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We present an exercise on "doing gender" that uses digital media to create an opportunity for interactive learning. Students create photo essays on gender performances in everyday life and then present their photo essays to their peers. This exercise allows undergraduates to engage in "real-life" learning regarding the socially constructed and performative nature of gender. In discussing each other's images in class, students confront both the ubiquity of gender performances and understand how they produce, receive, and police performances. We present the assignment and grading rubric in detail, describe examples of photo essays ranging from unsuccessful to excellent, and detail student learning and assessments of the assignment. (Contains 5 notes.)

The article examines the significance of sound in social life using participant observation of Experimental Improv and Noise (EIN) collectives in Virginia. It mentions that the shared meanings in interaction will create new organizational forms as musicians build their own scene and audiences in the digital age. Arguments among musical sociologists concerning the relationship of sounds and art are also discussed.

This paper builds upon existing work regarding the social contexts of interactive on-line content creation. Through an ethnographic examination of local-level music production and distribution in two American college towns, I demonstrate how musicians cultivate audiences through social capital that is exchanged both on-line and off-line. Active social networking is crucial to their music distribution and promotion. Through digital file sharing and social networking sites, musicians mobilize bonded social capital around their image and music. However, they have difficulty bridging the networks they cultivate with a broader audience, despite their desire to do so. This paper concludes with a sketch of the possibilities for musicians to develop bridging social capital, noting that new media industries capitalize on this desire, turning producers of on-line content into consumers of on-line media content and services. By employing a framework of social networks and social capital, this paper contributes more broadly to sociological understanding of how culture is transmitted through social networks and how social capital is an important resource in the ability to gain recognition for one's cultural expressions in the digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]