Suddenly, it’s April and the year is ending. It doesn’t seem like very long ago that we met for the first time in September, in the SWNG building, to start thinking about academic writing and research and personal narratives and how they connect out to larger issues that connect to “global citizenship” and beyond. I have learned so much from you as we have worked together, and I am grateful for our learning together.
For your final blog of the year, your assignment is to write a post that articulates an idea or issue that ASTU has raised and about which your thinking has changed over the year. Choose a text as a case-study to illustrate that idea (this is the usual practice of our blogs: analyze a text that illustrates high-level abstractions). This can be a text from our reading list, including the archival materials you just studied, OR an ASTU-related text of your choosing. Reflect on the significance of the idea or issue and what your changes in thinking about it suggest.
As you usually do, follow best practices of academic writing and blogs, e.g., using links & citations, reporting expressions, forecasts, abstractions, and so on. But you are welcome, also, to write from a personal position, as you reflect on your own experiences and learning.
Posts are due Saturday, April 8 at noon, and comments by Monday, April 10 at noon. Feel free to post early!
ETA: I thought you might like to check out each others’ excellent archival projects again. So here are the links to the 5 projects:
Etsuji Mori wiki
Jack Shadbolt bird sketches Tumblr
Gilean Douglas fan letter “Heritage Minute” (YT)
BC Security Commission website.
Also, while I have your eyeballs here, can i encourage you to fill out the FYP exit survey? This is the other half, essentially, of the survey you answered in September, so we are hoping to hear again from as many of the original respondents as we can. It takes less than 10 mins and you have chance to win a $25 gift certificate to the Bookstore.
Wow – last posts and comments! What a year this has been. I am impressed by the depth of thought, reflection, and analysis in the blog posts I read for this final assignment. Going through Gurveer, Natasha, Maya, and Anna’s posts, I see a clear pattern of insight into the power of self-representation in a complex hegemonic (word of the year?) society. Not only do I see a deep analysis of the work of self-representation, but I also see reflection on how our exposure to life narratives in this course has unveiled our own need to think critically about dominant scripts that society conditions us to accept. My hope is that the growth and learning that has happened this year for all of us will continue into the rest of our studies, and beyond!
It has been a pleasure learning alongside you all. Best of luck!
After reading over many classmates blogs reflecting on the year in ASTU, I noticed many people discussed how they learned a lot about BC history over the course of the year. Natasha and Karyn in their blogs both discussed how they learned significantly about Vancouver and BC through some of the life narratives we have read as a class (specifically Missing Sarah and Diamond Grill in their posts). Another common theme I also noticed in blog posts was many people talked about how ASTU was a challenging course with ups and downs but the knowledge that they learned will stick with them throughout their university career. Overall, I really enjoyed reading my classmates blogs reflecting on their year in ASTU and seeing what similar experiences I shared with them.
I really enjoyed reading and reflecting on some of the last blog posts for this year! I really liked the perspective Maya took in her blog post about the power we as readers have when reading autobiographies and becoming aware of the social situations they describe as well as the power that the narratives themselves possess. I thought that was a really insightful end of the year idea that we should keep with us going forward. I also really liked Alex Chow’s post about challenging hegemony (like Merial said din her comment it is perhaps the “word of the year”) and national memory. I was also really impressed with the quality of these two blog posts!
The posts focused on one’s reflection in this ASTU course. It was really interesting to read the blog posts as there were many similarities. I found out that many people found this course challenging, and it is a challenging course but I think we all finished the course learning way more than what was taught in the classroom. Another finding I noticed was that not everyone knew about BC’s history. Natasha and Alex O discussed similar points as to what I did: learning more about BC history and finding this course to be challenging. Overall, it has been a great experience to be a part of this class and I enjoyed reading the blogs!
One of the overlying themes I read through multiple blog posts– Andrew, Elena, Natasha’s – located the ability of life narratives of not only to provide insight into an individual’s life, but also to challenge the dominant presentations that shape how certain marginalized groups are perceived by the public. As recognized by many of my peers, reading through the various texts throughout the year has allowed us to come to the realization, and to be more aware of the different perspectives on various topics by reading through counter-narratives that provide us with an alternate side, and thus allowing us to see past the dominant perspective that society puts forth (I agree, hegemony = definitely word of the year!) It is interesting to think about how reading these texts will affect and shape how we perceive information in the future. All the best!
A common theme that I found emerged within many of the blogs was framing within autobiographies and the work that autobiography can do for marginalized groups. I found that Selena’s blog post was interesting because she discussed an issue of framing in the media that is very pertinent to the social issues involved with the Black Lives Matter movement. It made think about Time Magazine covers, and how they vary globally, depending on which continent you are in. The US tends to view a cover that discusses less serious issues (e.g.: “why anxiety is good for you”), ultimately promoting the ideal American lifestyle, while other countries view a cover that portrays important, real world matters like war and drought. Reflecting on what Selena discussed and what the Time Magazine covers, we have to be very critical of where and how we receive information to ensure that our “filter bubbles” become more permeable. This concept goes hand in hand with all the life narratives and scholarly articles that we read this year. I have learned that it is very important to pay attention to the way people and events are represented. Being more aware of whose stories are being heard and whose stories are being silenced is critical to constructing a global community.
It was wonderful getting to know all of you better and learning from you. Thanks for a great year 🙂
Merial Boschung (also posted on her blog):
I appreciate how you have connected four different texts together to talk about your over arching theme of reclaiming identity. I myself talked about this in my blog. I talked about how my perspective on my own period of disability has changed, and how I now understand more about it. I think life narratives like Ryan Knighton’s helped me understand that period of my life better. I think it also help me to better grip my journey of reclaiming my identity of being disabled.
I noticed that Anna, Maddie, and Andrew all talk about autobiographies as being useful. Particularly that they challenge hegemony and create new discussions on how marginalized groups should be represented. I think the points made about autobiography’s ability to change public discourse and perspectives is apparent in our class. Based on looking at the blogs, many people’s views have changed over the course of this year, mine included. Life narratives are much more than stories and each one has its own purpose, many to seek to destigmatize certain groups as Anna talks about. Something I have learned from this course is that it is essential to look at narratives particularly by marginalized groups because their stories a) deserve to be heard and b) encourage the reader to broaden their way of thinking.
This year has been amazing, thanks everyone for allowing me to share it with you!
After reading through these finial blog posts I realized how our interpretation and critical thinking skills towards life narratives has greatly developed through the year. Many blogs including Elena, Merial, Selena, and Andrew discussed the work in which autobiographies do to write back to the dominate framing created through hegemonic scripts which are used to discussed marginalized groups in our society. Furthermore, I found Kwezi’s blog very interesting as she showed how she took the critical thinking about representation developed in ASTU and applied them to another platform, in her case Disney movies. She raised an interesting point about how Disney movies (especially the classics we grew up on) perpetuate “cultural otherness” creating a distinct divide between the West and the culture in the movie. By raising this point it, Kwezi’s post caused me to consider how one could apply the other concepts we learnt in ASTU to disney movies. I though that Couser’s rhetoric of emancipation could also be applied to Disney movies because they almost always end happily ever after. Overall, I truly enjoyed reading the last blogs as they helped me to reflect on the year. Thank you all for a great year, best of luck!
What a year this has been! I would first like to thank all of my classmates for all the memories we have shared over the past 8 months. After reading the blogs of a few classmates (Maddie,Anna..) I was reminded that despite my personal connection to the memoirs and a/b we have discussed they all have made an impact in a particular group in our society. Additionally, their blogs spoke about how a/b have the ability to influence discussions on the different problems faced in the past and present. I feel as if this has been a common theme throughout our course as with the different autobiographies we have read such as Diamond Grill.