Read: Lutz and Collins, Reading National Geographic

1. In the preface, Lutz and Collins describe their goal as learning "what popular education tells Americans about who 'non-Westerners' are, what they want, and what our relationship is to them" (xii). A few pages later, they write, "those understandings or strategies for describing human differences have helped create and reproduce social hierarchies" (3). What do they see as the specific role of National Geographic in this dynamic of making hierarchical differences? Do you find their logic and evidence persuasive?

2. How might Postman or Miller comment on Lutz and Collins's book? What are the similarities and differences between how these authors analyze the impact of the media on our perceptions of the world?

3. Lutz and Collins consider National Geographic to be a mass publication that claims to be scientific. How does their assessment compare to Postman's analysis of serious television (news, documentaries)?

4. What do we learn by considering the politics of National Geographic's production?

5. What are the key messages of the photographs that Lutz and Collins analyzed? How are race, ethnicity, gender, and economic development represented? How do these representations change over time? Do you agree with their conclusion that National Geographic's images "obscure the American relationships with the third world that have structured life there in profound ways; they deny real social connections even as they evoke empathy" (280)?

6. What kinds of responses do readers have to National Geographic? Does the magazine awaken curiosity or reinforce preconceived notions?

7. What methods did Lutz and Collins use? How would you evaluate their evidence and logic?

8. Would it be possible to produce a middlebrow publication that didn't in some measure reinforce readers' perceptions of the world and their place in it?

Journal entry: National Geographic (due in class on Monday, 9/18)

Lutz and Collins suggest that portrayals of cultural diversity may have the consequence of reinforcing the audience's perceptions of our own superiority. For this journal entry, think about the key sources of information (books, magazines, websites, newspapers, television shows) that have shaped your perceptions of the world in general and cultural differences in particular. Have the effects been similar to those described by Lutz and Collins? If you like, you can choose to do a mini experiment in which you get others' reactions to the media you have chosen. Gather some pictures from a publication, clips from a tv show, advertisements, or pages from the internet and then conduct an interview with one or two people to get their responses to them. Use Lutz and Collins as a guideline for how to conduct such an interview. What are your results? How do they compare to what Lutz and Collins found? Are the opinions of your interviewees' as conflicted and potentially contradictory (i.e. simultaneous assertions of pluralism and progress) as those described by Lutz and Collins? How can we make sense of such perspectives?

For more information, contact: aleshkow@holycross.edu