Good morning ASTU! I hope you are all enjoying this lovely long weekend. I really cannot believe that this is the last blog post for this year’s ASTU class. I have really enjoyed getting to know all of you and reading your blogs every week! This week’s blogs were filled with reflection on everything we have done this past year as ASTU students.

There was so much praise in these reflections for what ASTU has taught us as students, and as Global Citizens.  In Andrea’s blog, she expressed how ASTU has helped build her as an academic.  Through the constant practice of reading, somewhat daunting, scholarly work, communicating and learning, Andrea says that she “will continue to apply the lessons of this class, the base for me to continue to grow in my knowledge of the academic and scholarly world.”

Devon praised ASTU for the “close knit” community it became, and the discussions that we were able to form because of this. Devon explained that it was from these qualities which helped her grow as a student, and learn that university is not “like the Hunger Games, where everyone is for themselves,” it is a place where we can each build off each other, discuss, disagree, and all grow as students and as young adults, in a safe and supportive environment.

Many other students explained how grateful they were for our Global Citizens program, and especially what they had gained from our ASTU class. As in our ever changing and interconnected world, many students commended the relevance of our Global Citizens stream in “real life.” I think that Ben did an excellent job at summing it up when he said,

“While my peers and I may not be engineers, Sauder students, or science wiz-kids, I think what we’ve learned and the way we’ve learned it allows us to contribute to society in different, yet highly important ways.”

It seems that through our studies of memory, trauma and the importance of these topics in literature, we ASTU students and Global Citizens have grown to see the complexity of our world, and realize that, as Matt says in his blog, “the more and more I learn the more I realize how much there is that I don’t know.” However, ASTU has given us the tools to grasp such complexities, communicate with each other, and to continue to grow as global citizens, as well as academics.

Thank you all for reading. I hope you all will continue on your search to find out what a Global Citizen truly is. It has been a pleasure getting to know each of you throughout this past year and I know you will all go on to do great things!

Jen Paxton

Reply to Amy’s “Moral Responsibility”

This week, Amy related Asad and Butler’s theories of how we react and respond in terms of other’s crisis to how Canadians are reacting to the current Syrian Refugee Crisis. Amy explains, like Asad, how Influential the media is on our reactions. Despite the amount of positive media surrounding the refugee crisis, Amy explains that there are many Canadians who look negatively towards the refugees, concerned that they are terrorists or will damage our economy. Amy asks, “Are we conditioned to not come to the aid of other human beings in fear of them impacting our economy?”

I think that the question Amy is asking very important. I also find it odd that despite the positive attention that these refugees are getting in the media, how so many are not welcoming towards them. Maybe it is not just the impact on the economy that is upsetting people, but this is just an excuse to speak negatively towards them. I wonder if these negative feelings have derived from this leftover notion of “us vs them” that was driven into the minds of Americans, and even Canadians after 9/11. I wonder if, as Butler is suggesting, it is because of the vulnerability that people feel that has them clinging onto this negative mentality. Maybe it is easier for these people to distance themselves from the people they refer to as “them,” rather than accept them into our “us.”  

Nice post Amy!

Jen Paxton

One of the reasons I enjoyed reading the class blogs this week was getting to see so many perspectives and different artifacts through each person’s reflection on Kogawa’s Fond. Since I focused most of my time reading Kogawa’s drafts, I loved reading Mariana’s blog about a letter written to Kogawa about Obasan, as I did not encounter any such thing during my time with the fond. The letter Mariana shared in her blog was from a Japanese-Canadian reader who had lived through the war and internment in Canada. Mariana shows how moved and affected the reader was by the novel, and how it had affected her ability to emotionally understand her past. I think this letter is a good example of how Obasan, as a technology of memory, helped the reader understand her personal memory and gain a sense of belonging by realizing that her personal memory is part of a greater collective, cultural and national memory.

Thank you Mariana, and the rest of the class for giving such diverse insights into your experience of the fond, reading these blogs really added to my experience!

Jen

I really enjoyed reading Ben’s post: OBASAN AND CULTURAL MEMORY

from last week. I thought it was interesting how he connected Marita Sturken’s theory of Cultural Memory to how Canadians now remember World War II compared to what actually occurred, including the horrible experiences had by Japanese-Canadians during the time. The idea of relating cultural memory to war and the true events reminded me of a guest speaker who came to my Social Justice class in highschool. Her name was Heather Evans and she came to teach our class about Chinese Comfort Women during the Second World War.

During the Second World War in Asia, after the Japanese invasion of the Asian- Pacific, the Japanese soldiers forced hundreds of thousands of women and girls across the continent to work as sex slaves for soldiers. These women were euphemistically referred to as “Comfort Women.” Ms. Evans explained to the class that the few women who survived the war as a sex slave, were forced to be silent and ashamed. If anyone found out about their past they were alienated, rejected and denied a story in history. It was not until the 1990s that the Japanese Government acknowledged their faults, and still to this day the elderly ‘comfort home’ survivors experience discrimination.

I thought this story is an interesting addition to what we have been learning in class and to the points Ben mentioned in his blog, as it is an another example of how a nation either deliberately or non-deliberately chose to forget history resulting in cultural memory that is not fully accurate. It also shows that this act of forgetting, or selective remembering as it may be, is habit that shapes all nations, including Canada and Japan.

Here is a animated video explaining the story of Comfort Women. Despite its animation, it is still quite disturbing and upsetting- as we know from our graphic narratives, but just a warning. Really worth a watch though.

Thanks for reading!

Jen Paxton

Hello ASTU class!

It has been a while since our last blog and our class has covered a lot! We finished Satrapi’s Persepolis, followed by reading Chute’s “The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis” to gain some understanding of how Satrapi’s choice of visualization impacts the reader’s understanding. Next, the class began its work on the keywords of memory to better understand them and use them in our literature review. We then moved onto Joe Sacco’s graphic journalist piece, Safe Area Gorazde, and finally we have read Joy Kogawa’s novel Obasan, a fictional work based on the true events of the Japanese internment in Canada. It is clear from this week’s blogs, that ASTU students are really thinking and making connections within class material and in their own experiences as global citizens.

This week, many students chose to delve into Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde, many comparing and contrasting to Satrapi’s Persepolis.  Robert’s blog  focuses on the visual styles in both Satrapi and Sacco’s work. He focuses on the immense detail in Safe Area Gorazde compared to Satrapi’s stark simplicity. Rob admires Sacco’s detailed and vivid account, however he says that it may at times be misleading, because Sacco was not a direct witness of some of the events he draws. On the other hand, Rob suggests that the simplicity of Satrapi’s work may leave too much room for the reader to interpret and that she could have used her opportunity of her first hand account to give a more accurate and detailed account. Amy also made connections between the two graphic narratives in her blog. Amy builds on Chute’s idea that Satrapi creates a “horrifying normalcy of violence..” (Page 103) in Persepolis, and relates it to Sacco’s work as well. Amy says that where Satrapi uses Marji’s youthfulness and childhood to illuminate her ‘humanness’ Sacco uses his ‘Silly Girls,’ to highlight the way, even through violence, it is human nature to find some normalcy in our surroundings.

Some students also chose to write about Joy Kogawa’s Obasan. Devon, Ben and Mckaylee, all expressed the shock and discomfort they found when reading Obasan, as the story of the Canadian Japanese Internment was not one they were well aware of. Devon explains that a lot of her discomfort came with the realization that she herself, as a lot of us were I’m sure, had become an oblivious citizen. I know that I found myself most uncomfortable reading this novel, as I know that it is part of my history as a canadian, my cultural and national history. Ben recounts Marita Sturken’s ideas of ‘cultural memory’ and how memory may become selective. He uses Canada’s history and memory of World War II as an example of this selectivity, as most Canadians take pride in what we did overseas, rather than think of the horrific and culturally damaging acts that many Canadians were a part of in their own country. In Mckaylee’s post titled “Fear” she says, “As a society we fear the different, we generalize and don’t account for every individual and what their vast differences could be from someone else who looks ‘like them’; we only see what we want to see.” If, as Mckaylee says, we as a society “only see what we want to see,” then we can connect Ben’s ideas of ‘cultural memory’ in that we only remember what we want to remember.

Finally, as we all recently benefitted from our day off on Wednesday, I’d like to touch on Remembrance Day.  Lauren touches on this idea in her blog ‘Lest We Forget’.  Lauren ties in many components of memory into her personal account of Remembrance Day. She recounts her nation’s past with those who have influenced the way she has learned and made memories throughout her life, or what Farhat Shahzad scholar of education, terms Interpretive Communities. She also shows the evolution of a memory, as it may start as a veteran’s individual memory, it is shared to become a collective memory and finally becomes a cultural and national memory of which we use in part to define ourselves.

It is quite fitting that we as a class studied Obasan on the same week as remembrance day, as it has reminded us all of several key components of memory that we have studied in class: that National and Cultural memory is not always accurate, as it may have become selective. Safe Area Gorazde and Persepolis also remind us to question what we hear in the media in our search for the “Real Truth” and to keep our minds open when it comes to learning and remembering.
Thanks for reading!

Jen.

After a few weeks with no blog posts and the addition of the class reading Joe Sacco’s “Safe Area Gorazde,” I thought it would be interesting to look back on some of the questions raised in previous class blogs to see if Sacco’s account may contribute or answer these questions. A blog that I stumbled upon was Devon’s, “Where can I find some authority..?” in which she questions not only who has authority to tell their story, but who has the authority to give “value judgement.” Devon also says that the way we judge and determine value of a culture “depends largely on how the public accepts the information that is being presented by said person with authority.”

I think the question Devon is raising is very interesting, especially when applying what we now know of Sacco’s account of “Safe Area Gorazde.” We know from interviews and through the way Sacco decides to portray himself in his graphic novel, that he is aware of his authority and that he is going to have some responsibility in how many readers interpret the value of Bosnian people and cultures. However, is he giving value judgement to Bosnia? If so, is aware of this, as he is of his authority? 

Have an excellent rainy weekend!

Jen Paxton