A social mirror to the prevalence of casual homophobia on Twitter
"This website is designed as a social mirror to show the prevalence of casual homophobia in our society. Words and phrases like 'faggot,' 'dyke,' 'no homo,' and 'so gay' are used casually in everyday language, despite promoting the continued alienation, isolation and - in some tragic cases - suicide of sexual and gender minority (LGBTQ) youth.
We no longer tolerate racist language, we're getting better at dealing with sexist language, but sadly we're still not actively addressing homophobic and transphobic language in our society.
Let's put an end to casual homophobia. Speak out when you see or hear homophobic or transphobic language from friends, at school,
in the locker room, at work or online. Use #NoHomophobes to show your support. And visit one of our resource websites to get more involved."
(NoHomophobes.com)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Jane Campion: A Girl’s Own Story (short film)
"Jane Campion has been a dominant force in world cinema for nearly two decades. Shot delicately in black-and-white, A Girl's Own Story is an early short film that traces the stories of three suburban teenage girls (Pam, Gloria and Stella) in 1960's Australia. It deals with the difficulties of burgeoning sexuality, incest, friendship and family against the backdrop of Beatlemania and an era that valued the isolating notions of purity and wholesomeness over honesty and acceptance."
(Anton de Lonno 11 July 2010, Senses of Cinema)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Hannah Starkey: reconstructed scenes from everyday life
"Using actors within carefully considered settings, Hannah Starkey's photographs reconstruct scenes from everyday life with the concentrated stylisation of film. Starkey's images picture women engaged in regular routines such as loitering in the street, sitting in cafes, or passively shopping. Starkey captures these generic 'in between' moments of daily life with a sense of relational detachment. Her still images operate as discomforting 'pauses'; where the banality of existence is freeze-framed in crisis point, creating reflective instances of inner contemplation, isolation, and conflicting emotion.
Through the staging of her scenes, Starkey's images evoke suggestive narratives through their appropriation of cultural templates: issues of class, race, gender, and identity are implied through the physical appearance of her models or places. Adopting the devices of filmography, Starkey's images are intensified with a pervasive voyeuristic intrusion, framing moments of intimacy for unapologetic consumption. Starkey often uses composition to heighten this sense of personal and emotional disconnection, with arrangements of lone figures separated from a group, or segregated with metaphoric physical divides such as tables or mirrors.
Often titling her work as Untitled, followed by a generalised date of creation, her photographs parallel the interconnected vagueness of memory, recalling suggestions of events and emotions without fixed location or context. Her work presents a platform where fiction and reality are blurred, illustrating the gap between personal fragility and social construction, and merging the experiences of strangers with our own."
(Saatchi Gallery)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Learning Communities: new students sharing common experiences
"In their most basic form, learning communities employ a kind of co-registration or block scheduling that enables students to take courses together. The same students register for two or more courses, forming a sort of study team. In a few cases this may mean sharing the entire first-semester curriculum together so that all new students in that learning community are studying the same material. Sometimes it will link all freshmen by tying two courses together for all - most typically a course in writing with a course in selected literature, or biographies, or current social problems. In the larger universities such as the University of Oregon and the University of Washington, students in a learning community attend lectures with 200–300 other students but stay together for a smaller discussion section (Freshman Interest Group) led by a graduate student or upper division student. In a very different setting, Seattle Central Community College students in the Coordinated Studies Program take all their courses together in one block of time so that the community meets two or three times a week for four to six hours at a time."
(Vincent Tinto, 1997, p.2)
1). Vincent Tinto (1997). "Universities as Learning Organizations", About Campus 1(6) January/February 1997, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/abc.v1:6/issuetoc]
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Uncontacted tribe found deep in Amazon rainforest
"Brazilian authorities say they have pinpointed the location of a community of ancient and uncontacted tribespeople in one of the remotest corners of the Amazon rainforest.
Fabricio Amorim, a regional co-ordinator for Brazil's indigenous foundation, Funai, said the indigenous community had been found after three small forest clearings were detected on satellite images. Flyovers were carried out in April, confirming the community's existence.
Four straw-roofed huts, flanked by banana trees and encircled by thick jungle, can be seen in photographs taken during the flyover.
The community is likely to be home to about 200 people, probably from the Pano linguistic group which straddles the border between Brazil, Peru and Bolivia, according to Funai.
Amorim said the region - known as the Vale do Javari - contained 'the greatest concentration of isolated groups in the Amazon and the world' but warned of growing threats to their survival."
(Tom Phillips, 22 June 2011, The Guardian, UK)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
