My first honors experience was a class that I took second semester titled "Communicating Images," taught by professor Eric Jenkins. In this class we learned all about images in our culture throughout history, ranging from different styles of art, architecture, advertisements, logos, and so on. I felt like this experience was a good fit for me because it tied in with my major, Electronic Media. E-Media has a lot to do with visuals such as video and graphic design. Thus, I felt that it would be beneficial for me to learn more about the history and different styles of our image culture. Furthermore, we also had the opportunity to critique images quite often, dissecting the ad campaign or artist or photographer and so on and deciding wether or not their work is a good or 'healthy' contribution to our image culture. For example, my final project for the class was a critique of Ciroc Vodka's tendency to integrate rappers into their marketing campaign. They pay these artists large sums of money to include the Ciroc brand in their lyrics, music videos, and so on. In addition to writing an essay about this topic, I also created a 'culture jam,' which is essentially a spoof of the original image campaign in order to portray my own message. Overall I enjoyed the class and I am glad that I chose to take it as my first honors experience. I hope to apply the knowledge I obtained over the course of the semester in the future, be it in other classes or even my career later on in life.
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