The year has finally come to an end and I am very thankful that I was given the opportunity to blog for the Arts Studies course. Three or four years from now, if I look back to my first-year, I would clearly remember writing a blogpost is something what I enjoyed (I know it sounds cheesy, but I gave some serious thought about this). The reason being that since I did not participate much in class, at least through blogging I was able to contribute my voice to the on-going discussion.

The importance of the blogging activity was something the professor wanted us to do at the beginning of the year (I remember myself not being happy about this). However, now that I realize how important it is to be consistent with keeping up with weekly topics and continuously reminding myself what we have learnt, it forces us to think  flexibly and naturally apply concepts learnt from an academic setting to the real world. We unconsciously find connections between themes/ concepts/ ideas from different courses, which will help us succeed in our later lives. In addition, reading my colleagues’ blogposts are a great learning tool as see different perspectives from multi-dimensional angles.

This blogosphere particularly worked very well in our CAP stream because we had the chance to share and hear voices of individuals whom we often don’t hear from either in class or in person. Hence, this space established a colorful tone of language and voice to share our thoughts and also re-think of what it is to be a “Global Citizen”.

As a student of the Global Citizens stream, in my future, I would still think about the three different perspectives (joint lecture): ASTU (social memory, collective memory), SOCI perspective (social inequality, institutions, structures, conflicts, symbolic interaction) and GEOG perspective (globalization, modernization) when thinking about a particular social issue.

Thank you to the professors and fellow colleagues for a wonderful CAP 2013-4 year!

We have come through a long journey, and finally completed of our first-year at university. It would have not ended better if it were not the CAP conference. It gave us the opportunity unify our knowledge that we have come across throughout this academic year and gave us the chance to reflect, connect and move on.

Evan and Mana has given their perspective on how the CAP conference on how it gave the flexibility to represent knowledge in  different approaches/ mediums such as art works, photographs, short films, and music. Some overlapping themes/ ideas were found amongst my colleagues.  “Connections”- Ashley and Emily saw a connection between their CAP courses and to the presentations in the conference. For example, Ashley was able to see a bridge between themes in her core courses as well as with other courses. Emily emphasizes the importance of concepts and scholarly knowledge taught in the Arts Studies course to which she was able to apply to the presentations from other CAP streams. They highlighted Colin Kulstad’s (our fellow Global Citizen stream colleague) presentation and related it to the four CAP stream courses.

Juliana and Niklas were intrigued by Helen Wagner’s presentation and had similar views on how concepts taught in the Arts Studies helped them to better understand the presentation. They question commodification of marginalized individuals (cover photographs of the Indigenous women) used in the front cover of the reputable, National Geographic magazine. Niklas further stresses upon concepts learnt in ASTU such as “language power”, “who is being represented by whom” and “being critical” in Wagner’s panel presentation.

Another concept that many spoke about was the act of “critical thinking. I recall that this concept was heavily emphasized by Dr. Gagnon during our first semester Political Science course. Amelia, Makoto, and Maria have applied this concept in while listening to the presentation have critically questioned their thoughts in their blogs.For instance, Amelia critically responds to Colin’s presentation on English as the dominant language by asking questions like “By disseminating English this way, are we broadening horizons or limiting modes of knowledge and understanding?” 

It was also interesting to see throughout each individuals’ blogs, vocabularies from our Arts Studies class were constantly used such as abstractions, research cite, so what… showing how much of a collective effort we have made in digesting this to our knowledge.

I want to conclude with an inspiring thought from Makoto’s “Revisiting Global Citizenship”. His definition of a global citizenship means “realizing where I stand in terms of privilege and social standing. And understanding the values I hold is not necessarily benefiting others… By comprehending your own standing in relative to others around…”. I have to agree with his humble statement of knowing oneself is crucial to make a step forward. This is something that I will value (and I hope most of you will) in the future as a student from the Global Citizen stream from the CAP stream. I honestly have learnt a lot and enjoyed from reading each blogposts from our ASTU course, a great learning tool. Thank you everyone and I wish you good luck in your next chapter of life!