Curt Mills 10

10. Address your journey in 332.
Did you change? What did you
discover about yourself? Your
community? What will you do with
what you learned?

332 has been a wonderful journey for me, and I am glad to have taken part of this community.  I came into the class open, but slightly skeptical of the course.  I thought it might be a waster of my time.  I was wrong.  When I look back at W&M, I will remember this course very much, as much as any.

Yes, I did change.  I think I come out of this course more open to others, and with a larger sense and appreciation of a wider diversity of viewpoints and experiences.  I am glad about this.

I discovered about myself that I am far more interested and enjoy drama than I thought.  I starred in my elementary school play, but I hadn't done much in this realm since, really since middle.  I loved being forced to read scripts of plays.  That rekindled that out old spirit and passion in this arena.

I learned a lot about the vast variety of great people who go to the College, a lesson worth learning as a I prepare to graduate soon.  I will take all of these experiences and lessons, and the deep humility and appreciation I learned here in this class as well with me as move forward with my life, out of college, and into my field of work.  I cannot wait, and am grateful to the opportunities this course has given me!

Curt

Curt Mills 9

What is private and public in the
community? What is the place of
nation in your personal life?

The lines between private and public, especially in the community, are very much blurred.  And when the teachings and role of nation in one's personal life go away is also uncertain.  I believe these questions are highly personal questions.  For me, I am comfortable having a lot of public scrutiny into my life, something I have had to deal with very much at a pretty young age this year a student president here at W&M.  However, I would say that at times this type of scrutiny has been deeply painful and difficult, and I think there should be definite limits into looking into people's lives and violating space.  Privacy, if it is not a right, should be one.  A common decency should be established between all in a community.  I believe that it is vital and essential for trust, which the most important underpinning of community success.  

Someone whose work I think shine a lot of light on these issues is Richard Rorty, a thinker not talked about much in this class but I think important nonetheless.  

Rorty says: "What Heidegger called the hope for authenticity—the hope to be one’s own person rather than merely the creation of one’s education or one’s environment. As Heidegger emphasized, to achieve authenticity in this sense is not necessarily to reject one’s past. It may instead be a matter of reinterpreting that past so as to make it more suitable for one’s own purposes. What matters is to have seen one or more alternatives to the purposes that most people take for granted, and to have chosen among these alternatives--thereby, in some measure, creating yourself. As Harold Bloom has recently reminded us, the point of reading a great many books is to become aware of a great number of alternative purposes, and the point of that is to become an autonomous self."

Here Rorty talks about this issue raised to make another point I think.   The interaction between public and private and coming to peace with what you position is on that is essential  in the process of becoming fully self actualized.  

Curt Mills 8

Return to your first article earlier
in the term and respond to it. Where
do you and your community fit in all
we have learned so far? Propose a
project you feel is vital into the
positive imagination of this
community.

In the first post, I talked about nations like my classmates.  I closed saying, "What of nations now?  What does it still mean in modernity?  Writers like the late Christopher Hitchens still pick up the project today.  For instance, he advocated forcefully for the Kurdish people to be their own nation state.  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, what does it mean to be in a nation as an American?  Is America a nation at this point?  We are “a nation of immigrants” is the old adage, muddying the traditional interpretation of the word, and making it still unclear what it means to be in a nation as an American."

I would say I agree with what I wrote about all this mostly still, but would amend it now a bit saying I have a broader, less geopolitically centric interpretation of a nation.  A nation can be anything, or anyone really it seems.

My community fits fine into what we have learned thus far.  I feel this course has been more than open to my input and thought processes.  I have been happy with my ability to contribute and add to the dialogue of the class.  Anyone can be part of a community.  The community we have formed in Sex and Race is entirely arbitrary.  First, we all had to elect to attend or work at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.  Second, we had to be in interested in the coursework and / or need the GER 6.  Anyway you shake it, we come here from very diverse backgrounds and with different motives and goals for the class.  Yet, we are seemingly very cohesive and loving of one another.   

If I had to propose one project for the class, it would be actually a rather cliche exercise.  Every student should write down their expectations for the class, and see how surprised they were by them at the end of the semester upon looking at them again.

Curt Mills Blog 7

In reference to ch7, what is
American Nationalism? Within its
geography, what does it expect of its
citizens? Globally, how does it
contextualize the rest of the world?

As has been mentioned, Anderson defines the nation as an “imagined political community that is imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.”  This extends of course to the discussion of nationalism.  American nationalism is of course a very broad, wide ranging topic.  

Many news sources have reported and speculated that American nationalism, and the violent, extremist variant has actually been on the rise in recent years.  The rise has been speculated for a number of fronts.  I agree with some of those speculations.  Post 9/11, there is little question America is a changed land.  Further, the downturn in the economy makes many blame those in far away lands.  Need budget cuts?  Cut foreign aid, even though that accounts to a minuscule fraction of the federal budget.  Finally, globalization has also likely stoked some paranoia.  1992 and 1996 US Presidential candidate Ross Perot famously warned of the terrifying, dire consequences that would occur if the US signed onto NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement.  "The phrase, coined during the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign, referred to the sound of U.S. jobs heading south for Mexico should the proposed free-trade agreement go into effect." (Wiki)

NPR profiled US nationalism's recent spike as well.  "Picture this: An alternate-reality, suspended-in-space American metropolis where steampunk contraptions — like propeller-driven dirigibles, squeaky trolley wires and clunky robotic creatures — operate against a backdrop of clanging liberty bells; red, white and blue powder kegs; and jingoistic posters warning: "Patriots! Arm Thyself Against the Foreigners and Anarchists!" OK. So you can't quite picture it. No sweat. It's the surrealistic setting of Bioshock: Infinite, a video game."  NPR uses the video game story to profile further the rise of nationalism.  

The crux of the feeling of course that America was great, but has somehow now lost its way.  Foreigners, and outside forces, are largely to blame.  

Curt Mills Blog 6

6. Discuss a current case of “an
anticipatory strategy adopted by
dominant groups which are
threatened with marginalization or
exclusion from an emerging
nationally-imagined community.

The most poignant case of the above described is the current case of the United Kingdom, a microcosm and example case of the broader problem in Europe.  Faced with a staggering Euro crisis, and economic downturn, immigration fears and concerns over foreigners have absolutely soared.   German chancellor Angela Merkel in 2010 famously declared that multiculturalism had "utterly failed."  She was joined by British PM David Cameron and then French President Nicolas Sarkozy.  Muslim communities and immigrants are routinely discriminated against in Europe. Further, much of the anti immigrant further is to prevent further immigration.  Thoughts like, if we have this many Muslims now, what would it possibly be like if we had even more?  These are the thoughts that can permeate the European psyche.  Anti immigrant parties are currently enjoying a huge, relative spike in the European polls.  The British UKIP, United Kingdom Independence Party, is perhaps the most prominent example.  UKIP is spiking in current British polls and is expected to excel in the next elections.  Another example, and much more disturbing, is the Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party which did quite well in the last election.  Sadly, more than five percent of the vote.

Curt Mills Blog 5

“Who killed Vincent Chin” and “Black Girl” are the movies viewed pertaining intensely to women and women's issues.  La Noire De as well.  Black Girl I think stood out most prominently for me.

French decolonization following World War II has always seemed to me the most interesting of all the stories of decolonization of the European powers following the second great war.  France parted painfully with its colonies.  Vietnam, Algiers, Senegal.  This list goes on and on.  The Battle for Algiers perhaps being the iconic film about this, as well as the iconic film on insurgent terrorism, at least in the mid 20th century. 

Black Girl takes a slightly different tact, delivering a message on colonialism through looking at the impact of it on something as simple as day to day life and domestic tasks.  Black girl addresses sex, but it also addresses race.  I think the film is extremely haunting and made a large impression on me.  Perhaps the greatest point it made to me is showing that there exist a number of cliches and stereotypes and cliches around sex discrimination.  The french wife and mother in this film is a far greater oppressor, or at least far, far more avert, than any male oppressor.  The husband does not seem as brutal, but is blindly aloof to the hostility and environment within his own home.  Still, Black Girl makes sure to paint the correct picture that sex discrimination is not as simple as male on female.    

Grace O'Donnell Blog 10

One very important thing I learned from taking this class is that it takes me about 40 minutes to walk from my apartment to PBK. For most of you this would be a 20 minute walk, but my legs are very short and I'm very slow. I was always late because every morning I'd convince myself that it wouldn't actually take me 40 minutes to walk to class, but it invariably would. In all seriousness, I learned a lot more from this class than that. Normally, I'm slow to make decisions about things. I like to take all angles into account, and sometimes that makes it hard to reach definite conclusions. In this class, I came to conclusions about things. We'd watch a movie in class and I'd leave, still wanting to finish the discussion we'd started in class. For instance, I wish we'd had more time to talk about Billionaire. The class was debating if Larry Hillblom had committed a crime in sleeping with those young girls, and if maybe they were lucky he had. I just thought this was crazy. Those girls clearly didn't have a choice when it came to Hillblom, and I was able to definitively come to that conclusion. On that note, another thing this class really emphasized was choice. As a community, we often had the choice of what we wanted to do. That's not something we're used to. As we struggle to come up with final presentations without strict guidelines, we're all confronting choice. And as we leave school and have more freedom in our lives, I think that's going to be one of the most important lessons we got from THEA332.

Curt Mills Sitiyana Blog Post

I had the distinction of seeing Ptofessor Aguas's play Sitiyana a few weeks back.  I really didn't know what I was walking in.  I regretfully admit and disclose that I have not ever seen a play here at William and Mary (nor did I ever see one at my high school).  I used to rather like drama, starring in an elementary school play, but have since rather dropped in, supplemented by the usual deluge of movies and an occasional mainstream play-- Broadway in NYC of course and Ford's Theater and Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

So, both because of my lack of experience with W&M theater and lack of recent experience with theater in general, I wasn't really sure what I was walking into.  I also wasn't that familiar with the play, other than what I had heard and what I believe Aguas outlined in class.

I was very excited and surprised by it for a number of reasons.  I was very unfamiliar with Korean, but had wanted to get to see media where it was featured more.  I recently saw the Korean movie from last decade A Bittersweet Life and loved it.  That the only language was Korean, and the rest was in the art was not that much of a deterrent for my enjoyment of the play.

Superficially though, I also greatly enjoyed seeing Professor Aguas on stage, as well as his kids, and some of my classmates!  Great evening.  

Curt Mills My Name Is Khan Blog / Livepost

"Parallel experiences" is a term I have started to use for a psychological or historical feeling that I have no real name for.  What I mean by this may be a bit jumbled and in my own head, but I will explain to the best of my ability.  Everyone in a sense has been in two places -- where they are now, and where they have been.   Everyone has a sense of where they have been stored in their memory.  This sense is a collection of places, feelings, people, sensations, and themes that help give whatever time that is (for me 20 plus years) meaning and structure.  However, every once in a while, an experience or new fact learned enters and challenges your perception of the events of that have passed, and it can at times be a rather rattling experience.  A central question that often occurs to me in situations like this is, how would have my sense of this time been different if I had been older, or with a different, more sophisticated worldview?

The movie My Name Is Khan in the student-taught unit challenged my perception in this manner.  For me the time of September 11, 2001 was a terrifying, yet perhaps euphoric time.  I was 11 years old, and in the fifth grade during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  I had never heard of Osama Bin Laden, and I have to confess I had never heard of the Twin Towers, having not been from and never been to NYC and being 11 and those are the kind of knowledge gaps one has at that age.  I did live in the Washington, D.C. area however, and so knew people's families in the Pentagons, and could see the smoke from the fireball that had become the world's largest office building.  Following that time, however, I saw my country like never before.  American flags everywhere, and patriotism abounded like I had never seen before.  I was very, very proud even at my young age to be from this country.  Neighbor (or at least my neighbors, granted I knew and knew of few Muslim families) embraced neighbor.

Today, those feelings and that sense still very much remains, but it has been tarnished a bit by the knowledge I have accrued over the years about the horrible, awful, anti-American Muslim discrimination following the attacks.  My Name Is Khan showed it in gripping, visceral fashion.    Now this knowledge has been infused into my mind, and makes me look back at that time differently, and makes me look at that time in the fashion I described. If I had been 21, instead of 11, how would I have felt about the time I was in?  How about if I was 31?  How about if I Muslim?  Though it may seem elementary, the full scope of there are literally infinite ways to experience any situation is just now fully occurring to me.

Grace O'Donnell Blog 9 Public v. Private

Sometimes in this class, it felt like nothing was private. We were  often asked to reveal ourselves in ways other classes with other instructors never would have asked us to do. Directly asking us to identify our race in the first week seemed prying then, but now it seems completely normal for our community. There is an openness to 222 that doesn't exist in other places. However, thinking about it now, I wonder if what actually happened is that our class went from being a public institution of the school to being something private meant for only us. The public sphere is a place where nothing is intimate, things are on display, and people are often putting on acts. The private sphere is what is real.

When I think about the nation and public v. private, the first thing I think of are terrorist attacks. Why terrorism is so scary is that it's an attack on what is private. Families are destroyed when people doing normal things like going to work or running in a marathon are attacked. Fear becomes ubiquitous, a constant element of the public and private parts of life.War is a public act, and a soldier is a public representation of the nation. Of course ordinary citizens are members of a nation, and the nation influences their lives. However, they are not formal representations of the nation in everything they do. Some things are private in people's lives, like family and home, and these things are what are targeted by terrorism.

Jillian Turner Blog #10: What is my name?

As I look back on the semester I am truly impressed by the cultivation of our community. Although I am only a freshman, I never imagined that I could get so close with my classmates, many of whom I probably never would have otherwise crossed paths with. I enjoyed learning from each others as much as I learned from the films we watched. I will admit, few films in particular stole my heart!

I am very glad we finished the semester on My Name is Khan. This film in particular addressed something that we had not yet discussed: mental disabilities. I was struck by Khan's character and his relationships with his family members. His younger brother seemed jealous of the attention Khan received from their mother and tried to distance them as much as possible. I also thought it was interesting that he disowned Khan for marrying his wife based on her religion.

I remember where I was on 9/11 as I'm sure many people do. As a second grader, I didn't grasp the gravity of the situation nor was I aware of the aftermath. I couldn't help but be frustrated with our country while watching My Name is Khan. I knew that Middle Eastern people were targeted as possible "terrorists"after the attacks of 9/11 but I had no idea how extensive the affects were.

The film sparked my thinking about how different this country would be if 9/11 had never happened. Would people still be strip-searched by TSA? Would we have never searched for "weapons of mass destruction?" My liberal self believes we would live in a very different world than we do today.

In the recent attacks at the Boston Marathon, the first thing that people asked was if the attacks were part of a terrorist plot. We live in such a paranoid time in the United States due to 9/11. Entire ethnicities are labeled as "other" based on the actions of the few.

I recently was trolling twitter and saw a post written by a Muslim woman who said "Muslims view "Islamic" terrorists the same way Christians view the Westboro Baptist Church." http://www.gaulitics.com/2013/04/yasira-jaan-yasirajaan-viral-tweet.html

So often in America we are quick to forget and quick to generalize. Early writers such as Frederick Douglass criticized American society in American Jeremiadic tradition. Works such as "What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?" critique society but provide a sense of hope in order to spark social change and cohesion.

Today, we don't have that. American society is divided politically and often socially. It is often only after a tragedy that we see true "Americanism" in the way that people come together. What a wonder it is that it takes something so bad to bring such good to our country..

Mayssa Chehata, Blog #10: Reflections on a Semester

On the first day of class, I sat as we went over the syllabus and honestly, I was rolling my eyes and on my computer looking for another GER6 course I could switch into. I was thinking this is going to be a class about holding hands and rainbows, and as an IR and Economics major, I just don’t get those types of things. I (fortunately) was not able to find another GER to switch into, and thus the journey began.

This class was a complete 180 from what I had expected. Our discussions were amazing, and I loved the way the blogs required us to think about “higher-order” questions, but keep them grounded in the movies and the material. The book was a great guiding force and reference point for the beginning of the course, and I really liked that after we had completed the book we didn’t just drop scholarly literature but rather turned to scholarly articles that were very pertinent to the things we were discussing.

I think what had be so skeptical from the get-go was this idea of forming a community in a classroom. I’m a senior so I’ve taken my fair share of classes, and all of them have been: get there, take notes, maybe have some type of discussion which really only serves to impress the professor or earn participation, and leave. ZERO connection with other students. Again, I am an IR and Econ major so that might have to do with it. Nonetheless, I didn’t know what about this class and this group of people and this professor would be any different. And I’m so glad that it was.

We actually have formed a community. When I walk past people in this class, I say hello to them, maybe stop and chat. That is never the case in other classes. I feel like I know everyone, or at least have an idea about their thoughts, beliefs, and their way of thinking, and that’s awesome.

Having this experience has really opened me up to knowing that you don’t have to go through life blindly passing by the people who you encounter, just having them as blips on the radar of your life, and nothing more. Rather, with the smallest bit of effort, you can have all those people you encounter actually have a meaning in your life, and hopefully you have one in theirs. As I prepare to enter corporate America (bleh), I think this is a really important lesson to take with me, and I feel really blessed to have been in this class and met such a great group of people and professor.

Best to Everyone. I truly hope we will meet again.

Mayssa Chehata, Blog #9: Public v Private

I think that while there can be a vast difference between the public and the private, in today’s world, the two are becoming more and more converged. While this can, in some cases, facilitate nation and community building, it can also lead to negative outcomes. For example, we learn from Anderson about the role the printing press played in nation building and bringing people closer together. Here, we see something that used to be concealed, or somewhat private (the texts), now becoming public on a very large scale. In this case, this allowed people to feel connected with one another, share thoughts and ideas, and spread nationalism. Another example of this is the Arab Spring, in which people took their hatred of their leaders, which had previously only been private for fear of going to jail or worse, and made those thoughts public through protests and over social media. Here you see nation/community building thanks to the convergence of the private and the public.

However, there is another side to this. In today’s world, things that used to be private, such as a diary or personal photographs, can now easily be sharedn with millions of people with the click of a button. Again, this can play a role facilitating nation building, as it can let you connect and feel closer to your community or your nation, however sometimes the things that are moving from the private to the public space can lead to trouble for the owner of those materials. For example, we’ve seen many news stories recently of photos of rape incidents being leaked online, and leading to life-changing detrimental outcomes for both the victim and the perpetrator(s). While this is good because it can lead to justice for those who committed the crime, it can also lead to very negative emotional outcomes for those innocent people who have had something very private now made extremely public.

Another instance where we see this effect is when people share their views (taking them from private to public) and can get in a lot of trouble. This makes me think of a recent new story of two teenage girls who posted an extremely racist rant on youtube, and faced a lot of backlash, including death threats, because of it. We also see this with people being scrutinized because of thing posted on their social media pages, possibly losing out on a job or an acceptance to a university because of it. But the truth behind that is that there are probably other candidates who do the same things (whether it be party, use foul language, etc.) but they simply kept it in the private rather than sharing it with the public.

So where is the halfway line? It is good to share things because we want to be part of communities and nations, and also sharing can help open one’s soul and mind. However, clearly there can be negative consequences of putting things into the public sphere, and once they are they, they can never be taken back. So how much do we share, and how much do we keep private? Today, unlike in the past, there is literally no limit on how much of yourself you can share, but how much you will share is certainly puzzling.

John Muller Sitayana Blog

Sitayana was an awesome experience for me. Not only did I love the play but one of my best friends cap off his amazing year with his performances as Hanuman. Ultimately, watching my friend Thomas on the big stage at last almost brought a tear to my eye. I remember when he first started acting and how excited he was it is so amazing to see what people are able to do when they discover their passion and I am so impressed. Furthermore, the play was excellent the choreography really stood out to me. The fight scenes particularly had me in awe and I can’t imagine how much work had to go into them. Also, the orchestra added so much to the scenes throughout the play the amount of work everyone had to put into that play is mind boggling to me.

I thought the themes of the play were great and came across very smoothly. Giving women a voice in this age old story made it all the more significant. I think it was cool to view the story from this perspective and it sent a strong message. Along with that the use of sounds rather than any dialect was more effective than I thought possible in conveying meaning. Finally, the use of symbolism really stood out at me especially when dealing with the theme of woman having a voice. I thought the use of the fans to represent having a voice or not was rather clever.

John Muller Blog 10 Sex Race and Moving Forward

My journey through 332 was very eye opening and I am very glad to have chosen this class for my GER. I have never been in a class that inspires as much thought as 332. There were certain topics that had never even crossed my mind that now I find myself thinking about often. Furthermore, the diversity in the class and the encouragement to think differently allowed for tremendous class discussions where issues were tackled from any number of angles. I think this general way of learning allowed for me to change the way I think about things and approach a problem. I certainly learned that there are so many ways of looking at issues and this class helped me open my mind and view issues from the perspective of various other diverse people.

I discovered that even though I never thought of myself as diverse being a white male that I can offer a different perspective on things based on my own experiences as well. Just because I am not part of a minority doesn’t mean I can’t relate with the stories and films that I not only watch in class but see all around me. I also learned that a community is more than just you inner group of friends and can form within a classroom. Often classes at William and Mary you can feel competitive with your classmates and it seems like survival of the fittest but the community that formed in 332 was very supportive and everyone wanted each other to succeed and everyone was open to hearing varying opinions. Moving forward I think what I have learned will help me after I graduate and in the real world. Being able to think outside of the box is a valuable skill and I think the education I received from 332 and William and Mary will help me to think critically and give me an edge over those who received a more of a “cookie cutter” education.