Thirsty for a Fresh Take on All Things True Blood?

WELCOME! Thirsty for a fresh take on all things True Blood? Pull up a virtual barstool at the Pierced Pomegranate Tavern where sisters Rachel and Rebecca are serving up juicy feminist analysis with a twist and opening a vein of thoughtful sociocultural dialogue on HBO's hit series.

Like the epic literary salons of eras past - theaters for conversation and debate which were, incidentally, started and run by women; where the spirited debate about the issues of the day ran as copiously as the actual spirits did - but updated for the digital age, the Pierced Pomegranate Tavern is a fun forum for exploring questions ripe for discourse about the human condition & today's most crucial social issues through the medium of True Blood.

Your salonnières are not peddling liquor per se, but they are offering up new and alternative ideas informed by such diverse influences as pop culture, art, music, cultural history, Goddess studies, transformative theory, literature and poetry, and archaeomythology, filtered through the sieve of their own lived experiences as feminist women of a particular age, background, and culture.

This is a space where you - patrons and passersby alike - can view and engage with these perspectives through the lens of True Blood and contribute your own thoughts. So, no matter if you're a Truebie or a more casual viewer of True Blood, or your drink of choice is a pomegranate martini - one of Rachel's favorite cocktails to drink and Rebecca's to mix - an herbal tea, a frothy double mocha latte, or a can of Fresca (wink, wink) you're invited to join the conversation on the show's complexities in a way that can spark transformation.

Hopefully you'll find something to sink your teeth...err...straw, into! PLEASE ENJOY RESPONSIBLY ;-)

YOU'VE BEEN SERVED (A WARNING)...

The Pierced Pomegranate Tavern is dedicated to exploring social issues and more through the lens of True Blood. As such, you may encounter:

*SPOILERS
*TRIGGERS
related to the often provocative and adult themes presented by the show

If you choose to enter and participate in this virtual salon, please be prepared to do so in a thoughtful, respectful, and mature fashion with the above in mind. Click here to check out our comment policy. Thanks!

Disclaimer

No copyright infringement is intended, all rights to True Blood belong to HBO, credit is ascribed to sites where images appearing here were originally found.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

How To Access the True Blood Reenacts the Goddess Persephone's Ordeal of Abduction and Rape...or Self-Directed Sexual Initiation? Opening a Vein on Woman-Centered Sexuality PCA/ACA joint conference visual talk

Pop Quiz:

What do the Alamo, Downtown Riverwalk, Tex-Mex, and the one-and-only airport where I have personally witnessed a pair of underwear & two pairs of socks endlessly circling - unclaimed - on the baggage carousel have in common?

They are all things I experienced for the first time in the host city for the 2011 PCA/ACA & Southwest/Texas Popular Culture and American Culture joint conference: San Antonio, Texas!

I gave my visual talk entitled, "True Blood Reenacts the Goddess Persephone's Ordeal of Abduction and Rape...or Self-Directed Sexual Initiation? Opening a Vein on Woman-Centered Sexuality" at the conference on April 20th.

As the chair of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Area: True Blood Feminism & Femininity panel, I was honored to share the spotlight with two other gentlewomen and scholars who also delivered fascinating papers that will, no doubt, be of interest to you. I met True Blood scholars on other panels whose work was quite intriguing. I will discuss this further in a later post.

 For now, since I promised panel goers that I would post my full presentation here at the PPT, I am most concerned with getting my material up and accessible. Believe it or not, it's taken me two full days to pull off the conversion necessary to post my talk here - and some of its nuance has been lost in the translation :-(

Here's my plan:

In the next 2 consecutive posts, the following will appear, in order:

  1. conference paper with citations
  2. interactive PowerPoint slideshow with hyperlinked text & images *you can play the slideshow in fullscreen mode or in the window within which it appears on the PPT; simply hover your cursor over images and when a hand icon appears, you can click on the image to learn more or be brought to its source site. You must click to advance most of the slides; a few of the early slides (credit reel) self-advance on a timer  
*these two formats (paper & PowerPoint) are meant to go together; the paper lists the slide numbers that correspond to the text throughout.
**please note that audio and video elements of the original presentation were unfortunately disabled in the conversion to Blogger - the credit reel was accompanied by Billy Idol's "White Wedding" - when you see it you'll understand why ;-)

I'll follow up with a full reference list for both paper & PowerPoint.

Please don't hesitate to e-mail us if you have any questions or you'd like more information!

Enjoy!

Rachel 

2 comments:

  1. I LOVE IT!!
    GREAT BLOG!!!

    http://todososdiaseuesperoporti.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks so much for the encouraging words, hope you'll frequent the tavern and lend your perspectives!

    ReplyDelete