Hi Friends!

I couldn’t have chosen a better week to be class blogger! I really enjoyed reading through the blog posts you have all posted this week and I must commend all of you for writing such captivating insights. I must admit however that I didn’t read some like Nicola’s blog because she mentioned she was blogging about the second half of Persepolis which I eventually plan on reading.

After reading the class blogs I noticed a common theme used amongst many of the blogs and It was a theme that particularly interested me; The use of Simplicity and/or Minimalism to portray Trauma, especially pertaining to French-Iranian Author Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir Persepolis . It was interesting reading about the contrasting opinions all the class bloggers held and  their choices of literature to compare Persepolis to.

To begin with in Kihan’s Blog, she compares the portrayal of Satrapi’s trauma to that of Anne Michaels in her novel Fugitive Pieces. Kihan contrasts the two pieces of literature and analyzes the effectiveness of the portrayals of trauma. In comparison to Satrapi’s graphic memoir, Michaels uses a novel to share her story and uses words to powerfully share her adversities. Kihan argues that despite both works being abstract in their roots, they are still able to effectively portray trauma.

In Sam’s Blog, he chooses to, similarly to both Kihan , compare Persepolis to a work of literature. Sam chose to analyze Art Speigelman’s Graphic Maus II. Sam spoke to how the Trauma was conveyed differently because of issues of authority. Sam argues that Speigelman doesn’t have the authority to make a testimony to convey his Trauma as he is portraying Trauma that his father went through, not him. Additionally, Sam chooses to speak about the use of minimalism in the books and the use of ‘black and white’ graphics; He mentions ‘the minimalist expression of violence and [Satrapi’s] experience of that violence is powerful in the way that it forces the reader to imagine, and therefore understand her experience and the normalcy of violence in Iran’.

In Taylor’s Blog, she compared Persepolis to The Breadwinner, by Deborah Ellis. Taylor found Satrapi’s use of of simplicity to illustrate Trauma to be ‘extremely effective’. However after reading Sam’s blog which brings about the issues of authority, I begin to question how am I supposed to believe the ‘Trauma’ portrayed by a Canadian woman writing in the perspective of a adolescent Afghani female?

In Kendall’s Blog, she continues to speak upon the issue of authority to convey ones trauma. Kendall goes on to mention some critiques of Satrapi’s Persepolis such as the fact that Satrapi wrote the book as an adult. Kendall ultimately argues that Satrapi holds full authority and that what makes her portrayals of trauma more effective is her acknowledgements of her flaws throughout the book.

In Rachel’s Blog, she speaks to Sam’s and Taylor’s points on the use of Simplicity and Minimalism in Persepolis. She argues that the simplicity allows us to focus on the main ideas – Violence. She states that the use of Black and White is almost to portray the seriousness of the graphic. What I found interesting in Rachel’s blog was her observation of the chapter title names in Persepolis; She noticed that normal ‘common objects’ associated to everyday life are made symbols of a painful childhood that Satrapi has to go through.

Finally, in Peija’s Blog, she extends the topic of simplicity using her own real life examples. She proposes that simplicity is a portrayal of being ‘unable to comprehend’. She speaks about how even though Satrapi has authority and can remember witnessing many events growing up, she still chooses to portray it simply in her graphic.

All in all, I really enjoyed summarizing the above blogs and extending the conversation on the topic of the use of Simplicty/ Minimalism and Authority to portray Trauma. I have to agree that the use of simplicity and minimalism is what makes the portrayals of Trauma so much more effective. I also strongly agree with many bloggers that the issue of authority is a big one and that establishing authority is important if you want to be able to convey all adversities and Traumas to an audience. I look forward to further enquiring into the issue of authority in our ASTU Class with our upcoming literature pieces.

I hope you enjoyed reading my class blog review today and if you want to continue reading about my insights visit my blog!

Until next time

-Kaveel Singh

What’s up ASTU 100 I know everyone is busy with Halloween plans since it is the bestt holiday of the year but I just wanted to say I really enjoyed reading everyone’s posts. After reading all of your guys blogs and getting some great decorative inspiration for my own I noticed most people talked about Persepolis or the Chute article we’ve been analyzing in class lately but the way everyone connect these two sources to other things is where stuff really got interesting! It was great hearing the connections people drew from the reading to our other classes and to their personal lives.

I want to start by talking about some of the blogs that drew on the last couple class discussions we had because they seemed to really get people thinking. Pieja referenced Isabelle in her blog and left some interesting commentary on the issue of whether a child can or cannot comprehend certain levels of brutality. She weighs in on this debate by explaining that in her childhood when she witnessed animals being killed in front of her, “I remember thinking that whole thing was very disgusting, and how sad it must have been for the animal to die. But at the same time, it seemed very ordinary, how animals must die to feed the human population. Looking back now, if I were to draw what I saw as a 6/7 year old, my visual representation would not be more than a scraggly shape of a chicken with X-crossed eyes and a spew of spiky blood coming from its neck.” This was a common sentiment in class and was used by a lot of other bloggers to explain Satrapi’s pared down art style. Raphael talked a bit about our group work on the Chute article as well as Satrapi’s drawing style, “The childlike simplicity with which we are given the perspective lends itself to greater inferred meaning. As we mentioned in class just today, the simplification of events and style add a greater impact than that of a realistic style. There is an “insufficiency of any representation to ‘fully’ represent trauma” (103). There seems to be somewhat of a consensus in regards to the function of Satrapi’s use of simplification in her drawing.

Another common connection people made this week was between Satrapi’s artistic style and other books. Sam Tuck brought up a book that Dr. Luger also talked to us about, Art Speigelman’s Maus series. He makes some great connections between the two graphic narratives and brings it back to the conversation we had in class about testimony. Sam drew a direct connection between the Satrapi and the author of the Maus Series, “It is as if he is in the place of the reader if he were reading Satrapi’s Persepolis. Satrapi’s testimony and style of narrative gives rise to the reader’s imagination of her trauma and her experience. This is like how only through Vladek’s stories can he grasp the unimaginably brutal trauma that Vladek experienced. Because of this, he must draw only his imagination of the brutality that Auschwitz prisoners experienced.” He too touches on the drawing style while drawing a connection to a similar style of book that also deals with trauma and brutality. Kihan also draws a connection to a book she read outside of class and compares the drawing style in Persepolis to the writing style of the Canadian author Anne Michaels. Kihan explains how the book Fugitive Pieces also deals with the explanation of trauma by using poetic language and syntax. Just like our discussion in class not everyone agrees with this technique and Kihan explains that critique, “Michaels has been criticized for this by those who find it problematic to fictionalize and make poetry out of what was/is a painful reality for so many, especially because Michaels uses her artistic craft and highly stylized diction to make this dark history sound, well, beautiful” but asserts that, “Thus, I would agree with Chute that Satrapi avoids glorifying the trauma in Persepolis not despite but in fact because of her abstraction of it…”. I found this comparison extremely intriguing since she compares the writing style of one author to the drawing style of another. For me I had never thought of this issue until it was brought up in class discussions but now I realize after reading Kihan’s blog that author’s are doing what Satrapi did all the time just without pictures and thus less obviously.

Finally, we had a few people mention things completely separate from Persepolis which was great for varieties sake. Iman talked about the original question posed to us CAP’s students at the beginning of the year about the meaning of a global citizenship. It seems that question kept her thinking because in her blog post she uses a connection in her own life to offer some understanding, “Through my interpretation there is not a set definition for what a global citizen is. Nonetheless, I believe a global citizen allows an individual to learn from people from all over the world, to study issues, and to connect and interact with other individuals. By advocating, at the local and global level most people feel a connection to others around the world who are facing similar challenges.” Iman described an awesome sounding organization that works to give voices to children in developing nations and how that experience helped shape her understanding of a global citizen.

Overall, it seemed like the discussions we’ve been having in class have gotten people thinking and now that there is somewhat of a general consensus about the big question of Satrapi’s intention with her drawing style I think it’s time our class considered some new questions. Personally, I would love to hear some input on the feminist perspective Chute uses to critique Persepolis since it wasn’t something I understood too well until Dr. Luger explained it to me. I hope everyone has a lovely week and don’t forget to pick up the book Dr. Luger ordered for us at the bookstore!

Hey ASTU 100,

Persepolis was an enormously popular topic this week, with 14 out of the 20 blogs writing directly about the graphic narrative. The connections with the book ranged from artistic style, memory, testimony, politics, and of course, global citizenship.

Let’s get cracking!

Both Jennifer and Ina chose to write about the meshing of modern politics and religion, specifically where the Niqab can fit into Canadian life. They brought up Harper, disagreeing with his anti-Niqab statements: “We do not allow people to cover their faces during citizenship ceremonies. Why would Canadians, contrary to our own values, embrace a practice at that time that is not transparent, that is not open and frankly is rooted in a culture that is anti-women. That is unacceptable to Canadians, unacceptable to Canadian women.” Both bloggers spoke about the role of the veil in modern day Canada, compared to its role in Persepolis-era Iran. Jennifer argued that banning the Niqab in Canada, was just as bad as forcing women to wear them in Iran. I, like them, share the same opinion: women should have the choice of whether or not they want to wear the Niqab. What do you think? Should women be banned from wearing the Niqab during oath-swearing ceremonies? Is this truly “anti-women” or is Harper just trying to garner a public response?

The blogs written by Rachel and Taylor referred to the impact due to the artistic choices, the style of Persepolis, and how trauma/violence is represented. In case you’ve magically forgotten, the art in Persepolis is quite plain: monochromatic, flat, and doesn’t have many details. As a class, we were under the consensus that the choices Satrapi made were on purpose, and the dense style was not a lack of drawing talent. The article The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis” by Hillary Chute expressed that the decision to simplify the illustrations actually created a more impactful effect on the reader.  Diego sums up that idea with the pleasant-sounding catchphrase: “Amplification through simplification.” (Thanks for the shout out, by the way!) Continuing on the topic of Persepolis’ style and trauma, Kihan’s blog took a slightly different route; she wrote about Satrapis’ abstract illustrations representing the “unspeakableness” of trauma. Kihan writes: “…Satrapi uses the graphic narrative to deconstruct the taboos surrounding the representation of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and ensuing Iran-Iraq war…” I completely agree with her. The convention of illustrations in graphic narrative is an incredibly accessible form of sharing your story. By having a genre where you can bring trauma/violence to the forefront, I think it becomes more relevant to more people’s lives. With this in mind, do you think graphic narratives are going to become more popular? How does it’s representation of history and memory compare to a novel’s representation?

Priya critiqued the eyewitness testimony vs. reality in Persepolis, in her blog. She questioned if Persepolis was truly an accurate, precise representation of what had happened in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. She wrote about “doubtful accuracy” regarding personal perspective in storywriting. She went on to say how personal memory can be changed, and therefore stories can as well. I absolutely concur: in my last blog, I wrote about this topic! (Yes, shameless self-promotion.) Cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, in her Ted Talk likened human memory to Wikipedia: “… You can go in there and change it. But so can other people.” Memory is incredibly malleable, and in no way 100% credible. Her blog and Raphael’s blog go hand-in-hand: he too doubted the complete truthfulness of the story. Raphael’s doubtfulness came from omission and the fact that we see the story solely through Satrapi’s eyes. He quotes: “History is written by the victors”, implying that authors have complete control of what goes into their stories and what is swept under the carpet. I agree with Raphael and Priya on this one… however, Satrapi does earn herself some credibility points by refusing to write a third graphic narrative. (She says: “The reason the book stops in 1994 is that I don’t live there anymore. I read an Iranian newspaper every day on the internet and my parents still live there, but that is second-hand information, you know?”) Considering the arguments these two blogs make, I think we should all take everything we read with caution. Whether it’s newspapers, watching the news, reading biographies, etc. we need to be aware that everything we read will be true only to some extent.

I am so impressed, you guys had tons of things to say. Sorry if I didn’t mention you in this recap, but I swear I read them all!

Thanks for reading + see you guys on Tuesday

-Carolina Judkowicz

Hello Readers!

This week in our ASTU class, we further delved into Satrapi’s Persepolis through the exploration of Chute’s scholarly article, The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. As a collective, we focused on her contention that “the complex visualizations that many graphic narrative works undertake require a rethinking of the dominant tropes of unspeakability, invisibility, and inaudibility that have tended to characterize recent trauma theory…” (Chute, 93). In this memoir, Satrapi utilizes a monochromatic style in the hopes of illustrating the traumatic events she faced during the Revolution and Iran-Iraq war. Our past discussions on her medium has also driven me to ponder about the extent to which her testimony, or first-hand experience, is favoured as a contribution to cultural memory.

Thoughts on this investigation is consistent amongst my classmates’ blogs as they too, question the personal narrative Satrapi expresses. Evident in Kendall’s reflection is the question of authority. Did Satrapi have any right to tell her story, controversial to the fact that Iran wasn’t (and still isn’t) supportive of her memoir (Chute, 106), my peer asks. She argues that the author does have the jurisdiction to recount her experiences as it is an exclusive account of her own perceptions. Kendall reinforces this with examples in the memoir, stating that “the fact that Satrapi acknowledges the flaws in her authority, and the limits of her own view, leads readers to trust in her authority more.” Likewise, Sam briefly emphasizes her authorization as he contrasts Persepolis with Spiegelman’s second-hand retainment; “It is as if he is in the place of the reader if he were reading Satrapi’s Persepolis.” It is in examples like these that fortify the potential Satrapi possesses in influencing how history is remembered.

The power that the minimalistic nature of the author’s art brings should not be forgotten either, as it is vital to understanding how Satrapi is able to convey her testimony so effectively. Raphael relays that “the separation between the author Satrapi, the child Marji, and the adult Marjane, lends itself to what Chute calls the “child’s-eye rendition” (99) of not only traumatic events but generally the entire novel. Diego expands on this idea with a single example, in which “she illustrates the human as something that resembles lego” (on Marji imagining a cut-up human being). Satrapi intentionally created her comic literary work in a “child’s understanding” in part because it did occur when she herself was a child, but also because as Chute argues, the abstraction allows us to pull in outside sources and our own imagination to fully comprehend the petrifying events that occurred.

However, on the other hand, does the story being told from a child-like perspective then undermine the possibility that it is a reliable source to contribute to cultural memory? The fact that these recollections may be hazy ideas that adult Satrapi gathers from her childhood makes one wonder, are first-hand sources credible if they are being told years later? Though Kihan supports the effectiveness of the medium alike with the majority of my classmates, she touches on the probability that “a critic could claim that the use of abstraction in {both Fugitive Pieces and} Persepolis overly romanticizes the historical events that these works attempt to represent.” But what becomes of the memoir if abstraction isn’t used? My classmate sums up our collective thoughts with, “Satrapi avoids glorifying the trauma in Persepolis not despite but in fact because of her abstraction of it.”

Why does this matter though? Cultural memory is, as I’ve acquainted myself with Sturken’s article, “a field {shaped by} cultural negotiation through which different stories vie for a place in history.” Reading through all of these amazing blogs, it’s easily achieved that our class has gained a greater understanding of this Revolution and war through her medium. Since I believe, none of us have stories of Iran’s history passed down to us by fellow friends or family, Satrapi’s memoir is the cultural memory we use to shape our understanding of history. The extent to which her art transpires to cultural memory, is seen to be at least relevant in the context of our ASTU class. If it doesn’t do any justice to anyone else, for example, Iran once again, who’s to say it doesn’t impact another group of individuals? Like what we have discussed in class and as Kendall has wrapped up her blog post, “{Satrapi is} just putting her story out there for someone to receive the message.”

I hope you had a great week and make the upcoming one another good one,

Kristen Ylo

This week in ASTU, we began our exploration of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, a story of growing up in the midst of the Islamic revolution and the Iran Iraq war. One of the most notable features of this graphic memoir is this graphic element: its portrayal of the plot, characters, and themes through comic-style images. Considering the effect of this specific visual choice led me to think about the significance of every decision an author makes in choosing how to tell their story. Every author is in constant consideration of which medium, style, emotional approach—even word choice—will best portray his or her message.

Interest in Satrapi’s choices as an author—how she tells her story—seems to be a common theme throughout my classmates’ blogs as well. Jacqueline explores the effect of Satrapi’s use of personal narrative to achieve her ultimate purpose of countering negative perceptions of Iran. Jacqueline asserts that personal narrative is more powerful than factual accounts of an experience, such an op-ed or a historical narrative; in multiple cases, the personal element is more striking to an audience. An example of this is Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, a memoir written in similar circumstances to those of Satrapi; as Jacqueline writes, “both authors had been made powerless, silenced by the conditions of their environment”. Similarly, Kristen presents the connection between the experiences and recollections of Marji and those of Anne Frank. As she argues, both are in a situation of “liv[ing] in a dynamic fear”, yet still “[advocate] the need for a voice against the whole of society”. On the topic of personal narrative, Kristen also finds it effective, for “having the story clarified by a young child or teenager is a whole different story”. These connections between Persepolis and other literary works demonstrate the universal effect of personal narrative in adding deeper dimension to our perception of a historical event. The similarities that Jacqueline and Kristen address transcend different cultures and time periods, conveying unknown and otherwise unpublicized experiences.

Peija furthers this idea by describing the impact of personal narrative on her perception of many historical events. In her words, “I never really could relate to past historical events – I was just someone reading about it and then forgetting it. That is until I heard multiple perspectives of historical events”. Here, we see the true power of personal narrative: it allows one to understand history from a first-hand perspective, allowing the reader to relate on a deeper level.

But it’s not just how we choose to tell our stories that holds significance. Focusing on the literary works produced by each of my classmates, it’s interesting to see what issues were focused on. Brought to light by Mariana’s discussion of the bias of political news, this hints at another essential question: what do we chose to tell? Intertwined with their comments on how Satrapi achieved her purpose, many of this week’s blogs explored the various power struggles that we encounter in society. Touching on the internal struggles in society between tradition and revolution, Diego extends Satrapi’s themes of rebellion against tradition and societal norms to our society today, referencing the gay rights movement, photo sharing media such as Snapchat and Instagram, and the rise of professional gaming as ways that we rebel against and change social norms in a positive way. However, Priya focuses on the wars and political repression in Persepolis—acts that stem from social rebellion—as a negative force: they rip from children the joy and freedom of childhood, as we see in Marji’s often premature adult behavior. Still, Kristen touches on the possibility that, when the dust is settled, perhaps a rebellion brings peace. She references the work of Craig Kielburger, a young Canadian activist working to eradicate child labor. She argues that it is Canada’s past rebellions and establishment of our society today that gave Craig the resources to make a positive impact. Anne Frank or Marji may not have had the same opportunities, though they possessed the same courage and passion for change.

Why do these essential questions—how an author writes and what he or she writes about—matter? It’s the effect of the author’s choices about what to say and how to say it on the reader that give literature so much significance and power to help us understand the chaos that is living in our insanely diverse world. Going back to Peija’s blog post, I was struck by how much I related to her experience with the genre of personal narrative—it has an effect on our understanding of and emotional connection with any story. Here, we find connections: similarities within our differences.

It’s also how it provokes our thought processes. Reading the blog posts this week really made me think about how power and rebellion affect us. Are these forces good or bad? We are presented with an intrinsic duality—they bring both negative and positive effects to the table. So then how do we balance that? It’s something to keep in mind.

To another good week!

Kristen Lew

Hello readers!

In my ASTU 100 class this week, we discussed a graphic narrative called Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi. It is a memoire about Satrapi’s experience as a child growing up during the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the war against Iraq. Persepolis serves as an emotional account of these events, not a historical one; it is Satrapi’s memoire. The discussions that we had in class regarding this graphic narrative prompted many of my fellow classmates to discuss this piece in their blogs.

Some students focussed on the innocence that they felt “Marji”, the child narrator, lost as a result of the conditions that she grew up in. Priya Adhikari, for instance, wrote about how the subtitle of Persepolis, “The Story of a Childhood”, is inaccurate, as the children during this time period grew up with such political, social, and economic unrest, that their childhood was stripped of them. They never had the chance to truly experience it. Although Imaan Punja also discussed the topic of innocence in her post, she chose to draw parallels between the children of Iran and the First Nations children forced to attend Canada’s residential schools. Imaan’s blog post confirms the ideas described by Priya, while making a connection to another relevant issue that haunts Canadian society.

My classmates also focussed on the connections between Satrapi’s graphic narrative and some concepts that have been discussed in their other classes, especially sociology. For example, Sania Shoaib argues the importance of Karl Marx in Persepolis and how Marji is influenced by his views through other members of her family and the larger society. Although Sania’s blog was insightful, I found that I was searching for more depth in her points about Marx; I wanted the discussion to continue. Isabelle Semmelhack’s post satisfied my curiosity by going further than sociology. She created a network of influences by drawing parallels between sociology, political science, and English, further describing the value that each of these disciplines has in their ability to better explain Satrapi’s memoire as a whole. 

Keeping to the theme of using several connections to back up ideas, Nicola Cox’s post regarding Persepolis discusses an academic article that we read last week in ASTU 100, called “The Role of Interpreting Communities in Remembering and Learning” by Farhat Shahzad, as well as her personal experience re-reading Persepolis at an older age, and her findings about Iranian culture from one of her friends who emigrated from Iran. Nicola discovered that the concept of “family” is quintessential in Iranian culture, as Satrapi describes in her memoire. The young character, Marji, is influenced by her parents, her uncle Anoosh, and many other members of her family and community throughout Persepolis. Their opinions matter to Marji, whether she outrightly admits it or not. Nicola also describes the view that Western society posses about families and how it is contrasted with Iranian culture.

Although everyone’s findings were helpful in further understanding Satrapi’s Persepolis, disclosing the numerous perspectives that one can take while reading this graphic narrative, I found my thoughts paralleled by the questions asked by Kendall Manifould, specifically regarding memory. The one that drove the argument in Kendall’s post considered this: “Is memory a reliable source for recounting events?” She went into detail about the importance of remembering and the significance of forgetting, describing how “it is one’s duty to remember and be a witness to important events. It is the brave, and noble, thing to do”.

Based on my personal experiences, it seems inevitable that people remember things how they want to. The emotions that they attach to certain memories, both during the event and after it takes place, guide their judgements and shape their actions and character. This is the view that I took while reading Persepolis. The way that Satrapi wrote about her childhood experiences seems to confirm this point, as she tells readers her story in the way that she wants to portray it, which is not necessarily how it occurred. However, the common theme through my class’ blogs is that Satrapi’s honesty in her writing and the pictures in her frames provoke questions of innocence, childhood, and the significance of remembering traumatic events.

Excellent work, bloggers! I cannot wait to see what you write about next.

Hello fellow students, I’m Sam and I’ll be summarizing this week’s blogs for ASTU 100. There is so much I want to write about in this post, because all of your blogs were so interesting and seemingly purposefully connected that there is a lot to sum up. I’ll try and capture all your ideas as best I can, for as I read through the separate blogs I kept thinking back to what I wrote about in my first post, how we as a community are developing or own interpretive community of learning. I think exploring this community through class blogging is important, but I’m sorry if I ramble on.

I sat down to start writing this after reading all of your blogs, and I put on some Miles Davis to concentrate while I was writing, and it made me think of the chapter we are reading in Sociology right now on culture. The graphic novel we are reading right now: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is very much based around this idea of culture, and how it connects to memory and the authors own personal narrative growing up in Iran during the revolution. Culture encompasses the ideas, values, practices, and material objects that allow a group of people, even an entire society to carry out their lives in relative order and harmony (Ritzer, Guppy 2014). Let’s take Iran and America (or the west) for instance. The two cultures associated with those countries are very different and as I will discuss later, Satrapi uses her personal narrative told through an abstract medium, to convey how her story sheds light on previous assumptions and shows us a greater truth to our cultural differences.

Another important part of a culture and country is memory. Nicola’s blog focuses on the culture of family inside Iran vs. that of the Western world and how it passes on memory. As we see in Persepolis, the idea of memory and lenses of memory are linked to Satrapi’s personal narrative, as well as the culture of Iran. Both Carolina and Kendall both discuss this idea. Carolina shows how age and memory are fused as one, and gives the example of the lenses that Satrapi uses to convey her story. She writes from her own point of view living in Iran as a child, but her story is narrated by a much older self. I ask myself, how does this affect her telling of what happened historically? Kendall’s blog focuses on this, and she believes that “memory is arguably the most authentic way to record history” and I agree. I also think Satrapi realizes this as well. History cannot cover every view point, but smears them all together to get the gist of the cultural, political and social aspects of what happens over time. Kaveel points out in his blog the fact that there really is no specific time-frame to Satrapi’s work and says that this is not necessarily a bad thing. While a personal narrative naturally comes with bias, or a certain “perspective”, it is this perspective that gives us a unique view of one specific thread that contributes to the rope that is history. Satrapi’s Personal Narrative cuts through the generalizations of culture and memory to open the reader’s eyes to the connection we have as human beings.

After reading Kaveel’s blog I was drawn to Satrapi’s narrative and the meaning that it holds. It is very descriptive as a comic, but why did she choose to write it as a graphic novel? In my grade 12 AP English class, we read a book called Fugitive Pieces which discusses the same themes (memory, written history, culture) as in Persepolis, but is about an orphaned Jewish child in the wake of the Nazi agenda. The book is extremely descriptive but is described through text. Why would Satrapi use an abstract form like a graphic novel to portray an extremely controversial, important and personal life narrative? Jennifer’s blog includes a video link at the end of her post to a trailer for the film version of Persepolis, which uses the same art style. That led me to watch a clip of “Making of Persepolis” where Satrapi talks about her use of graphic narrative in the telling of her story. In it, she answers our question by saying: “Drawings have an abstract quality, if we used real images…it would be an ethnic film, it becomes the problem of those people who live over there and are crazy about God. Drawings with their abstract quality emphasize the universal.” (3:08)

This conversation on the use of graphic narrative in respect to meaning, memory and popular culture opened a wide array of views from the class. In Rachel’s blog she points out that comic narrative affects the feel of the person reading it, and how it conveys even horrible topic in a personal way. With text, we relate our own ideas of what the sentences and concepts in a text mean or look like as images in our head, and base our understanding from our interpretation of the text. In a graphic narrative, the author gives you these images and you interpret the significance of the concepts and themes through the drawings. To give an example as to how this makes for an accessible, but also powerful medium we can look at what Kihan discusses. She points out that when an author uses a medium like popular art it widens the scope to a mass media level. But Kihan argues, in Satrapi’s case this does not lead to trivialization of the graphic narrative as say, a comic book would. Instead it “creates something powerful for everyone to experience.”

This begs the question: why in Satrapi’s case it is a powerful medium? How does this graphic narrative change the readers view on the subject? In both Jaqueline and Imaan’s blogs they answer these questions. Jaqueline compares Persepolis to Stephan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday in the way that both authors counter previous mainstream stereotypes about their experiences through their personal narratives. She illuminates the fact that Marji is powerless to create change as a child living in Iran at the time, but as an adult she uses her personal narrative of living through such an event to “give power to her once over looked voice”. In Imaan’s blog points out how a powerful narrative like this can change our views on a subject that have developed over time. She connects Satrapi’s narrative to that of a child who experienced the Residential School system. In Canada we are slowly changing our views on the assimilation of Aboriginals into western culture by the government, through these personal narratives of Aboriginals who experienced this and are sharing their stories. In Satrapi’s case, she uses her narrative to bring about a positive change in the way the west views Iran because of the Revolution. Her narrative and its universal presentation breaks down the generalizations of mass media and culture to bring people a first-hand story narrated though a personal lense. Through this presentation, she creates a meaningful change in the way people view the events she lived through. Satrapi breaks through barriers of culture, memory and history with her personal narrative to focus on the simple connection we have as humans living on this planet.

Apologies for making this so long, you guys had a lot to say!

Thanks again for reading, see you all next class

-Sam Tuck

Hello Readers,

I want to first congratulate everyone on their excellent blog posts this week; I thoroughly enjoyed reading all of them! You all raised some interesting points and brought very thought-provoking questions to the table.

A common theme for this week’s blog post was Farhad Shahzad’s “The Role of Interpretive Communities in Remembering and Learning”, as well as the subject of scholarly academic writing. Jennifer Lai, Kristen Lew, and Sania Shoaib highlight these topics. Kaveel Singh and Sam Tuck zoom in on Shahzad’s theory of “interpretive communities”.

Another popular subject this week was our discussions in class, specifically regarding different technologies of memory. Mariana Drok described the importance of storytelling as a technology of memory, especially its significance to First Nations’ history. Ina de Weerdt went on to talk about how blogging is another technology of memory that has greatly impacted her, and how she feels that she belongs to a blogging interpretive community.

Another source of speculation was regarding the issue of “bias”. Jacqueline DeSantis speculated whether “bias” was any different from “perspective”; she views that one has an inherently negative connotation while the other is viewed in a more positive light. She claims, “The difference between bias and perspective is not as cut and dry as it seems. If we replace the word bias with perspective then it seems like people are less critical of an outside influence.” Meanwhile, Mariana Dork argues that bias is the only way for events to be accurately recorded in history. She says, “Information is a powerful tool of manipulation in the 21^st century. When it is being distorted the only way to learn the truth is by listening to people, who have experienced a particular event themselves.” Taylor Khatkar proposes an interesting view on this topic while referencing Nigerian novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk “The Danger of a Single Story”.

I personally find this subject very interesting to debate. I feel on the one hand, bias should not cloud one’s judgment and prevent one from considering other possibilities or perspectives, but on the other hand, how can you experience ANYTHING in your life without having a bias? It’s just not possible. In that regard, bias shouldn’t be viewed as a bad thing.

Some of my classmates mused over the question that has been presented to us from day one: “What is a global citizen?” Raphael Gamo asserts, “…global citizenship is the privilege to learn and interact with people from all over the world, to discover issues and solutions, and to just in general communicate on a scale larger than your immediate locale.” He also went on to talk about his experiences living in Jakarta, Indonesia and attending an international school there. “Due to this high concentration of different cultures and nationalities, I feel drawn towards international communities, and in turn, the idea of global citizens. I can’t really imagine any other way when it comes to the communities. I’m a part of, the mix of people just seems to feel right and comfortable.” This particular statement resonated with me because I, too, lived overseas and attended an international school in Singapore. Diversity was a largely influential factor in my decision to attend UBC. Ken Sakamoto also shares a similar view on this topic.

Nicolo Jimenez wrote about the Syrian Refugee Crisis, and our responsibilities as global citizens to aid them in their struggles: “I do not think it is appropriate at all for one country to be spearheading the Syrian Refugee Crisis or for countries who are more stable financially and politically to stand back and remain lukewarm! I take it my responsibility to advocate for more countries to rally as a whole and tackle this phenomenon in unity because we are stronger together.” The Syrian Refugee Crisis is a very critical issue in the world at this time, and as students in an ever-increasing globalized world, it is our responsibility to be aware of the crisis, and be educated in the nation’s responses and policies regarding the refugees.

As an endnote, the majority of students discussed how grateful they are to be in the Global Citizens CAP stream. They are able to pull connections between lectures and academic perspectives to form a more interconnectedness view of the world around us. This was a main theme in Carolina Judkowicz’s blog, as well as many others.

Keep it up, bloggers!

-Kendall Manifould

Hello readers!

In the past two weeks, our ASTU class took apart and discussed the article “The Role of Interpretative Communities in Remembering and Learning” written by Farhad Shahzad. The article focused on how people’s memories or perspective are linked/affected by their social ties, political standing, nationality and up bring. All of us wrote a blog post in response to the article and here are some of the few blogs worth noting.

After reading the blog posts, I have a clearer understanding on what an interpretative community is. It is interesting to see how differently everyone reacted to the article and the questions that they raise regarding this topic. Everyone is able to link either their own experience or the things happening in their immediately environment to the topic.

Some students used their own experience to approach this topic. Take Rapheal Gamo and Kihan Yoon-Henderson’s blog post as an example, they talked about the problem of identifying their ethnicity in a globalized world. The increase fluidity between nation caused people that were brought up in a different culture or have a mixed heritage become more common. The fluidity of people with a mixed cultural background or a mixed ethnicity find it difficult to identify themselves with one ethnicity group. Kihan’s blog focused on the topic of ethnicity and the identity crisis she encountered as being a ‘Halfie”(a term used for being half Asian half Caucasian ) and gave us some insight on how being a Halfie affected her mindset. Kihan stated that,”my[her] ethnic identity remains a sort of grey zone to myself [herself] and to others.” This is due to the fact that people from different counties sees her ethnicity differentiates with how she sees herself.

Other students discussed how media, book, social network and the government can alter the perspective of the readers. Priya Adhikari, Taylor Khatkar and Dione Yeung argued that the media is bias and can affect the view point of the public. Priya stated in her blog post that,”I [she]  believe[s] that media nowadays is somewhere misleading and manipulating memories.” I couldn’t agree more with her statement. The word choice of a news report can greatly affect the readers. Take the Syrian refugee crisis as an example, if the the media used the word “immigrant” instead of “refugee”, I wouldn’t think this matter is urgent or serious at all.

Taylor Khatkar proposed an intriguing question, she asked weather it is possible to remember or learn without having a perspective or being bias, and I honestly do not think it is possible. From a young age we are influenced by our parents and peers without even realizing it. One is not possible to write without a perspective because everyone has their own set of values and it is impossible to ignore.

Lastly, Dione Yeung’s blog resonated with me, I personally can relate to Dione’s blog post since we have similar upbringing given that we both lived in Hong Kong, China. She pointed out that, “the government, or the state is actually constantly shaping the way we think without us being conscious about it.” To further support her point, Dione gave an example that high schools in China will not teach students about what happened in the TianAnMen Incident where countless lives were being cruelly taken away by the communist party when students go on strike against them. In Hong Kong, we were also not taught the specific of what happened in the TianAnMen incident. Although thousands of citizen would go on protest on the day of the incident every year, urging China to apologize, there will be nearly no news coverage of the event. The government tries to cover up what happened by manipulating the student.

All of the blog posts are extremely incisive and the writers of the blog post gives interesting examples and valid reasons to support their point.  Hope you all reading find this post enjoyable and have a wonderful day!

By Rachel Lam

    Within the Global Citizens stream in the Coordinated Arts Program, the following ingredients have been added to the academic blender in order to produce the perfect Global Citizen smoothie: Political Science, Sociology, and ASTU (Literature Studies). However, a few students have taken it upon themselves to add specific ingredients (topics) of their choosing to bring forth new flavours (insights) to pre-existing ingredients.

     Priya’s first blog post addresses a very controversial topic that has stood the test of time (probably ever since technological advancements with CRT TV’s): Media monopolization. Although the focus of her post revolves around Shazad’s academic research on learning and  memory, Priya highlights a quote by a student within Shazad’s writing that accentuates the topic of media monopolization – “Dealing with the biases of media, it has become hard to inform my own paradigm”.

    This sour flavour of manipulation relates to Nico’s post about the Syrian Refugee Crisis, as the media plays a substantial role on how much information about the crisis is conveyed to its audience. Nico expresses how important global cooperation is during a time of need, and also stresses how important it is to not fall victim to the ‘Bystander Effect.’ This is in relation to a student’s observation of how the media reports the crisis in a more EU centric, implying that North America has no obligation to aid the migrants.

    Kaveel, Ina, and Taylor have chosen similar ingredients by further examining Shazad`s research, and have chosen to focus on the idea of Shazad`s idea of “Interpretive Communities.” These communities encourage active learning through the participation of two (or more) people, and the technologies used by Interpretive Communities include (but are not limited too) lectures in a school setting (Kaveel), blogs (Ina), social media, and books. It is also worth noting that some sort of bias will always develop within Interpretive Communities, because that is the inevitable flavour of sharing information (Taylor), especially within the media (Priya).

   All of the ingredients that these students have shown are reminders of how important it is to be aware and knowledgeable of the current state of the globe, as there is always two sides of a coin. Being ignorant of the other side only leads to unnecessary bias, and could lead to falling victim to the ‘Bystander Effect.’ Therefore, it is important to have an open mind and acknowledge the different perspectives this fortunate (or unfortunate) world has to offer.