paolina buck | ASTU 100A Class Blog G04 (2015-2016)

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

Hello and “Guten Tag” my dear readers,

welcome to the ASTU 100 Course Page.

Here you can find the links to all the blogs of my dear course fellows, information about our literature course, the Global Citizen‘ stream and the general course blog.

My name is Paolina and I have the honor to write one of the first class blogs for you.

Let me give you a quick review of what we have done the first few weeks of this semester:

Parallel to the book “Academic Writing: an Introduction” by Janet Giltrow, Richard Gooding, Daniel Burgoyne and Marlene Sawatsky we read the article “The Role of Interpretative Communities in Remembering and Learning” by Farhat Shahzad .

While “Academic Writing: an Introduction“ is supposed to prepare us students for the big, new world of academic writing, the article is dealing with the topic of remembering and learning.

Based on a study about how Canadian students remember the War of Terror, Shahzad wants to raise awareness for the fact that interpretative communities play a big part in how we remember and learn about events and how they influence “the consumption and negotiation of knowledge inside and outside the classrooms” (Shahzad, Abstract), with the intention of helping teachers to improve their teaching strategies though the knowledge they gained though the article, but also making the reader of the article reflecting their own experiences and situations critically.

Reading though the blogs, I was wondering about the connection between the book and the article.

Olivea picked the topic of citation, mentioned in “Academic Writing: an Introduction”.

Through her personal experience described in her blog and following critical reflection on the meaning of citation, it gets clear that citation is “a way of creating a discussion around her argument” (Olivea) though “orchestrating voices“, as it’s called in the book (Academic Writing: an Introduction).

If you continue through the blogposts, Therese talks about

“…what happens if your communities have the same worldview?“ and

“How do we get pass their ideas?“

exemplifying these questions through her own personal childhood experiences in a religious family.

“My point is that the ideas forced on us or given to us by our communities aren’t always correct.“ (Therese)

For me personally, this is a very strong statement, which takes a lot of courage.

Acknowledging, that the social norms and world views you are given by your environment or “interpretative community“ are most of the time biased and not rational, is not an easy process.

But here I found the connection to Oliveas Blog and “Academic Writing: an Introduction“ .

Therese continues her thought and ends her blog with the conclusion that one has to seek information and knowledge and educate himself/herself in order to widen their horizon.

She and Olivea basically talk about creating a discussion (through critical thinking in different life situations or citation in an academic article), looking at different points of view and not being satisfied by one simple answer.

One shouldn’t be afraid of what they don’t know… yet.

Through a broader knowledge and exploring different points of view the bigger picture becomes much clearer.

(And by the way Therese also builds a connection to another part of the CAP stream: Sociology! So read her blog!)

But there are so many different aspects of interpretative communities, right?

It is a very complex topic, for example regarding the question of degree of authority (check out Sandras Blog!) of the communities and can interpretative communities change through for example a change of location.

Baris demonstrates this with his own experience of moving to Canada‚ away from his „old“ into a „new“ and unknown interpretative community.

Or, going back to the role of teachers as an interpretative community, Grace brings up the question, if the government “should shoulder more responsibility“ (Grace) because of it’s big influence on the media and the flow of information.

Which brings me to Melissas Blog. It continues the thought of mass media manipulation though not only the government or companies but though individuals taking advantage of the simple access to, for example websites like wikipedia.

It is a frequently used website, on which a lot of people rely (I wouldn’t recommend that…) and which isn’t really strict about protecting and controlling the content of their websites…

So the media is a great resource of knowledge, as Melissa says, because we are able to learn about events all over the globe without leaving the house, but it also has to be constantly questioned and enjoyed with caution.

But can we measure the influence of an interpretative community?

Mel, referring to Shahzad and the collected data, comes to the conclusion:

The stronger the emotional connection to the community the bigger the influence .

“one’s obviously going to be more convinced with the opinion of a close friend than someone they just met off tinder.“ (Mel)

So we are back to family/friends as a interpretative community, which closes the circle and brings this Class Blog almost to its end.

Almost.

I want to end it with one blog, written by Joseph, with which I could personally really relate with because that topic kind of haunted me, too, over the last weeks.

It deals with the general but really though question:

“Why learn?“ (Joseph)

and is a great reminder, that often the journey is the destination (I won’t tell you anymore, read it!).

I hoped you got a basic overview of what we are doing in our ASTU100 class and enjoyed the first blog of my life. Have a nice day. : )

See you soon!

Paolina

Sources:

Magda:http://blogs.ubc.ca/magda2370/

Olivea:http://blogs.ubc.ca/oliveabellastu/

Sandra: http://blogs.ubc.ca/notquitethereyet/

Baris: http://blogs.ubc.ca/astu100barisuzel/

Grace: http://blogs.ubc.ca/gracelong/