TERM 2
Blog #3: Final Reflection
For your last blog, think broadly about what you have learned in ASTU and CAP this year. Use American Sniper or “Redeployment” as your anchor (this will help you stay specific and not think TOO broadly) and consider one of the following questions: What tools or concepts from the year does the text illuminate? What scholar (be specific about their ideas) has influenced your understanding of it? What connections do you see to other texts on our syllabus? How does the text intersect with theories or concepts you have discussed in your other CAP classes?
The idea here is to show your ability to encounter new and complex texts. How have your first-year studies equipped you to think critically about American Sniper or “Redeployment”?
Blog #2
What was your experience of reading the poetry these past 2 weeks? Did you learn something about poetry, as a genre, that differs from how you have previously approached it? What place does poetry have in the conversations we’ve been having about culture and politics? Is it a special place, different from graphic narratives or novels?
Blog #1 Required Topic: Respond to your experience at the “Amazonia” exhibit.
What questions does the exhibit raise for you? What do you find interesting or challenging or otherwise noteworthy about it? Choose 1 object from the exhibit as the focus of your discussion (it will provide your “anchor” to the exhibit). You may consider one or more of the questions below to focus your discussion, or develop your own research questions.
-How does your chosen object exemplify what the Museum calls “the unsuspected relationships between Vancouver and Amazonian peoples [and] ideas” (MOA website)
-What is your own relationship to the object? How does the exhibit invite you to reflect on your connection to Amazonian people or culture?
-How does the exhibit itself construct knowledge? What is the mandate of the exhibit (as explained as you enter the exhibit)? What kinds of primary materials are included? How are they explained?”
-What disciplinary lens (Sociology, Political Science, Geography and/or English) do you find most useful for reflecting on the exhibit? What disciplinary concepts or terms does your object illuminate?
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TERM 1
Blog #3: Required Topic: Respond to your experience at the Kogawa Fonds with one of these questions in mind:
-What kind of artifacts does the Fonds contain? Reviews of Obasan? Reader letters to Kogawa? Historical documents that Kogawa used for research? Consider the kinds of genres that you find.
-Which artifacts make you think about the literary aspects of the book and which artifacts make you think about the historical events the book is based on?
-How do the artifacts change your understanding of the book’s place in Canadian (or World) history?
-In a literature class, we are often preoccupied with what is inside the book – with the themes, images, plot and characters of a book. How does our field trip change your focus? How does it feel to think about Kogawa as a real person who, at one point, had all of these documents in her house?
-We have talked about the terms ‘national memory’ and ‘strategic forgetting’. Are there certain artifacts in here that contribute to Canada’s national memory of WW2?
**These topics are just for inspiration. You may respond to any aspect of the RBSC visit that you like.**
Blog #2
What issues in Persepolis resonate with today’s political climate? Can you identify with any of Marji’s struggles? Or does her life feel like a world away?
Blog #1
What have you learned about academic culture or writing that has been surprising? What have you found inspiring or challenging about your introduction into this new culture and its attendant “genre”?