ASTU100

Hey bloggers!

This is going to be my last blog post for the year, and wow, has time flown by. Our first year of university is quickly coming to an end and I am beginning to reflect on what has happened this year both inside and outside of the classroom. I came into university knowing what I wanted to major in and do. I wanted to major in history and then continue school and eventually become a teacher. Although history requires quite a bit of writing, English has never been my strongest subject. Knowing this, I was worried going into arts with the amount of papers we have to write. Not to mention two terms of ASTU. As I expected, ASTU has been a roller coaster for me. One second I understand what’s going on, and the next I am beyond my comfort zone. Though I have faced many challenges this year in the course, I have gained a greater appreciation for the discipline after being introduced to so many interesting novels, graphic narratives, and scholarly articles. ASTU has opened my mind to all of the different types of  literature there are.

My “aha” moment was that although I struggled with ASTU, it has helped me become a better student. I have learned how to do close reading and improve writing. These skills that I have learned go beyond just this one class, they can help me with the rest of my academic journey. Even if I change my mind and no longer want to major in history or become a teacher, the skills I have gained from ASTU will help me both inside and outside of the classroom. ASTU has been a battle, but I am grateful for the skills that the course has given me and I cannot wait to see what else is in store for me at UBC.

Best of luck with the rest of your semester!

Elizabeth

Hey bloggers!

This week I actually wanted to go back and talk more about 9/11 and its aftermath. 9/11 happened when we were all very young and because of this, although we knew that it happened, it did not have as much as an impact on us, as it might have for others. However, growing up in Canada which is right by the United States, 9/11 is an event that is always being brought up and into discussions and we are expected to know about it. Personally, although I know that 9/11 happened, I did not really know much about it until recently. I remember growing up and on the anniversary of 9/11 every year it was always a day of grief and sadness. You would see it on the news on TV, in newspapers, you would hear it on the radio. Regardless of what you knew about 9/11, you knew that it had happened thanks to the people around you and the internet.

Today, I know more about 9/11 than I did before and that is thanks to the rapid increase in advancing technology. Now you can easily have access to endless amounts of information in a matter of seconds and in just a few clicks. So many people use social media and the internet to keep in touch with friends and family across the world, but many also use it to be aware of what is currently happening in the world around them. It is because of the internet that we are able to be more aware of what is happening in the world and more quickly than we ever were before.

Although it the internet can be used for good, it can also be used for bad. An example of this would be bullying another person or even using it to spread something like homophobia or racism. We easily have access to the internet and we see things like this all the time and because of this, it normalizes something that is not. We see and hear about homophobia and racism all the time that it can make it seem as though it is something natural and is accepted in society.

The internet can be used for so many things and can helps learn more about something we may not necessarily be experts on, but it can also hurt others. What do you think? Do you think that the internet is being used more so for good or for bad?

Well that’s all for now, until next time

Elizabeth

Hey bloggers!

This week in ASTU, as we continue exploring the theme of trauma, we are reading an excerpt from Judith’s Butler’s book, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? In particular, we are currently looking at trauma in context of 9/11 and its aftermath. In the excerpt, one of the main ideas that Butler presents is that individuals are vulnerable. Humans are social beings and our existence is relative as well as dependent upon the existence of others. We are able to acknowledge our interdependent relationships we have with others by accepting our own vulnerability. Butler also notes that individuals and societies have different interprative frames or mindsets in which we see things through. These interpretative frames can determine if society or an individual sees onself or itself as vulnerable with or against others as a result of interdependent relationships.

After reading Butler’s excerpt, and seeing her arguments against individualism as well as further discussing interpretative frames that shape our own actions, I thought of how mindsets reflect in different languages. For instance, where English is spoken, there tends to be an individualistic mindset, whereas where Mandarin is spoken, it tends to have a more general mindset. For instance, in Mandarin, there are no inflections of nouns, pronouns, verbs, or adjectives for the word itself. Words such “me,” “my,” “we,” or “I” all use the same character.  Unlike in English, there are also no verb tenses or conjugations. The distinctions between a language like English and a language like Mandarin reflects the differences in the frames of how people think from the two different societies. Language is the most common way in which people communicate. Our thoughts are shaped, whether apparently or subtlely, by distinctions in languages.

It can be difficult to see out of your own interpretative frame and understand others through different frames of thinking. Butler makes the point that we all have frames in which we see things, but in order to understand and accept our vulnerabilities, we must be able to see through different frames. Especially in the globalizing world today, it is essental that we are able to understand that there are different frames through which we can interpret events.

Until next time,

Elizabeth

Hello again! It’s been quite some time since I’ve last blogged, but recently in ASTU, we have been discussing and reading a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer called Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. The novel revolves around and is narrated by a young boy named Oskar Schell. Oskar had lost his father in 9/11 and in the novel, he struggles to deal with his father’s sudden death. At the same time, the novel also tells the story of Oskar’s grandparents whose lives had been turned upside down by the traumatic bombing of Dresden. In the bombing, Oskar’s grandfather had lost his love, Anna. It can been seen throughout the novel that one of the recurring themes is the characters’ struggles to deal with the trauma they have experienced, especially the loss of their loved ones.

Peronsally, I think one of the important messages that they novel conveys to its readers is revealed when Oskar’s grandmother writes in her letter to Oskar that it is essential to let your loved ones know how much you care for them because you never know when will be the last time they will be able to hear that from you (314). It is of no surprise how often death occurs, but many people do not think about how sudden death can be and how it can come when least expected. While reading the novel, it reminded me of the day one of my favourite teachers in high school had passed away. I had heard the news through social media, and at first did not believe it because I had just seen and talked to her earlier that day. We were talking about what I was going to be doing in post-secondary and she had really helped me figure out what I had wanted to do. At the time, I had not thourghouly told her how much she had helped me and thanked her. I was talking to her one second, and a few hours later, she was gone. You can never predict when someone will take their last breath, it can come suddenly and unexpected. In fact, if the death comes too suddenly, the people closest to the person who passed away may never be able to recover from their emotional trauma, much like Oskar when he lost his father in 9/11. When we understand that death can be sudden and take away a loved one in a blink of an eye, we are able to cherish our time with them instead of taking it for granted assuming that there will be a tomorrow. For this reason, we should always let the ones close to us know just how much we care about them.

Often when we hear about tradgedies such as 9/11 or Hiroshima and see the trauma that people have faced and the number of lives lost it can feel distant or surreal. We think that it won’t happen to us. By putting a number on the amount of lives lost in tradegies like 9/11 it makes us think of just numbers and it takes away the significance of each individual. When we look at tragedies from an individual’s perspective like Oskar’s in the novel, we can clearly learn and see how the loss effects someone on an emotional level. We then learn and realize that it can happen to someone we know and we learn how important the death of one person can be. Although we may never forget the amount of lives lost in a tragedy, it is after hearing an indivdual story and how it effected them that stays with us.

Until next time,

Elizabeth

Foer, Jonathan Safran. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin

Company, 2005. Print.

Hey bloggers!

For the last few weeks in ASTU, we have been reading and analyzing Joy Kogawa’s novel Obasan. Obasan is a novel about a Japanese family and their struggles in Canada during the Second World War. Although the novel is fiction, it is based on true events of Japanese mistreatement at the time. Most recently, we went to the Rare Books Archives in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre to take a look at the Kogawa fond. The Kogawa fond consists of a collection of documents and letters related to the works of Joy Kogawa. As we have been reading Obasan by Joy Kogawa, seeing these documents and letters really brought the book to life.

In the Kogawa fond there are many boxes that contain orginal documents that Joy Kogawa herself used as well as fan letters and respondant letters from publishing companies. What surprised me that most was the amount of rejection letters that Kogawa received and the amount of drafts she had written before her novel was published. Although the novel itself is fictional, many people have acknowledged the effectiveness in which it delivers testimony of the mistreatment of Japanese people in Canada at the time. What had intruiged me about the novel was the fact that it was fiction, but still influenced the recording and remembering of an event that had actually taken place. In the Kogawa fond were many letters from people who had read the book and wanted to let Kogawa know the power and influence that Obasan had concerning real life events. There were also letters from people suggesting that the novel be translated in other languages so that it could be shared across the world.

By being able to see for ourselves the documents in which Kogawa used herself to write the novel and the criticisms she receieved, I learned things about the novel that I would not have otherwise known. Regardless of whether it is fiction or non-fiction, I would argue that literature that explores the struggles that people face can have a significant impact and call for change in the lives of many. It does not matter if they have experienced the same struggles or not, by reading literature about the struggles people face can help them understand and maybe even advocate for change.

On a side note, hope you are doing well and lets power through the last two weeks of the term!

Elizabeth

Hello everyone! It’s been a while since I have last blogged and recently in ASTU we have been focusing on the novel Obasan by Joy Kogawa.

In the novel, Kogawa goes through the process of remembering what she had experienced during the Japanese internment in Canada. At ths time, many Japanese Candians were discrimnated against because they were thought to be unloyal traitors and many believed that the Japanese Canadians would side with Japan in the war. However, it was more than just racism that the Japanese faced. They were sent to work to camps in Northern BC, families were separated, and all of their belongings were impounded. What surprised me about all this is how they treated all the innocent people.

My brother and I were born in Canada, but our parents and grandparents came from Vietnam. The treatment that the Japanese received made me think what if it had been my family that this happened to? How would that have effected my life growing up? It makes me wonder if I would have been silent like Obasan and Naomi or have spoken out like Aunt Emily. There are so many questions that run through my mind when I think about if the same thing had happened to Vietnamese people.

Many people come to Canada so that they can live better lives. Canada is usually seen as a country that is multicultural, diverse, and accepting of other cultures. However, the reason that people see Canada that way is because that is how we remember our national memory. For years we have been trying to forget the cruel things that have happened in the past instead of remembering them. Finally now we are beginning to realize that in order to move on we cannot just forget. We must remember and learn from what has happened and try to mend the relationships that have been destroyed.

Hey readers, and welcome back!

If you frequent the ASTU100A blogs, then you would know that last week, many people focused on “The Role of Interpretative Communities in Remembering and Learning” by educational scholar, Farhat Shahzad. In the article, Shahzad begins with Wertsch’s idea of collective memory which is the process between humans and technology. However, she focuses on how our interpretative communities affect how learn and remember.

Now you are probably thinking… “Elizabeth, why are choosing to write about Shahzad THIS week? We’re ready to move on!” Well, to answer your question, it was in sociology when we were discussing our reflection paper that made me think back to this article. In sociology we for our reflection papers coming up, we are supposed to explore this website and engage in sociological issues inherent to residential schools in Canada. Again, you are probably wondering, “What does this have anything to do with ASTU?” What came to mind for me was what do Canadians really know about what happened in those residential schools and better yet, what they choose to remember and not to remember about them.

It is easy for many Canadians to say that Canada is a diverse, multicultural, and very accepting country because they often forget what has been done to the Aboriginals in the residential schools. Why is that? Simply because for so long, the Canadian government has been trying to forget about it. Not until recently, have we come to terms and accepted that yes, Canada has committed a cultural genocide. Although Shahzad may not have necessarily been referring to the government when she was writing about interpretative communities, it goes to show that any community, no matter how big or small, can affect how you learn and remember.

The government may not have been directly affected the learning and remembering of Canadians, but they could control what teachers teach in the classroom. The question is, why are we now choosing to remember? Why is it that after decades of trying to hide the truth that it is now that we want to remember? Knowing this and that everyone I learn from there is a bias makes me wonder what information are they censoring from me? What is happening around the world right now that I don’t know about? To answer that some people may say “Just Google it,” but even then with so many people on the internet now and with a click of a finger anyone could easily change a Wikipedia page or just make their own site. Understanding that almost anyone can edit information on some sites or that people in your interperative communities may be bias has taught me that I must always keep an open mind. That although I may not always agree with what someone is saying, I should still respect it. At the same time, it makes me constantly question what is the truth?

I may forever be questioning what the truth is, but when it comes down to it, it is up to me to decide what I believe. If anything, I have learned that you should not always believe the first thing you hear. Hear what other people have to say and learn from it. Don’t forget to remember from it. Who knows, what they say might make help you decide what you want to write in your next blog post.

Until next time,
Elizabeth

Hi there fellow bloggers and readers!

As you can probably tell, this is my first post here and seeing as it is, I’ll let you get to know me a little better before we start. I am from Surrey, BC and I recently just started my first year here at UBC in the faculty of arts. As an arts student we had many choices when choosing our courses. We could make our own timetables, be in ArtsONE, or many of the different CAP programs. Although we had all of these choices, for me personally, I knew that I wanted to be in the Global Citizens stream of CAP.

So I said I knew I wanted to be in the Global Citizens stream, but what exactly is a global citizen? To me, a global citizen is a person who looks to make sense of ideas and problems through different viewpoints. By doing so, they are able to form an understand concepts from a global perspective.

Last week, students in the Global Citizens stream came together along with their professors in a joint lecture. In the lecture we discussed what a global citizen is from a political, sociological, and literary point of view.

From a political point of view, it focuses on cosmopolitanism meaning that we all belong to a single community. Paticularily about how societies are organized and how it can create conflict.

Sociologically, it is about seeing the bigger picture. It is about seeing the relationship between your own personal troubles and public issues. By being able to see this relationship, you can see it from a different perspective and possibly find an explanation for not only yourself, but others and to take action.

Finally, from a literary view, it is more about how you analyze the different issues and possibly find solutions. With literature, you are able to express things not only from a literary point of view, but also a political and sociological.

Anyway, hopefully this made some sense to you and that I’m not just talking to myself.
Until next time!

Elizabeth