With our year together as members of the CAP: Global Citizens stream coming to an end, we all shared one last collective opportunity to enjoy the CAP program. This Friday we were all able to attend a peer run conference and showcase which featured presentations created by CAP students. For me, attending the showcase was a wonderful chance to enjoy some of the students and works of other CAP streams. It was interesting to see the range of different social issues taken up by various stream groups, as well as hybrid groups which contained members from numerous streams.
One presentation by the Philosophy, Political Science, and Economics stream (PPE) which really intrigued me was “Occupying Media: Public Space and Arendt”. The presenters spoke of the power social media held as a primary informant of news and culture. They also spoke to the power of voice the internet provides for certain groups. This presentation not only tied in well with our discussions from Sociology and Geography concerning social conflict and the power of physical boarders; but also our ASTU classes vigorous investigation of voice.
Another interesting presentation that stood out, was Amelia’s exploration of Vines. She did a wonderful job of investigating its deeply rooted social connections, but also of exposing possible backlash from its popularization. Our unconscious decision to empower short seven second videos into becoming powerful tools of socialization could be potentially detrimental. Vines as a form of cultural representation do not create what Carter would call an accurate “societal memory”.
As our year comes to an inevitable close and our classes begin to tie up, it’s intriguing to look back on our CAP program. In a year of social unrest (i.e. conflict in Ukraine, Turkey, and Venezuala) and major international events (Sochi) there could not have been a more interesting time to be a member of the CAP: Global Citizens stream. Rather it be discussions based in our individual classes, or those awesome free roaming collaborative discussions our stream teachers held, the Global Citizens course truly brought together many of the current issues circulating in the international community and incorporated it into our academia.