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Thursday, 28 March 2013
Silly Stones
I found this interesting site online called Grave Humor - Funny, Ironic and Ridiculous Tombstones, where people post pictures of weird stones that they see. If your humor can get as morbid as mine, you may appreciate this site. I think my favourite is the one that reads "I made a lot of deals in my life but I went in the hole on this one" (I SERIOUSLY love a good pun...), with this one being a close second. Some of the pictures are of tombstones of people who's names are a little silly, such as "Worm" and that kind of thing, which I don't find particularly funny. I appreciate the ones that are purposefully engraved in a manner to make you chuckle, because I would like to do something similar when I die. In our culture, at least the way I see it, the tombstone stands as a marker of not only the individual's body, but of their life as well. We put names and phrases on the stone that remind us of who the dead were in life, to preserve our memory of them. So I appreciate when someone makes a conscious effort to create the best memories of themselves after their passing by having an interesting phrase put onto their tombstone, or having the tombstone itself depict something original like Mickey Mouse, a computer or a parking meter. Flip through the photos and enjoy!
Friday, 22 March 2013
Response to: Speakers for the Dead
I wanted to post a brief reply to the film we watched the on Tuesday titled "Speakers for the Dead." (It will be brief, as we discussed a lot of themes about the movie in class)
One thing I wondered about the movie, and maybe I'm misunderstanding this because of the way the movie was structured, but why it did not occur to the committee in charge of commemorating the African-Canadian cemetery to first ask the former owners of the land where the stones were before excavation... it seems like a logical thing to do. I also found it interesting that in the debate as to whether excavation should take place or not, it was predominately the voices of white individuals who were the loudest. Those who did not have any claims of ancestry to the buried individuals in the cemetery were making judgements and decisions about what was "proper" treatment of the ground and what was not. For a while residents of the town allowed their neighbor to dig up the ground to plant potatoes and to allow their animals to wander over the patch. But when digging was in search for tombstones, there seemed to be more of an appreciation for the "sacred" nature of the spot. I do think that it was because of racial tensions within the community, and that those who claim a privilege over others based on their race were frightened that somehow a part of their identity would be tarnished. I especially found that statement from the one elderly woman about how "it was not a racial issue because she was participating in the committee" (not a direct quote) and so on to have a weird, "I'm not racist because some of my closest friends are black" kind of undertone to it...weird.
Anyway, those were some of my thoughts. I groaned when the video was put in and was ready to leave at any moment, but ended up staying the entire class because it was actually and interesting and education video, go figure!
Have a great weekend everyone!
One thing I wondered about the movie, and maybe I'm misunderstanding this because of the way the movie was structured, but why it did not occur to the committee in charge of commemorating the African-Canadian cemetery to first ask the former owners of the land where the stones were before excavation... it seems like a logical thing to do. I also found it interesting that in the debate as to whether excavation should take place or not, it was predominately the voices of white individuals who were the loudest. Those who did not have any claims of ancestry to the buried individuals in the cemetery were making judgements and decisions about what was "proper" treatment of the ground and what was not. For a while residents of the town allowed their neighbor to dig up the ground to plant potatoes and to allow their animals to wander over the patch. But when digging was in search for tombstones, there seemed to be more of an appreciation for the "sacred" nature of the spot. I do think that it was because of racial tensions within the community, and that those who claim a privilege over others based on their race were frightened that somehow a part of their identity would be tarnished. I especially found that statement from the one elderly woman about how "it was not a racial issue because she was participating in the committee" (not a direct quote) and so on to have a weird, "I'm not racist because some of my closest friends are black" kind of undertone to it...weird.
Anyway, those were some of my thoughts. I groaned when the video was put in and was ready to leave at any moment, but ended up staying the entire class because it was actually and interesting and education video, go figure!
Have a great weekend everyone!
Friday, 8 March 2013
So... this happened
I'm sure there are a lot of students in the class who love viking archaeology, so I'm posting this for your judging pleasure!
Tuesday, 5 March 2013
Our Case Study Project: Taxidermy
The submission of our project proposals last weekend has got me thinking more and more about this final project, so for this week's post, I want to talk a little bit about our project outline. I would love to get feedback and suggestions from anyone reading this post, all constructive criticism is welcome!
Our project centers around the Victorian to modern taxidermy in Western society; we are comparing this practice to the intentional mummification behaviors of past pre-industrial societies, making the argument that taxidermy is a type of "modern-day mummification" based on the motivations behind both practices.
We suggest that what motivated mummification of human individuals and what also motivates the taxidermy of animals is either affection for the individual or a sense of conquest or ownership over the individual. We will support this argument with examples and academic literature concerning both taxidermy and mummification.
Another facet to our argument is that both taxidermy and mummification are utilized by participants to formulate either an individual or a group identity, and that this identity represents a relation with the taxidermied or mummified individual, again, either an affection for or conquest of said individual. For example, the use of taxidermied exotic animals in museums, particularly by early colonial explorers, could represent the identity of the conquering Western power and their abilities to "tame" the exotica.
Our project will be presented in a series of blogs. I think this works well because a) everyone in the class knows how to use Blogger (I hope), b) it will allow us to engage in a discussion of the topic and present our argument in structured, linear format, and c) we can hopefully receive feedback and questions from our classmates directly on our project, and elaborate on the comments we receive.
I'm starting to get quite excited about this project because I have never done such a large assignment in this web format, nor have I done any study of taxidermy, so I'm bound to learn something. If anyone has any suggestions about what we should or should not include or, even better, any suggestions for sources or visual media that we could include for our blog, I'd love to hear them!
Our project centers around the Victorian to modern taxidermy in Western society; we are comparing this practice to the intentional mummification behaviors of past pre-industrial societies, making the argument that taxidermy is a type of "modern-day mummification" based on the motivations behind both practices.
We suggest that what motivated mummification of human individuals and what also motivates the taxidermy of animals is either affection for the individual or a sense of conquest or ownership over the individual. We will support this argument with examples and academic literature concerning both taxidermy and mummification.
Another facet to our argument is that both taxidermy and mummification are utilized by participants to formulate either an individual or a group identity, and that this identity represents a relation with the taxidermied or mummified individual, again, either an affection for or conquest of said individual. For example, the use of taxidermied exotic animals in museums, particularly by early colonial explorers, could represent the identity of the conquering Western power and their abilities to "tame" the exotica.
Our project will be presented in a series of blogs. I think this works well because a) everyone in the class knows how to use Blogger (I hope), b) it will allow us to engage in a discussion of the topic and present our argument in structured, linear format, and c) we can hopefully receive feedback and questions from our classmates directly on our project, and elaborate on the comments we receive.
I'm starting to get quite excited about this project because I have never done such a large assignment in this web format, nor have I done any study of taxidermy, so I'm bound to learn something. If anyone has any suggestions about what we should or should not include or, even better, any suggestions for sources or visual media that we could include for our blog, I'd love to hear them!
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