Cross-Cultural Blog

Students in my Cultural Interfaces class are engaged in a really interesting project right now. They've been assigned to spend the weekend taking digital pictures of some form of "Stanford Culture." We're sharing those photos on Flickr, and then they're going to work together in class on Monday to create blog posts that share -- in words and images -- some aspect of Stanford culture with our CCR blog-readers.

I love the pictures that the students are posting -- If I had to make a blogpost on this topic, here are the ones that I would include: a series on the Red Fountain. The Red Fountain is located outside of Green Library, the largest library on campus -- and not only is it a unique landmark, but it also is a central stop in the Stanford practice of "fountain hopping". I find it fascinating that three separate students (out of 13) thought to include the Fountain in their selection of photos -- from an aesthetic treatment of the fountain ...

... to one that captures the moment and spirit of fountain hopping ...

... to a final picture, which a student entitled "Holi festival," showing the way that this Stanford landmark has become incorporated into an ancient cultural festival from India. That's a cross-cultural moment, for sure.

I'm excited to see what images and Stanford "cultures" the students focus on in their blogposts over the next few days.

Posted by Christine Alfano at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross-Cultural Rhetoric. Yesterday, at 9 am, was the first day of class. We looked at McDonald's Websites across the world. Students worked at the plasma screens in groups of 3 or 4. They chose to look at websites for Israel, the UK, France, Mexico, Spain, Japan, Singapore, and Jordan. We learned that marketing and advertising is all about the rhetorical relationship between writer, audience, and text -- it's the rhetorical situation in action. But we also came to realize how powerfully the visual and interactive material in these ads (these websites) both reflects and creates specific cultural values for each country.

One of the images on the new McDonald's site for Sweden is available through the website link at http://www.mcdonalds.se/

[I was just told that I have to take the image down because of copyright issues... yes, trying to be a responsible blogger!]

I would love to know how students in Orebro respond to this advertising. We will have to wait a few weeks!

Posted by Alyssa O'Brien at 09:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It's the start of a new school year here at Stanford, and we have two courses listed as part of the CCR project this term -- a freshman course (PWR 1: Cross-Cultural Rhetoric: Ads and Activism Across the Globe) and a sophomore course (PWR 2: Cultural Interfaces: The Rhetorics of Cultures, Subcultures, and Group Identity). The students themselves seem genuinely excited to be part of this project and are already eagerly anticipating the international connections they will make later in the quarter. As we welcome the students into this project, we're going to be opening up this blog space to them for their own commentary on cross-cultural issues. I'm excited to see a real conversation open up about issues related to culture and community, both domestic and international.

Posted by Christine Alfano at 08:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (36) | TrackBacks (0)