In our group last week, we talked about women in the Progressive Era. One of the biggest, and evidently one of the most problematic parts was the beginning of the fight for women’s reproductive rights. Margaret Sanger was one of the first pioneers of reproductive rights and an advocate for birth control. The fight for women’s right to choose is still just as comprehensive and controversial today as it was in the Progressive Era.

Margaret Sanger- one of the first advocates of women’s reproductive rights…

…but yet these rights are still being challenged today.

In my group last week, we were supposed to discuss how the North and South differed in terms of urbanization. Before the industrial age, most of California was literally just hills and empty land. Nowadays we drive down roads and suburbs that were built decades before we were born, yet we don’t think about it. These roads were built by men who quite literally broke their backs over them, yet we never stop to appreciate it.

-Vanessa Rodriguez

The story behind this hack is that my roommate and I were watching the baseball game from our dorm room and I figured that it’d be a solid opportunity for a hack since sports is still such a relevant and widespread topic for a wide spectrum of people in today’s society. Nate Cho.

For my hack I hacked my philosophy lecture by using hermeneutics. As a sustainability major I tend to look at history through a environmentally minded lens. These pictures demonstrate how westward expansion and the seemingly endless supply of resources that are for our use are in fact ethically ingrained into the American way of thinking. In my philosophy class Professor Atterton called to our attention the fact that when the dustbowl hit people just figured they could continue to move west and use the resources available there. This mentality posses a problem in modern day society, we must rethink the anthropocentric ethics we hold if we hope to sustain human life on earth.  Jeff Hoyos

Today, I was reading a book for my literature class titled, Ways of Seeing by John Berger. Whenever I read a book, I never can really focus, and I always get distracted. On this page, there is a paragraph that is talking about a painting that says, “Now it hangs in a room by itself. The room is like a chapel. The drawing is behind a bullet-proof perspex” (Berger 23). This part was what got me distracted, and I started to think about history. I started to think about how weird it is that people like looking at paintings and drawings that were made years and centuries ago and how people treat art with care and basically like royalty. I also started to think about museums and how they are filled with things from the past. This reminded me of how Professor Blum was saying that we are haunted by history, which we are! I think it is really funny that we are surrounded by so much history that we do not really notice until we actually stop and think about it.

As I was listening to a playlist my friend made me, I happened to look at the album cover for the song Fernando Pando by The Virgins. Located in the bottom right of the cover is the “Parental Advisory – Explicit Content” sign. Obviously this relates to our discussion on what explicit content is and if censorship should exist in a modern world. Should I not be able to listen to a great song because someone else has deemed the content explicit?

As I walked to class a few days ago, I stopped right in front of this building and I took a good look at it. I reflected on what Professor Blum had said about history haunting us in our every day lives and this couldn’t be a better example. Every day we walk around campus and we pride ourselves on the design of our buildings. SDSU is known for its Spanish Colonial style of its buildings. We pride ourselves on and exploit the styles and ideas of people from another country! Think about it, how many times have you ever heard anyone say “I love American architecture!” ?

this was my way of taking what we learned in the classroom and sharing it with someone else. That person was my mom. We have been Hellogoodbye fans for years but the other day I showed her what we did in class and we were able to talk about ways we want to think more critically about the world around us.

The 20th Century was the birth of modern America: Electrification, highways, agriculture, and War. Electricity changed the American workplace forever, employees could now work longer hours due to the soft yellow glow of light-bulbs. The times of quite evenings vanished and a flourishing night-life of leisure and relaxation took place. An influx of (more) affordable cars/trucks spurred the need for public highways and government infrastructure. Commercial agriculture exploded onto the scene, changing the way Americans fed themselves. World War I and World War II proved to the world the growing might of America.

The 20th century was a time of explosive change and growth. Twenty-first century America has slowed down considerably, life has become too complex and cumbersome. What if we brought back the attitude of the 20th century, that innovative drive and passion? (Leave out the sexist, racist, and other negative-ists)