The presentation began focusing on journalism, why
journalism is important and how it is important in society. Eva then began to
talk about how society has changed journalism, and how social media is turning
everyone in to their own journalists. Eva talked about how journalism is about
answering the big questions, but also the little ones. Eva spoke on the
importance of investigating in journalism, and mentioned the 5 w's of Dwight
Harold Lasswell. Eva then began to talk to, and sort of interview, Anne
.The presentation shifted focus to the Artist and her life. The Artist talked
about where she had lived, what she did for work, and the inspirations.
The presentation showed me that journalism is a bigger part
of my life than I had realized. I never stopped to think about how twitter and
Facebook are news sources, and my friends are posting information, which I
guess technically qualifies as journalism. The presentation also showed me that
art can be very different to different people, I liked the style of the rooster
the artist had painted, and I don't think that style would be the same had she
grown up in the United States due to our cultural views on art. I also thought
about how leaving your home country must be hard because there are so many
things that you miss that you simply can't do. An example of this is how Anne
could not participate in a festival back so she sent her piece digitally
to the town.
Anne did talk about how the United states is drastically
different from her home in Venezuela. This makes me wonder if I ever moved to a
different country, even someplace that seems like a paradise, would I be
unconformable for the simple fact that the place is unfamiliarAll in all I
found the presentation enjoyable. I learned a little bit, I saw some really
cool art, and I think it helped me get better at picking up on Spanish, maybe.
The presenter did a wonderful job informing us about journalism, and the artist
did a good job talking about her experience moving as well as her work and the
various artistic things she does.
Connor Mc Ferron
Cultural Event
Reflection
The cultural event that I attended was the journalism one on October 1nd.
Eva Feld, a journalist from Venezuela spoke in Spanish about the importance of
journalism and how everyone is a journalist in some way because they use sites
like twitter and facebook. She also interviewed the artist Anne-Marie
Herrera Nalsen about her artwork and life as an immigrant from Venezuela.
Eva talked about the different forms of journalism like reporters and
columnists and even social media. She mentioned the characteristics of
journalists and the goal of journalism as a whole. The goal is to bring
news about everything that happens to people. They talk about the who,
what, when, where, and why of events and news. Journalists have to have a
strong intuition and be very intelligent because it is easy for someone to take
an article and start rumors due to one misused word or one incorrect
fact. There are many characteristics that all journalists should
share. They are passionate about transmitting messages to their audience,
they have to avoid rumors, and they have an authenticity to their writing, they
want to give as accurate version of the newest happenings.
Eva also interviewed Anne-Marie who is an artist from Venezuela who is also a
biologist and now lives in Ohio. She talked about the inspirations for
her art and about being an immigrant in the United States. Anne-Marie
experiments with a lot of different art forms like painting, sculptures, and
digital art. She is influenced by nature and loves to depict trees in her
artwork.
I really enjoyed the cultural event because I thought I could relate to it in
many different ways. I really liked how Eva mentioned social media.
I think it’s important to remember that what we post online becomes public and
people can take those posts and interpret them in many different ways so we
have to be careful about how we word things and what we post. We don’t
want to accidently start rumors by a vague post or an angry tweet. I also
thought that Eva’s presentation related a lot to my Rhetoric English
class. We are talking about the importance of directing your writing to
your audience and I think it relates to journalism in many ways.
Journalists have to be aware of who their audience is and what type of person
will be reading or responding to their message. They have to make sure
they appeal to their readers. Reporters, columnists and people on social
media are going to approach their audience in very different ways and I think it’s
good to keep in mind when thinking about journalism.
I was personally impacted when Anne-Marie was talking about
being an immigrant. I feel like being an immigrant has a lot in common
with being a freshman college student. Sometimes I feel lost and confused
because it takes a while to adjust to something I’m not used to. It’s
like a fish out of water because I learn as I go and I don’t really know what
I’m doing, which is similar to how Anne-Marie felt moving here. She also
talked a lot about missing Venezuela and I feel the same way about my
hometown. Granted, I only live two hours away, but I could relate in a
way to what she was talking about. I thought it was really cool how she
takes her emotions and experiences and puts them into her artwork. It’s
like a memoir of her life and the transition from Venezuela. It was
particularly intriguing to me because I have no creative abilities whatsoever
so I found it very interesting how she could put her emotions into art like
that.
I took a lot from the presentation, mainly because journalism wasn’t something
I ever gave much thought to before. It gave me a whole different
perspective on journalism and social media and reporters. It made me step
back and think about what I’m reading on the internet and to think about the
writer behind every article. It was really interesting to hear about
journalism from someone who is really passionate about it and it was neat to
see her in action, interviewing Anne-Marie who also had a great story to tell.
It makes me think about how much work journalists put into every piece in order
to avoid starting rumors and to have an objective viewpoint and stick strictly
to the facts. I never really thought of social media being an avenue for
journalism but it makes sense after hearing the presentation. It
definitely made me more aware of the abundance of journalism in my life and how
it has a huge impact on the way that everyone views the news because that’s
where they hear it first.
Kelsey Obendorfer
A Cultured Experience: Journalism, Immigration,
and Artistry
An eccentric event took place on October 1st, 2013
in the Kennedy Auditorium at Xavier University. It was a refreshing cultural
event where Eva Feld shared her experiences and thoughts about journalism and
picked apart the artistic mind of a Venezuelan artist, Anne-Marie Herrera
Nalsen. The entirety of the presentation was in a high-level of Spanish, yet
the main points were relatively understood.
Eva Feld, a Venezuelan journalist, writer, and editor, has
encompassed the bulk of what writing constitutes, as she is able to talk, read,
think, and tell stories in Castellan, English, French, and Hungarian. She
maintains a literary blog, aladecuervo-vocablos.blogspot.com, with the intellectual,
Venezuelan Teódulo López Meléndez and has her own personal blog, evafeld.blogspot.com,
where one is able to find her numerous works. Eva has written a book, Mujeres y Escritores más crímen, three novels: Los vocablos se amaron por última vez, La
transparencia del reflejo, and La senda de las flores oblicuas and even a travel book, Membretes del pasaje.
Journalism will subsist forever as it is something people
will continue to seek out for information. The purpose of journalism is to
inform the public about the events occurring in the world around them. Today,
in the 21st century, it seems as if everyone is informing the world
about theirs or others actions, whereabouts, thoughts, and anything else deemed
important enough to share. We have become a society where technology
allows us to accomplish tasks in the matter of seconds, yet we forget the
impact these things can have on others. On one hand, we take the simplicity of
life for granted because we are a society where we want instant gratification
and then are unsettled by having to do things the unconventional and more
time-consuming way. On the other hand, society publishes information on the
daily lives of others but who’s to say that it’s even important or necessary.
Do we really need to know what everyone else did today? In most cases you are
only concerned with major events or the lives of those close to you, but then
you most likely already know what is occurring in their lives. This is why
journalism has become a major part of our informational-seeking society because
it is the job of journalists to: find the news, translate it into an
understandable language, and then sort out only what is important. Although not
everything that you read or hear is fact, for which this was the case even when
journalism originated from the main sources of media, the newspaper and radio.
In the beginning, yellow journalism occurred quite often as the truth was
changed into science-fictional ideas to “hook” the readers. A great example of
this is the telephone game because as the message is relayed down the line it
continually changes from person to person, as details are left out and also
changed. For this reason, when transmitting information the five W’s (who,
what, when, where, and why) should always be illustrated so that a reader can
learn the important details. As a result, we have become a journalistic society
but one where the facts are still embellished to help grab the attention of
readers; which is why, the moral issues of journalism still remain.
After her presentation, Eva went on to interview a
captivating artist, Anne-Marie Herrera Nalsen. Nalsen was actually born in
Ithaca, New York but lived most of her life in Venezuela, and parts in England
and Sweden, yet now she resides in Loveland, Ohio. Anne-Marie is a jack of all
trades as she graduated with a degree in biology from the Central University of
Venezuela, is an artist, illustrator, poet, and a dreamer for conviction.
Nalsen was the owner of her own workshop and gallery for eighteen years in
Venezuela after being a professor at the Central University of Venezuela for
more than three years. For this reason, she has participated in a variety of
national and international expositions and has written various books, like Donde
vive el agua, La historia de Narcisa, La mariposa elevada,
and Historias pequeñitas – haiku para dormir, and a poem called Ser
Mujer.
The interview between Feld and Nalsen was captivating as we
were able to understand the artistic process behind Nalsen’s works of art and
the experiences in her life that fuel her imagination. First off, it was interesting
to learn that Nalsen was actually born in the United States but the majority of
her life was spent in Venezuela. For this reason, I enjoyed being able to
listen to an actual immigrant from Venezuela, as I have learned that Venezuela
is in a state of down-turn but haven’t been able to fully comprehend the
reality that those problems are causing for Venezuelans. Not only has her
immigration played a role on her art but also her love for nature, as Nalsen
was a biology professor for some time. Both experiences have played a key role
in her art as she combines her love of nature with other themes, like love,
connection, and opportunity. The majority of Anne-Marie Herrera Nalsen’s art is
composed of trees in different settings or media as she embodies a continual
effort to be connected with the environment around herself. Although, most
people wouldn’t know that a great deal of her current work is digital media, as
she is able to shed her own light on past images. Digital media is definitely a
newer media for most artists yet the possibilities are even more endless for
the works of art that can be created through this process. I loved being able
to understand and look at the works of art created by an artist as I’m always
intrigued by the inspirations for other works of art.
This unusual event detailed the importance of journalism in
our society, the difficulties of being an immigrant, and gave insight on an
artist’s inspirations and her struggle for resilience. While it was something
unknown to most I’m glad I was able to attend as it shed new light on the moral
issues we face every day as a society and on the inspirations of a cultured
artist. Hopefully, I will be able to attend other cultural events in the future
as this was definitely a positive experience and one that I would recommend
others attend. Remember, shedding new light on topic not only combats ignorance
but it creates a more cultured and open-minded individual.
Kyle Madoni
Evento Cultural
I recently attended a presentation by Eva Feld about the field of journalism
and contained an interview with a Venezuelan artist, Anne Marie. This presentation was completely in Spanish,
and while I tried to keep up with the pace of speaking, I only understood a
small portion of the presentation. From
what I could understand I was intrigued by the topic and the interview as well. The visuals were a great help in keeping up
with the presentation, and the conversation and questions with the artist made
me think about art and expression in new ways.
First, Eva Feld spoke about the history of journalism, and how it progressed
throughout the years to become a more refined skill.
She spoke about how important of a role a journalist plays in keeping the
public informed. Without journalism and
reporting, our world would be inefficient and uninformed. Crisis and events of all kinds need to be reported, and
journalists are those that bring us this news.
One may believe that the role of a journalist is no longer relevant with social
media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram acting as a constant way of
humans informing one another about their whereabouts and actions, but
journalists are as vital today as any other point in history. Journalists take this vast amount of
information, dissect the important or interesting facts, and attempt to portray
the facts to the public in the most informative and simple way possible.
There is so much information, and so many different ways of interpreting said
data and the journalist’s task is to remove that unneeded information and
present their content in the best and most persuasive way possible. There are countless genres of journalism and
even more for writing in general, and so journalists often specialize in one
genre or another to be most efficient.
Journalists act as the medium between the events of the world, and their
significance to the public. This puts the
journalists in a position of some power, and journalists often faces moral
dilemmas on how to and which information to present, so they accurately portray
the events that occurred. Eva spoke about
the questions that a journalist has to ask themselves while writing an article,
in order to most accurately portray the information to the reader.
Eva then had an interview with a Venezuelan artist, Anne-Marie Herrera Nelsen. Eva started by asking Anne simple questions
about her personal history. She then
inquired about her art, her inspirations, and her future. Eva asked how and why Anne migrated to the United States from
Venezuela. Her questions also revealed
that Anne was also a biology professor and a current mother of two, along with
being an artist. Anne spoke about how she
visualizes her art and the process to making it a reality. It was interesting to watch Eva put into
practice the process which she was just talking about. I watched as she asked
intriguing questions to get the most pertinent information out of her
interviewee. She was able to inform her audience about her guest with her
informative questions.
The questions that followed the interviewed allowed the crowd to put into
practice some of the journalism skills discussed in the former part of the
presentation. The audience inquired about
Anne’s inspiration for her pieces, which often contained aspects of nature, and
trees in particular. I liked hearing
about the inspiration behind each piece of art.
Most of the pieces had a story behind them, and hearing about the background
allowed me to have a deeper understanding and appreciation for the work.
Jack Hughes
Reflection
Due
to not being a fluent Spanish speaker, it was very difficult to understand Eva
Feld in her discussion on journalism and her interview with artist Anne-Marie
Herrera Nalsen. However, I was able to pick up on key components of the
presentation. Eva discussed the importance of journalism in our society
and how it will never cease. It is how we know what is going on in
different parts of the country and the world. She also discussed social
media and its influence on journalism. This has become a major way of
communication for people in the modern world. So it is natural for
journalism to exist there. Then she went on to talk about influential
people in journalism. Some of them were of Hispanic decent as well.
Eva included a power point presentation with her speech. This made it a
little easier to understand what she was talking about. Her power
point included pictures and illustrations that went along with her
presentation.
Then she interviewed artist Anne-Marie Herrera Nalsen. This was very
interesting and easy to understand. One particularly interesting exercise
Eva did with Anne-Marie was Eva would say a word and asked Anne-Marie to
respond with the first thing that came to mind. Some of these words were
love, nature, music, etc. Through this exercise we learn that Anne-Marie
is native to Venezuela. She misses her home country very much and the
United States is very different for her. Anne-Marie is primarily a
painter. She loves nature and draws inspiration from it. Her
favorite thing to paint are trees or arboles. This was a very deep
exercise as we learned much about Anne-Marie and how she is dedicated to her
art. Throughout the interview, a slide show of Anne-Marie’s works were
being displayed in the background. This was very interesting to see what
her art really looks like. She did include many pictures of trees.
Some of her other works included people and faces. Anne-Marie included a
lot of digital art as well. This is a new form of art that I was not
familiar with so it was interesting to see. During the interview,
Anne-Marie was painting a large gold ball. I am unsure of what that
signifies.
This event was very difficult to understand, but it was a realistic
Spanish culture experience. I am now aware of the pace native speakers
converse at and that there are many different accents to be aware of as well.
Learning about journalism’s importance was very relatable. Anne-Marie’s
art was also very beautiful and interesting to be exposed to. Overall,
this was a good experience and opened my eyes to the Spanish language.
Paige Rimer
Cultural Event
Reflection
I have always found it interesting to listen to others speaking a conversation
that contains only Spanish. When we were given the opportunity to attend the
Cultural Event featuring Eva Feld and Anne-Marie Herrera Nalsen, I was very
excited, but also nervous that I wouldn’t be able to understand their swift
speaking. The event was conducted on October 1 in the CLC Kennedy Auditorium
with both of the speakers being from Venezuela.
The event began with Eva Feld speaking about her career in journalism and why
she believes that it is an important part of society and should continue to
grow within our culture. Ms. Feld is not only a journalist, she is also a
Venezuelan writer and editor; she is able to speak, read, think and count in
English, French, and Hungarian.
In Ms. Feld’s opinion, journalism is important because it
allows information to travel among the world and create knowledge within our
society. Ms. Feld spoke on the different kinds of journalism and moral issues
journalists face in their career. Lastly, Ms. Feld interviewed Anne-Marie
Herrera Nalsen who is a Venezuelan painter that immigrated to the United
States. As an immigrant she faces economic and political topics that she must
overcome, she is also a mother and a biologist.
I found the entire interview to be very difficult to understand especially the
first part since it was the story of Ms. Feld and her writing career. She
discussed things like how today we are all writers which we are. Many people
take the advantage to post onto social media sites such as “Facebook” and
“Twitter,” where they write posts and publish themselves onto the internet.
Going along with all of us being writers, Ms. Feld discussed plagiarism and how
it is very wrong.
In the conversation between Ms. Feld and Anne-Marie, they also discussed many
difficult things for me to understand. One of the first things they discussed
was immigration and how difficult it is to leave everything behind. I could
never imagine leaving my family, home, town, and friends behind.
I learned a lot from Ms. Feld that I never thought I would have taken away from
her presentation. The most important thing that I learned is that we are all
writers. I have never considered myself necessarily a writer besides writing
papers for school. When Ms. Feld mentioned social media as a form of writing, I
strongly reconsidered everything I began posting. The amount of times I “Tweet”
per day isn’t just me putting my thoughts online, others are reading what I
post on a daily basis making me a writer too. Learning this from Ms. Feld’s
presentation was a “take-away” that I really enjoyed.
Overall, I really enjoyed listening to Ms. Feld and Anne-Marie speak, I found
their native language very intriguing. Listening to them describe
journalism and art was very interesting for me since I don’t usually have the
chance to study either. I enjoyed hearing both of their stories and am very
happy that I have learned about their inspiration and how writers are
everywhere. Overall, I am very pleased that I had to opportunity to attend this
event and recommend it to others.
Ellie Thompson
