ASTU 100 with Dr Luger this year has been quite a journey for me. At the start, we talked a lot about citations and academic integrity. Dr Luger explained to us what it is like to be a scholar and to express your opinions about a current topic which I found very interesting and useful. As the course goes on, I do find myself struggling with many things. The class began to discuss the Iranian war, the Iraq war and the 9/11 culture which are topics that I am aware of but I could not exactly relate to. There were a lot of things I did not know about because growing up in Vietnam, we never really discussed these topics. As a result, I have learned a lot from class but I do struggle to analyse certain topics.

The second semester, the class focus on the 9/11 culture and the Iraq War. Recently, we watched Clint Eastwood 2014 biographical war drama “American Sniper” and discussed a lot about the glorification of veterans as heroes and of gun culture, along with the portrayal of good vs evil and the blurring between home and war fronts. This got me thinking about other war movies I have seen such as Dunkirk (2017) or Good Morning, Vietnam (1988) and how I never really stopped to think about the ways things are portrayed.

A lot of the texts we read this year in ASTU 100 is based on the author’s perspective. For example, Persepolis is based on Satrapi’s experience growing up in Iran through the war. Similarly, Obasan is written by Kogawa about her experience growing up through the Japanese-Canadian internment during World War II. Likewise, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is about Changez, a Pakistani man living in the States after the 9/11 attacks. In addition, in the film “Stories We Tell”, Polley uncovers her family’s secrets through different storytellers in her family. From the film, we get to see the different perspectives on past events in the family. Furthermore, “American Sniper” again shows the perspective of a sniper during the Iraq war. Recently, Dr Luger let the class watched American Sniper and then had us read “Redeployment” by Phil Klay at home. I was startled at the differences between the film and the text. The film portrayed Chris Kyle as a great soldier who is gloriously fighting for his country and cannot wait to get back to the battlefield. However, Klay gives the reader a different perspective of what it is actually like to be a soldier returning home.

Overall, ASTU 100 course this year reminded me to be careful about what I am reading/watching as with the increasing flows of information on the Internet nowadays, one can easily be influenced by another’s opinions. Thus, it is important to be able to distinguish reliable sources and to remember to be open-minded to different perspectives/opinions.