Dear Readers,

We only have a few weeks left before the years wraps up and I can’t believe it’s already over. Many of you chose to write a reflection of the year and our time spent in ASTU. A lot of us came into this class not knowing exactly what to expect, but having read your posts this week, I think it’s safe to say that no one is leaving this class without tons of new and useful knowledge thanks to Dr. Luger.

Paolina wrote, “ASTU100 took  away  a lot of my fears regarding scholarly articles”, and Alex summed up his blog post with the well put sentence, “Ultimately this course has significantly broadened my worldview and made me consider current affairs through a much more critical lens”. Isaiah wrote a great piece on the way this class’ focus on the subject of trauma in the context of our literature affected him and the way he can now think about such a deep topic more critically. Clara’s blog this week focused on how reading our class’s last novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid caused her to think about her own identity in a new way. She wrote  “In my opinion this is something that an individual has to figure out somewhat on their own. In essence, an individual  choses what they want to identify as.”

While we are all coming away with different and new perspectives, ideas, and skills, I don’t believe a single one of us will be able to leave this class claiming not to have learned anything. Melissa put it very well stating “Never in my life has a course opened me to see things in such a big perspective and now that I look back at it, it’s insane at how much we’ve got covered in one year and how we’ve learned how to write a literature essay not just some recap and summary”.

Reading my peers’ words on the year that is now behind us left me feeling great. We’ve all shared a lot this year in our CAP Global Citizens stream, and I get the sense we all feel like our time and energy has been well spent, and we feel confident and well prepared for the years still ahead.

Big thanks to Dr. Luger for everything she’s taught us this year!

Best, Olivea

Hello readers!

It is the end of the year now and it has been quite an experience to have this group of people together in ASTU. I think everyone contributed to this class in different ways. Our class members come from all corners of the world and that gives us insight to many of the great ideas we all had in discussing literature relevant in this concept of being a global citizen. In ASTU more than learning about scholarly writing and better and more proper ways to rephrase our ideas we, have learned to look at the world through a different lens. We have moved from being confused with the many lines of a text in front of us back in September to understanding the meaning of the different movements authors make in scholarly writing. We can now identify them a lot more easily and even compose our own scholarly pieces of writing. We have, throughout this year, learned from each other and we have in a way created a community in which we can look at relevant events of our time through literature.

Reading all of the class’ blogs was really interesting this year; it gave us a wide range of opinions and views. This last post was mostly about what we have learned this year. Alex for example tells us “exploring literary and scholarly works that have arisen from these events has most definitely allowed me to gain a better understanding and knowledge of what it means to truly be a global citizen.” We were exposed to different kinds of texts which have made us change the way wee see things just like Joseph explains in his last blog post “our scholarly musings generally functioned more like a magnifying glass on the densely compacted troubles of our time.”
It is nice to see some reactions like Inneke’s, which is very similar to mine, where she tells us that she wasn’t amused with the idea of writing a blog, but here we are at the end of this second term, finding this blog as one of our favourite things in this class where we can all share.
Just like Melissa I feel like many of us saw many changes in our writing style during the course of the year and with that came improvement.
After all we have seen and dome this year I think it is fair to thank every member of this community for making it special and for making it work the way it did.

Thank you once more bloggers,

Gabriel Nogués

Hello everyone!

I’m posting really early since the next two weeks would be crazy hectic for me and everyone else. Let’s get down to the last blog posts of our first year!

Majority of the bloggers (Magda, Elizabeth, Erin, Paolina, Alex, Inneke, Kate, Maria, and Isaiah) chose to reflect their year in ASTU and the insights they have gained. One blog that gave me that “aha” moment was Joseph’s. He brought up an interesting point regarding how “aha” moments are usually associated with good ideas and not the ‘dark’ topics we talked about such as terrorism, trauma, and war. He concluded with the “need to search through this darkness for a light more permanent that the little sparks of greatness that give us hope to keep going.” Very poetic! This is a great way in looking at the world especially as global citizens.

Another topic that some bloggers touched on is of course, one of the most interesting novels we’ve read this year: The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Sandra analyzed the character of Chris and the cause of his death. Melissa looked at the romance genre and made a connection between the relationship of Changez-Erica and America-Middle-East. Martin crticized those Americans who are prejudiced against Middle-Easterns and look at them as “terrorists.”

In connection to the novel, two bloggers (Jackson & Clara) wrote about a subject that I can 100% relate to: immigration. Clara focused on the struggle of identity that most immigrants felt and questioned who determines their identity. She brought up an interesting question as well that is very relevant to my experience: “If I consider myself Canadian can I lay claim to being French, Korean, Deutsch and Scottish? Is it the the percentage of your ancestry that is from a certain place that determines whether you can claim that heritage?”

Overall, this year has been amazing! All blogs were written well and showed how much we’ve learned in ASTU. Good job everyone! (give yourself a pat on the back, we’ve made it haha)

P.S. I tried to include everybody since it’s the last one

Therese

Hello fellow bloggers and faithful readers,

I hope that your weekend was wonderful and fulfilled all your wildest dreams.

My turn has come to be the class blogger for our most recent round of blogs. The majority of the blogs included some element of reference towards a short story that we recently read in class by Richard Klay called Redeployment, as well as The Reluctant Fundamentalist written by Mohsin Hamid.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist recalls the story of a Pakistani man expanding on the trials of being moving from Pakistan to America and accepting and rejecting certain elements of American culture. The story then follows his path as 9/11 occurs. The protagonist, Changez, experiences the after effects of being Muslim in America and proceeds to move back to Pakistan. In Redeployment Richard Klay writes about a soldier returning home from war and the psychological effects that it has on a person to readjust to civilian life.

Grace wrote her blog on Redeployment with emphasis on the psychological trials of being a veteran. She discussed how societies views of veterans is socially constructed. She says how we glamorize them into heroes in a way that they don’t want. Graces compared this to Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, and how in that book veterans don’t want to have to toil in pain or die, they just want to integrate into normal life. The main character in Redeployment struggles through a similar battle as he fights to adjust to civilian life.

Jackson and Joseph both blogged about Redeployment, especially the usage of dogs in the novel. Joseph elaborates on how he feels Klay uses dogs as a metaphor. Joseph then moves onto the value of dogs and why they are seen as man’s best friend. He insists, “dog is a mans best friend because he cannot empathize”. I see this connection to empathy as especially relevant in a novel about war. War and killing for your country is a time when people are pushed to their limits to distance themselves from empathy. Joseph clearly sees this connection. Jackson used dogs as a central theme of his blog to communicate his thoughts. One point that he made that I found compelling was the acknowledgement to the fact that most war movies and stories end gloriously whereas Redeployment ends open ended with unanswered questions.

Alex also wrote about Redeployment and the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He notes that recent years has shown more emphasis and treatment towards PTSD, at least in the media. He makes the interesting comparison between inward and outward trauma and how one shows their trauma. I found that last point especially thought provoking, it made me attempt to comprehend how difficult it must be for some soldiers returning home. They spend their whole time in the army training to become a well-oiled machine who can function with a unit and as a unit. To return home to find that the machine that you’ve built of yourself is failing must be incredibly difficult, especially when you’re too afraid to share this internal failure.

Melissa wrote about The Reluctant Fundamentalist and the way that it can be perceived as a romance novel. She draws the comparison between Changez relationship with America as similar to America’s relationship with the Middle East. She realizes that even though Changez goes back to Pakistan he still has a little bit of America in him. She compares this to how even though America has withdrawn from the Middle East the Middle East still has bits of America in it.

As always, it was an absolute pleasure being humbled by the intelligence and insight that my classmates provide me with. I look forward to reading more and continuing to be amazed at just how smart you guys all are.

Study safe!

Isaiah

Hello readers!

It’s been awhile since I’ve written so let me catch you up on what we’ve been focusing on in my ASTU class. Last week, we read the short story “Redeployment” by Richard Klay, which is a story about a war veteran returning home and the difficulties he faces with adjusting to the constant changes in environment. We then moved into a novel this week called “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” by Mohsin Hamid. This novel tells the story of a young Pakistani man named Changez who falls in love with an American women and his abandonment form the United States. Although there were a few other topics discussed in this week’s blogs, I’m going to focus on those that talked about Klay and Hamid’s stories.

Let’s start with Martin’s blog. He focuses on the aspects of the short story that show how hard it is for a soldier to return home from war. Marin uses the example of when Sgt. Price returns home to his wife and says, “I moved in and kissed her. I figured that was what I was supposed to do” (7). I really like the example used here because it shows that something so ordinary and routine like kissing your spouse is extremely difficult when coming from an environment filled with violence and war. This brings me to Therese’s blog, which brings up the idea that going home might be just as hard as going to war. Although many believe that war veterans who come home must feel relieved and safe, Therese brings up a good point when she says “but being in the army doesn’t actually leave them”. Moving onto Joseph’s blog, he focuses mainly on the meaning of the dogs in Klay’s story. When Sgt. Price kills his own dog instead of taking him to the vet to be put down, it shows that he is taking responsibility for his dog’s death. This connects back to how difficult it is to return home, because it seems as though it is impossible to escape from what is routine when at war.

I’m now going to move on and look at some of the blogs that discussed Hamid’s novel “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”. Starting with Melissa’s blog, she discusses the novel as a romance. She talks about Erika representing America because they are both “stuck in their original form” and “not willing to change”. This connects to the idea that Erika is unable to fall in love with Changez because she is unable to live in the present and can’t move on from her deceased boyfriend. This novel can be seen as portraying many different genres, not only romance. Moving onto Baris’ blog, he brings up the idea that what we take from the novel depends on what lens we read the book from. I think he Baris brings up a really good point here; the reason why he doesn’t see the book as being anti-American is because he can relate to how Changez is feeling. I might interpret the book differently than others because of different backgrounds, which I find really interesting.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading everyone’s blogs this week and good luck with the rest of your semester!

-Kate

Hey Bloggers,

Its hard to believe that it has been since term one that I have been the class blogger, and it is also equally hard to believe that we are almost finished our first year at University!  So much has gone on since then in ASTU, but these past few weeks in particular there has been a lot that has happened.  We recently read a short story entitled “Redeployment” by Phil Klay that follows the return home of a American Soldier that has been fighting in Afghanistan and how being overseas has really changed what it is like for him now at home.  We also had the opportunity to participate in a very interesting joint lecture held by some of our CAP professors that focused on the Black Lives Matter movement, so in this post I want to focus on the blogs that covered those two topics in particular.

The joint lecture that we had on the movement that is Black Lives Matter- often seen on social media as #BlackLivesMatter- has an interesting overlap with the material that we have been analyzing in ASTU.  In particular we have been looking at post 9/11 literature that has also labelled there to be a “good” guy and a “bad” guy. In Ryan’s blog he talks about the work of Judith Butler is relates to the Black Lives Matter movement as she has forced us to consider this distinction between “us” and “them” that has been around for longer that most of us have lived.  Butler’s work also centred upon who’s life we see as grievable and who’s lives we don’t, who are we responsible for and who are we not?  In Clara’s blog she also decided to focus on the Black Lives Matter lecture and talked about one of the websites that we had to look at.  The photo she provided in her blog with all the “dead” bodies that are meant to represent Michael Brown and the way he was killed shocked me too.  It really put into perspective for me just how bad the situation was, just how black men are shot by police each year is shocking.  Along with that image Clara also brings in the theories of Judith Butler to question who lives matter and who’s don’t? How can the police force and the US government justify their actions towards the black population?

Along with the blogs about our Black Lives Matter lecture there were also a number of blogs about the short story “Redeployment” by Phil Klay, Martin’s blog, Jackson’s blog and Erin’s blog, focus on this topic. I found Jackson’s blog was interesting to read because he made a comparison of Klay’s story to the Hollywood film American Sniper, the movie shares many similarities to Klay’s short story.  Connections are made because both characters are military men who have many internal troubles and a lot of emotional baggage following their return home from war.  Both characters share the reality that home doesn’t feel like home anymore, they come to a conclusion that they feel more at home and more significant when they are fighting at war.  In her blog Erin focuses on the narrative of Sgt.Price in the story and how he invites us to see the return home of a soldier as a harsh and upsetting thing, not a reunion full of smiles and tears of joy.  Along with that Erin also looks at Klay’s story through the lens of Judith Butler who questions what life we distinguish as grievable, particularly in this story that concerns the lives of the Iraqi’s.  Lastly Alex’s blog is similar to Jackson’s as it centres upon the film interpretation of stories like these.  Alex talks about the PTSD that some soldiers experience after they return home from war having seen horrific things, and how something as simple and comfortable as going grocery shopping can be so scary and unfamiliar.

Those are just a few of the topics that the blogs were about last week, other topics discussed include The Reluctant Fundamentalist and various post 9/11 poetry that we analyzed in class. Great job of the blogs!

Until next Time,

Magda 🙂

Hello my dear readers!

I hope you had a great weekend.

I have the honor to write the class blog for this week. First of all I want to start with what we have talked about in our ASTU class over the last week. We started reading a short story called “Redeployment“ by Richard Klay, and then moved on to the novel “The Reluctant Fundamentalist“ by Mohsin Hamid.

Richard Klay tells the story of an returning veteran from war and how he experiences the change of environments and which emotional challenges he has to face below the surface. Mohasin Hamid’s novel tells the story of a young pakistani man falling in love with an american women and getting abandoned from the US. The book is told from the young man’s perspective.

But what’s going on in the  ASTU100 blog world?

Therese illustrates this topic of “Redeployment“  very well in her blog post “ The War We Don’t See“ through writing about a conversation she had with a soldier back in Winnipeg. She comes to the conclusion that tolerance and open-mindedness is very important in such conversations and if they are given a very “civil“ conversation between a pacifist such as Therese and a soldier can happen in a productive way. Martin also writes about the story “Redeployment“, pointing out the struggles of veterans coming back from war. I barely know anything about the veteran programs they have in Canada to help those who struggle with reintegration, so it was very interesting to read a little about this.

Joseph takes a new direction towards the meaning of the dog in Richard Klay’s story. He questions if the dog symbolizes the ability to emphasize with other indivduals… or not. From Klay’s story he draws the connection back to Judith Butler’s question which lives are grievable and ends his blog with the question “How can we get outside of ourselves and understand “others”? “ which leaves the reader with a lot of material to think about.

Olivea’s blog talks about the poem called “The Names” by Billy Collins and how it happens that we associate certain texts with 9/11 without even knowing that the text is about this certain event. It becomes clear that most of the witnesses of 9/11 use a certain vocabulary such as the term “falling bodies“ which automatically causes us to think about it. It is also very interesting to see that not only the texts we read in our ASTU class proof this observation, Olivea talks about an article of Humans Of New York, in which a person uses exactly these terms too. Moving on to Inneke’s blog, she focuses on our joint lecture on Black Lives Matter and the hashtag conflict concerning #alllivesmatter. She summarizes the message of the lecture very well with the conclusion that as global citizens it is our responsibility to tolerate and respect each other, because we are all equal.

It is very exciting to see how everyone develops their own thoughts on all these different topics. Every blog is different and I really enjoy reading them and gaining some insight into my classmates’ thoughts and opinions. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do and that you have a great rest of the week. Thank you for your time and see you soon !

Peace out!

Paolina

Hey bloggers,

Its been a while since we have last blogged and in that time, so much has been going on in ASTU. For this week’s blog, there was not really one thing that everyone talked about. Blogs this week ranged from discussing our most recent joint CAP lecture about the #BlackLivesMatter movement, Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist, to a chapter of Phil Klay’s novel Redeployment.

Clara and Ryan both took a look at the joint CAP lecture and Ryan points out how in the lecture, there is a reccourring theme of identity in all of our classes. This theme of identity and the question of who do we grieve arises. Both Clara and Ryan expand on Judith Butler’s ideas and how we see people as either being with “us” or “them.” It is interesting how it is not necessarily another culture that is the problem in a multicultural place, but rather the institutionalized racism that still exists and is beyond our power.

On the other hand, Baris talks about how he did not see The Reluctant Fundamentalist as being an anti-American novel, but instead how it is about the struggle and confusion of Changez trying to adjust and fit in to a new place with a different culture. I had not really thought about the novel this way all too much before reading his blog post and because I had never really experienced something like this myself. Having been born and raised in Vancouver, I have never lived anywhere else. In fact, I have not even moved houses. When travelling to a new place for a vacation, it is not the same kind of feeling because you know that it is only for a short amount of time and and you still go home and get back into routine. The different lenses in which the book can be interpreted through makes it all the more interesting and allows for you to really see what others think.

This week Martin discusses Phil Klay’s Redeployment and how even when soldiers return home from war, a part of them is still there and that coming back home is a battle within itself. He mentions how once the soldiers are back home, they have difficulty adjusting back to normal life because they have been trained to always be cautious and attentive of everything in their surroundings. Many soldiers like Sgt. Price are then confused as to what is home. When at home, they want to go back to the battle field and when on the battle field, they are wishing that they were at home. This makes it difficult when trying to adjust which raises the question that Therese asks how should we act when they get back? Do we thank them for what they have done or do we ask them about the war? This battle that soldiers face when they come home is much more than them. It has an impact on everyone, especially those who they are close to and are trying to welcome them home.

This weeks blogs have all been very diverse and interesting. I look forward to reading everyone’s last blogs soon, but until then, good luck to everyone with their upcoming assignments!

– Elizabeth

Hi ASTU class!

I hope all of you are having a good time during reading break <3. The blogs during this week focused from lyric poetry to language poetry…from Collins to Spahr…from September 1, 1939 to September 11,2001. Since I am one of the class bloggers this week I will try my best to mention the main themes…Let’s do this!

First I would like to start with “September 1, 1939” by W.H. Auden. Therese begins with an interesting point of view about how this poem relates to Saal’s trauma transfer because “is seeing your own suffering from someone else’s perspective.” I found really fascinating how she mentions that people’s traumas are connected. For example, WWII and 9/11 victims probably experienced similar type of emotions because of the traumatic events they had to passed through. This is a reason to why people should consider all types of victims, as she mentions “‘habit-forming pain, mismanagement and grief’.” On the other hand,Gabriel’s post mentions how this poem can be adapted and interpreted in different ways. He also points out how “the last line of the eighth stanza was changed from: We must love one another and die” to “We must love one another or die.” Hint: If you are thinking about a future comment you might want to consider the question he wrote at the end of his blog.

Other poems that came out while I was reading the blogs were “The Names” by Billy Collins and ““Photograph from September 11” by Wislawa Szymborska. Even though both were written after 9/11, they represent it in a different way, as Alex’s post says “Szymborska can be seen as writing in the moment where as Collins’ poem can be seen as a reflection.” When I read the word “reflection” it made me think about Kate’s blog since she mentions how for her “The Names” made her think about the 9/11 memorial and the engraved names on it. Olivea also mentions how “there is certain imagery that we have just learned to associate with 9/11.” For example, from a post by Humans of New York the idea of “bodies falling outside” made her associate this event with 9/11. Going back to Kate’s blog, she brings an interesting point regarding “Photograph from September 11” which is how the author manages to bring a little piece of hope as seen in the lines “There’s enough time” and “They’re still within the air’s reach.”

Even though we focused on different lyric poems, an important piece we were discussing the past weeks is This Connection of Everyone with Lungs by Juliana Spahr. Clara discusses how there are links that bind humans no matter what and how the role of a global citizen is to recreate these connections to be able to understand our differences in this globalized world. On the other hand, Jackson presents to us the question: “Is it the contributions made upon world peace represent the spirit of a “Global Citizen?” Even though they connected the poetry with the theme of global citizen, others decided to take a look at the symbol of “bed” on Spahr’s poetry. For Isaiah it is seen as an equalizer and he mentions “What follows our wake up is what distinguishes us.” Seen from a different perspective, Erin thinks “the change that needs to be brought about is less ignorance regarding what is happening outside of our own comfortable countries.” In this setting she relates “bed”  with the idea of comfortable.

After taking a look at the different poems during ASTU class we were able to learn the difference between lyric and language poetry as seen on Sandra’s post. I find it interesting how Inneke mentions similarities between song lyrics and lyric poetry. Maybe you would like to discuss more on “Can you call a song writer a poet then?”

Thank you for your time and see you next week!
Maria Jose Zegarra