The Line of Conquest

I followed up today on the point Shauna made about the Pope's treaty that granted certain "rights to lands" outside Europe. Kellie was, indeed, right. The agreement was called the Treaty of Tordesillas, and it stipulated that lands east of a certain point belonged to Portugal while areas west went to Spain. It is an interesting piece of historical context that asks us to consider the notion of national "rights" to non-European lands and the involvement of Catholicism (and the Pope) in these early imperial efforts. Thanks, Shauna and Kellie, for bringing it up.

Contrapposto

I wanted to follow up on Kellie's keen observation today that de Bry rendered his figures in an almost contrapposto stance. It occurred to me after class that one of the most famous examples of this "counterpoise" position is also a warrior of sorts: Michaelangelo's David. What does this do, if anything, to your reading of de Bry's "Lorde of Virginia"?

To blog or not to blog...

A blog (short for web-log) has many functions...and faces. We'll be discussing its definition in class on Thursday, but there are two main benefits of using blogs -- particularly in classroom settings:
1. They are user friendly (no need to know programming languages).
2. Blogs encourage and support user interaction through the commenting feature--something you'll be using a lot in this class.

For class on Thursday, I'd like you to do a little blog surfing on the internet. Using the links below, you'll notice blogs come in a variety of forms. There are personal blogs, professional blogs, community blogs, political blogs and educational blogs that range from musings on fashion to travels abroad to who should be the next president. Come to class ready to discuss features you feel are essential to what makes a blog different from a regular webpage, a chat room, a discussion board, Blackboard or even something like MySpace or Facebook.

To begin, you might want to check out the definition offered by Wikipedia (we'll be talking more about wikis later in the term). Also useful is an article, "What We're Doing When We Blog," written by blogger co-creator, Meg Hourihan. If you'd like to check out some sample blogs, try looking through the blogs listed on a site called technorati that keeps a list of the top 100 blogs.

Enjoy!