My site compromises 24 pages with each page having 2-3 internal/external links, plus a navigation bar of 8 standard links. It includes 2207 words of my own writing—not including the Manifesto, Research Proposal, Annotated Bib and Lit Review—plus a 2060 word printable research essay based on the website, and a 7 item annotated bibliography plus 3 sources that were translated from Farsi to English from 3 different news websites.