GOOGLE Internet Kafesi in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Well, guys, have some shame... Ever heard of plagiarism?

This is an internet-cafe in Bishkek (Sovetskaya/Mederova Str.) ;))

Thanks for photo, Sister! ;)
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(UPDATE: February 23, 2011)
My sister wrote today:

не могу твой блог просмотреть. видимо ты слишком нежелательные вещи пишешь на усмотрение наших высокопоставленных...демократия называется, одно пустое слово...

Unfortunately, she cannot read my blog because of the Internet censure in Kyrgyzstan. To your friends living in the countries, where the Internet is censured, please, send the article "How to Get Around Nearly Any Web Blocker" from eHow. Useful.

Part II: Interesting Blog-projects Presented in My Class "The Emergence and Rise of the American Politicosphere"

Now, when I am finally done with grading, I have a spare minute to blog about several blogs, which were successfully presented in my class last week. (Read Part I) Today, I want to present two outstanding group-projects. These two blogs are very different from each other. Yet they have several things in common: both blogs raise awareness about the role of social networks in contemporary politics, these blogs have clear structure, neat design, quality content (I cannot but mention the selection of links to awesome articles and videos) and bitter-sweet humour.

All about Wikileaks by Leaker123
No doubts, this blog turned out to be the best ever presented in my classes in terms of design. Of course, what really matters is the content of a blog; however, I cannot but admit that I am very impressed by the final results of Leakers123:

"We are three students of English who write on "All about WikiLeaks" about Wikileaks as a part of a university project. The goal of the blog is to gather information and opinions about WIkiLeaks and surrounding topics."

The blog is informative, it can be very easily navigated, the design is neat AND the blog-posts are very well-written. I think, the three student bloggers did an outstanding job. Many thanks for this effort!

Social Media Battle by Ger_watch and US_watch
This blog is a high-calorie political snack, which will complement your diet, one of the most engaging blogs produced in this class. The two bloggers decided to write "about politicians who explore the world of social media". They stage the battle, "Who will win? Americans or Germans? Let the battle begin." Intrigue! And the stage is ready for the social media battles between Obama and Merkel, and a number of prominent American and German politicians, dead and alive. What are the conclusions? Who are the winners?
US_watch wrote:

My personal résumé about how American politicians use the internet for their purpose is fairly positive. I found that most of them are doing a fine job. Especially president Obama seems to have a competent staff to keep his facebook profile up to date. Another finding was that the time of blogging politicians seems to come to an end. They tend to concentrate more on facebook or twitter as those aren’t as time-consuming. Though some politicians do better than others, there’s one thing that unites them all. It appears to me that they don’t grasp the spirit of web 2.0. To them the internet is a one-way street. A channel to call out to the world and their voters, but when it comes to virtually interact with them, most of them don’t seem to be that interested anymore.
That’s why I’d like to end my US-part of the blog with a plea to all politicians out there. Talk less, listen more and the explore the fine chances that you have not taken so far.

More here.
Ger_watch wrote:

The last post about German politicians, trying to use web 2.0. How can I summarize the last eleven entries? At first, I want to apologize if we have have affronted anybody, but actually we had no other choice. If you want to see boring politics, you can watch the German "Bundestag", but we wanted to entertain you.
Obviously, not everything's bad about German politicians on Facebook, Twitter or Youtube. Maybe, the German mentality does not even want blogging politicians and an enthusiasm towards politicians as it could be seen during Obama's election. But I personally think that it is important to improve the online performance as there are less and less young voters.

More here.
So, who is on the Wall of Fame and who is on the Wall of Shame according to Ger_&US_watch today?

In the bloggers' opinions, Dirk Niebel and his "Edelprofil" on MeinVZ, Ken Salazar on Facebook, those reponsible for most of the official German parties social network profiles and a couple of Republican leaders, etc. are obvious loosers in terms of effective social networking with the young voters.

As for the Wall of Fame, along with the obvious example of Barack Obama, thanks to the bloggers I got to know Kristina Schröder on Twitter, Hilda Solis on Twitter, to name a few.

I sincerely hope these blogs will not be abandoned. Overall, great job, WikiLeakers123 and Ger_&US_watch!

(to be continued)

Part I: Interesting Blog-projects Presented in My Class "The Emergence and Rise of the American Politicosphere"

Today, I want to bring to the attention several blogs created by the students taking my class the Emergence and Rise of the American Politicosphere. In this blog-entry I will present three great blog-projects and explain why I like them very much. Due to the load of the work to do, I will be very brief and up to the point.

I must mention that the blog-projects are graded based on the quality of content and visual design. The students choose whether they want to build their own blog or launch one with the help of Blogger, Typepad, WordPress, etc. More about choosing a blogging platform here. The students are encouraged to experiment with the designs; however, design should complement the content. The content of the blog is very important: the topic, its relevance to this class, the blog's general coverage of the phenomena/events (the critical analysis is especially appreciated), the quality of the links, the general purpose and message of the blog, etc.

Shooting the Breeze by wetterfrosch
Wetterfrosch (translation from German: weatherman) is a self-proclaimed "22-years-old coffeeholic who often gets lost in the supermarket". The blog's creative presentation of the content outweighs the unsophisticated design. Wetterfrosch is open about his/her intentions:

LET'S TALK ABOUT THE WEATHER! A clear, shallow and safe topic: the weather. We love it, we hate it, we all have an opinion about it. The world has never known a topic that enjoyed greater popularity! The world never payed more attention to a topic with more meaningless phrases and inate ongoing, boardering on ridicule in it's intensive triviality. The world has never known a topic favoured by more amateurs...possibly except for politics.

And we are elegantly lured into talking American politics. This is what I call "a creative approach" to the blog-assignment.

Hollyticosphere by Salia
Salia introduces himself/herself:

I just learned something about My "liberal identity" by doing an internet quiz:: You are a Peace Patroller, also known as an anti-war liberal or neo-hippie. You believe in putting an end to American imperial conquest, stopping wars that have already been lost, and supporting our troops by bringing them home // // Btw: This is not actually telling you anything about my political opinion but about my adorement for funny quizes :) // Do it yourself: www.FightConservatives.com

This is an example of a blog by a person who appears as having "serious fun" with the project, while trying to figure out in what ways Hollywood is influenced by politics and liberal (non-mainstream) ideology. The blog is informative and, if I may put it this way, investigative. Unlike a typical research paper, Salia's blog resembles a digital notebook (notizenbuch) of the electronic sources relevant to her topic of interest. Hopefully, this blog will turn out to be very helpful to Salia in the closest future when she decides to write a research paper about politics and Hollywood.

Approaching the Healthabaloo by Elaine
To Elaine, her blog is "an attempt to approach the still more than lively discussion about the Health Care reform in the U.S." Elaine's personal narrative explains why she, an insured German student, has become interested in this topic:

Born in 1989 in Germany, I had to see the doctors on a quite regular basis: congenital neurodermatitis and hip dysplasia, chickenpox, sore knees, colds, scarlet fever, circulatory collapse… Health insurance was something I always took for granted. I never thought about what it would be like to be uninsured until last year’s February: I was brought to hospital as an emergency during my holiday. Diagnosed with thrombosis, the injections I required urgently cost about 380 Euros. In the middle of the night, with about 20 Euros in my purse, I was deliriously happy to be covered…

Blogosphere thrives on personal narratives. The course I have been teaching this semester was a lot about personal narratives and how they are evaluated in terms of relevance to the general history of the United States. Elaine's story is dramatic and "true"; her interests are clearly justified. As a result, Approaching Healthabaloo is a great compilation of very useful sources and Elaine's comments about a number of widespread misconceptions about the Health Care reform proposed by President Obama. Clearly, by the end of the 12th blog-post Elaine is a self-educated expert on this topic.

These are just three of my most favourite individual projects. There are more descriptions coming up tomorrow.

(to be continued)

The First Conference I Attended This Year: BOND Conference 2011, Bochum and Dortmund

The first conference I attended this year was the BOND Conference, the annual dissertation colloquium (combining American Studies in BOchum and DortmuND).

The conference offers young scholars in American Studies a forum to present current research projects as work in progress. Despite the fact that BOND is an "internal" event, a kind of dialogue or intellectual exchange between the American Studies PhD students from Bochum and Dortmund, we always have PhD students and Professors from nearby universities and international guests. This time the visiting American Studies specialists were Lynn Rose (Truman State University, currently Fulbright Professor at the University Rostock) and Steven Reschly (Truman State University). The way they handled their responsibilities as our conference "Rock Stars" was simply excellent. Many thanks, Professors!
If you click on the picture below, you will be able to inform yourself about the presenters and their work.

Thanks extends to the BOND organizers: Elisa Schweinfurth, Heike Steinhoff, Sina Nitzsche and Ariane Theis. Many-many thanks for organizing this annual event! An example of a good academic tradition.

Below is, basically, the extended summary of my presentation, which I have decided to publish as a reminder to myself.

"Construing Digital Nomadism"
Presentation by Svetlana Makeyeva
BOND Conference 2011, Bochum/Dortmund

One way to construe contemporary digital nomadism is to think of it as the basis for the formation of a sphere—a site and subject of liberal democratic practice—on the Web; another way, as the threat to the state system in Deleuzian and Guattarian sense, e.g. a war machine set by a nomad against the State apparatus. The intellectual framework which informs my study has its origins in A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (D&G, 1980). With the English translation of the work in 1987, A Thousand Plateaus entered the English-language postmodernist and poststructuralist discourse. This complex philosophical work is qualitatively different from the Kantian and Hegelian [Western] State philosophy. Since A Thousand Plateaus received substantial criticism from many of the tenants of Anglo-American philosophy and analytic tradition, it seems useful at this point to provide an overview of a critical discussion of the postmodern thought, epistemic relativism in the philosophy of science and D&G’s work— particularly, A Thousand Plateaus—at this stage of my study. There is a set of the problems hindering the texts of D&G from acquiring a ‘classical value’ within Anglo-American political philosophy and academic scholarship, in general. (These will be mentioned in the course of the presentation.) However, despite the dominance of the narratives of Enlightenment and Spirit, the postmodern thought and the school of epistemic relativism did receive a degree of recognition in the United States, Great Britain and other countries and institutions, which have successfully adopted the dogmas of the analytical Anglo-American academic scholarship. Indeed, the postmodern thought has gained proponents and paved its way into Anglo-American university curricula. As demonstrated by a number of recent innovative works reviewed in this study, some philosophical concepts (nomad, war machine, body without organs, rhizome, etc.) introduced in A Thousand Plateaus and other prominent works by D&G turned out to be very useful in analyzing and reflecting upon the trends within contemporary American society. These studies are of particular interest due to the major up-to-date topics of my thesis, e.g. the State control of the Internet, the obstacles to the freedom of expression caused by the American corporations and the political resistance to the State system on the Web.
Key terms of the presentation: nomad, State Apparatus, contemporary digital nomadism, the Internet, World Wide Web.

I enjoyed the discussion a lot. I received several questions about the text I am reading, the methodological framework of my thesis and critical approach to Deleuze and Guattari's theories, particularly, feminist criticism of the philosophical concepts in A Thousand Plateaus (which I did not address in my presentation). Two distinguished professors recommended to include a paragraph or two about my approach to the "body" in my research. The comments and recommendations turned out to be a constructive criticism; hence, very helpful. The work on my thesis continues.

I like the picture above very much. It is available on the Web on many websites. Whoever the author, this is witty.)