Role Call of Resources - Art Plagiarism Story

Since we have a completely unexpected snow day I have five minutes to blog! Yessss! (I love when people add extra "esses" to a "yes." It means they really mean it at a visceral level. They/I may have even closed my eyes and motioned a fist grab-and-pull.)

Here's one of my favorites from this semesters role call of resources. This one fosters THE BEST classroom discussion.

Back in December an art photographer was walking around a gallery in Miami and thought some of the pieces looked extremely familiar. He created a Facebook post with some of the images and all of his "fans" immediately cried out that the pieces were clearly stolen from him and another photographer. He notified the gallery and the owner immediately shut down the show, in horror. Here are some of the Powerpoints I use for the discussion. I like to walk them through the beginning of the story and ask how they think the photographer and the gallery owner should respond, before telling the class how the photographer and gallery owner actually did respond. The thief's response is priceless. It's like he was trying to give me fodder for class!

The story will often lead to discussions on copyright and ethics and composition. I've used it both with art students and non-art majors and the discussions are the same. This hits home for them, more than I thought it would. Feel free to use. You'll be both shocked and pleased by what students say - and how they discuss with each other.

Art Plagiarism Bust from Shannon Simpson

Role Call of Resources - Bad Scholarly Article

I've decided to do an ongoing series this semester about current real world examples I'm using in class to illustrate points. Let's begin with an article written in an extremely popular peer reviewed source...

Evaluating Sources

The Black Devil Beats Article
This is actually worse than blaming hip hop, it's actually blaming 'African Americans and their music' for juvenile delinquency. Yep. That bad.  But, it's from a Peer Reviewed source, so it must be credible, right kids? The below article is from the January issue of the American Academy of Pediatrics Journal. It couldn't be more inflammatory due to the terrible definition of African American music and the researchers need to narrowly define two genres of music entirely by race. There are so many negative and ill-informed implications from using these definitions. This just continues to support negative stereotypes that are not actually proved by this research. UGH! This from what is described as "among the top 2% most-cited scientific and medical journals." I'm so disappointed. There are way too many people that will be reading this and not thinking there's anything wrong with it.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2013/01/02/peds.2012-0708.full.pdf+html

Issues to discuss with students

1. What do you think about their definition of "African American music?"

2. African American music is the only genre defined by race. Is that okay? Why or why not?

3. Jazz, a musical genre with roots in African American culture was NOT identified by race, and yet is in the "high brow" category. What does that tell you about the perspective of these researchers? 

4. Can you think of any other reasons for correlations between music exposure and juvenile delinquency?

5. Why would you, or why would you not use this article?

6. THIS WAS PUBLISHED IN A PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL. What does that mean to you when you're evaluating sources? 

And now, students, please take the rest of this library session to discuss institutional racism, and I'll be in my office listening to hip hop,  AND R&B at the same time. Take that Netherlandic Researchers!