I’m Abi Rosenthal. I am a first year student at SUNY New Paltz and am planning on studying English. In the future, I would like to go into writing or library studies and work as a librarian.

The theme for this course was about looking at images and analyzing the rhetoric surrounding them. First, we analyzed a short clip of a propaganda film of our choice and discussed how effective it was as pieces of propaganda. I chose a Smokey the Bear film from 1953 and showed how, while promoting forest fire prevention, it also showed a darker side to American values and exceptionalism. In class, we have looked at World War II and anti-Communist propaganda and discussed how they influenced average people’s perceptions of global threats. I had looked at a 1945 Life Magazine article about the American “Liberation of Guam” and how the article was pro-military and objectified Guam. A major theme of the course is to “go down the rabbit hole” and make connections between things that are seemingly not connected. This is exemplified in our oral presentation assignment where we were split into groups, given four images, and told to make a presentation with more images around the theme that connects all of our photos. My group’s theme was about the creation of life, extension of life, and what can we really consider to be life. This extended from everything to religious definitions of life, artificial intelligence, and activism. For our final project, we are to create an exhibition inspired by choosing a monument or memorial and jumping down the rabbit hole for interesting connections. My monument was a memorial stature of Senator Joseph McCarthy, of McCarthyism infamy, and how his legacy is still seen in our modern society.

This course taught how to analyze pieces of the past and what they signified then and how we can use it in our present and for our future.