The last lesson was one of the most fun ones. I am generally involved in arts and have taken visual art courses before so it was a great opportunity to combine this passion with storytelling. Even though I have experience in different media, the different forms stories can be told really surprised me and allowed me to rethink potential ways I would like to communicate my stories. During the lesson, I created the outline of a story I would like to communicate. That was the birth of my younger brother when I was 12 years old! I thought of creating a timeline of significant periods of time in his life as a way of communicating my gratitude towards him. Overall, I loved the creative process of creating our own story and hearing ideas from my classmates.
Author: Angelos Charalampos Bouras Page 2 of 3
I really enjoy reading comics in general especially the one of Persepolis. I really like the way the author introduces ideas that can be approached by any audience from teenagers to old people. Their language is simplistic, yet powerful, the black-and-white use of colors highlights the contrast and creates a dynamic image throughout the whole book. I find the language really strong and emotional because it is simplistic and innocent and that’s what a reader is expecting from a 10-year-old girl to write. However, within this simplicity really powerful and complex ideas like War religion identity and innocence are conveyed throughout the first four chapters there is a combination of a first and third person which is a really nice balance between giving context and informing the reader to have a better understanding but then use of the first person to give different inside from every Iranian family and specifically from a 10-year-old girl that is experiencing everything in Iran overall it is a really unique and powerful way of communicating ideas that I would like to see being used in more media.
After talking about the importance of scheduling an advising meeting and talking about the logistics of the next semester, we started conversations regarding the trip we had on Thursday. Then we took some time to read each others’ prep notes and analyzed the writings on the exhibits. According to eugenics’ beliefs, the white race was considered supreme leading to severe discrimination against the black race or other minorities. An interesting notice was rewriting Africa with different characters a microaggression that connects even to modern societies within Richmond. Looking forward to making change, the memorial is a symbol incentivizing locals and or even people who drive by to know about Richmond’s Unhealed history. More specifically, the planting of new trees next to the memorials is a way of reclaiming history and giving hope for change and healing. Except for these, we analyzed how the concept of slavery is approached in Texas and other states, where many topics are avoided or perceived through really superficially not trying to face reality and acknowledge history. That brings us to the general conclusion regarding storytelling; the ways many stories are being not heard or not even spoken even though they carry significance. An example of that would be the location of the tavern being next to the place where slaves would be tortured highlighting the views of white superiority. How were kids grown up in such an environment and what are the effects of such an abusive environment on the next generations? We continued analyzing eugenics by pointing out examples of measuring scalps or analyzing food consumption statistics to prove the superiority and inferiority of races based on pseudoscientific beliefs and false claims.
In the final part of the class, we went through the assignment of the mid-term portfolio, emphasizing the purpose of the assignment and the way students should approach it by analyzing the rubric.
Unfortunately, I was not able to join the classroom on Thursday due to my sickness even though it was a trip I was really looking forward to. Nevertheless, I am fortunate to read everyone’s notes, especially Anna’s and Nickolas’ Class Notes, which helped me understand the context of the other notes and a really insightful outline of the excursion.
Regarding the assignment, I was wondering about the format and structure of the essays; How long are you expecting the essays to be and what structure should we follow both within paragraphs and in the essay overall?
Could we have any examples of what learning moments or quotes are? Are the learning moments a realization or a learning curve over the semester? Could we talk more about the evidence you are expecting us to use in the classroom? Are there any previous learning portfolios we could read?
Finally, I read the essay rubric and it seems that it adds up to 9 points and not 10.
Overall, I really enjoyed my research process, even though it was short, it was really rewarding going through all the steps of annotated week biography and learning about all the different ways and styles that exist. Something definitely useful in academia. I realize that if the research that someone has done is effective, and if we spend more time researching putting the pieces together, and writing or evaluating the sources and coming to a conclusion, is much easier and faster, and that’s when I realize the importance of researching deeply effectively and with quality. Even though my question was generally from abroad and three sources were limited still, I was able to answer them to a big extent my question. Seems the sources that I used were both informative and insightful and really niche to the topic that I was researching. That is the extent to which segregation of white and black races has led to segregation in the education field up to today.
Unfortunately, I was not able to find the book that I wanted to read called Colour of their skin and therefore I found a different source that was an online article. It was still covering the same topic and I wanted to research more to ask my question regarding the extent to which the segregation of races in Virginia affects the educational system, the session that we had with the librarian was extremely helpful. I had previous experience in research but not to that Deb, especially for an annotated bibliography. Therefore I used the information provided and found other two resources that would help me answer my exploring question. The first one is a peer-reviewed journal, while the other man is not using all the information I had, and the article or under the instructions for the assignment, I tried to make a summary and a reflection of the first resource from the book and I applied the same methodology to the other two sources. Overall, through the steps until now I didn’t just explore more in-depth my questions, but it was also a really useful process really significant in the academic world.
Through reading chapters 7 and 8, I gained a better understanding of how segregation started and how it is still dominant in the US specifically in Virginia. Even after the revolution of the black population of Richmond, many of the policies that were taken were based on discrimination to support the economic system of exploitation. Even if the policies that were taken were considered to liberate people context is really important to be given and reality is really different than theory. Examples of this are how black kids would have access to education, theoretically, but funding that was given to an average white kid was four times more in comparison to the funding for a black kid. Moreover, black people would have access to work and to land, but since white people were always more privileged, they would be the ones that would be the owners of the land and of the companies, and therefore they would always favor, other white people. When their land, their home, their family, their education, their freedom, and their identities in general are challenged, and almost taken, there is no sense of speaking about decolonization and resegregation. Even connecting it to the current status of the US and specifically Virginia, history affects majorly the path society takes and even though constitutionally black people may have the same rights it can be even measured or just seen by any citizen that forms of segregation are still dominant in Richmond.
A great historian is supposed to be objective and not include personal elements in their writing. That is why a lot of people argue that Herodotus should not be considered the first historian. However to what extent can a person produce any type of written work without including personal elements? In fact, even the act of being able to “write about history” and be considered a historian comes from a place of privilege and therefore contains personal characteristics. This idea can also be applied to Richmond’s Unhealed History. Before starting to read the book, I read about the author’s background and not surprisingly he is a white, heterosexual, Christian, American man. Up to an extent that information stayed with me and changed the way I received knowledge while reading the book taking into account that the book could be written basically from an oppressor’s point of view. However, as I started reading I was leading more and more close to the conclusion that personal characteristics do not entirely define a person’s intention and their ability to separate themselves from the truth. By that I mean, that the author until chapter 6 is doing a great job of rediscovering the history of Richmond, using multiple trust-worth resources, and offering insightful perspectives that sometimes are intervented with facts by themselves and sometimes I do not entirely align with some of the way his thoughts are expressed, but overall I can say with confidence that he is using narrative in an effective way to communicate historical knowledge and share his interpretation separately. The combination of micro-elements like the 03use of the third person, the inclusion of different trustable resources, diagrams, figures, charts, direct and indirect quotations, the separation of comments, and the rest of the text, all contribute to the creation of a macro-narration that I consider successful of generating and communicating historical knowledge.
I made a lot of realizations after finishing the first two chapters of Richmond’s unhealed history. It still is prominently, white, Christian, and patriarchic, and that originates from the history of the town. The colonial history cannot be erased and determines to a big extent, the nature of the area. The fact that this land was taken from the indigenous communities and the current white-dominant civilization is built on that land is shocking. Our university, the houses, and the whole town have as foundations the blood of native communities that were genocide and still are not even heard in the modern world. I found it almost offensive in the book how it was mentioned that both colonial powers and indigenous peoples harmed each other and how they were responsible for the death of both sides. That equates the forceful and violent takeover of their home to the only defending mechanism that indigenous peoples had and that is at the minimum disrespectful. Overall painful and uncomfortable continuing to read the book but rewarding!
After the interview, I spent some time reflecting and these are some of the main takeaways:
- I am extremely privileged
- No matter how hard it is to be vulnerable, it is totally ok to
- Share your experiences with your peers, both of parties get rewarded
- The book is a serious demonstration of their lives, not function
In preparation for the next class, I did the following steps:
- I listed all the interesting quotes from Naji’s story
- I connected them by theme
- I analysed them and gave them meaning
- Starting writing paragraphs and raising bigger ideas