Archive for the ‘Socio’ Category
Location, Ecuador: When your first cinema experience is Avatar in 3D
Indigenous Ecuadorians watched Avatar in 3D; for some of them this was their first movie theater experience. (Image from PRI / World in Words podcast) Not intending to jump on the bandwagon of the Avatar-debating blogsphere, I have to bring up one interesting story from the global audience’s experience. Early this year there was a [...]
March 26th, 2010The vague aspirations of one neighborhood’s street signs
Five months ago, I discovered a townhouse subdivision of sorts called “the Magnolias,” when I moved to a spot nearby. In the months since I’ve lived in the area, I’ve wandered bemusedly around the neighborhood, growing more bewildered with each passing street sign. Anyone living in the United States is familiar with the “Pine Groves” [...]
January 2nd, 2010Museum studies, week 3
Journal entry, which is explained in the previous post, for week three of Museum Studies. Discusses two articles we read to prepare for class discussion– one about the Newseum in Washington, D.C., and the other about the history of history museums and historic preservation in the U.S. Both great topics. Also a blip about my [...]
September 7th, 2009Not from around here: one story of a Chinese immigrant family working in the restaurant business
A couple of months ago, I mentioned Jennifer 8. Lee’s book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, and included an excerpt about how very American it is to eat Chinese food. Chinese immigrants make up an enormous portion of the US Asian population; even so, I never really understood the [...]
June 11th, 2009An idol for the “emperors”
On the way to work this morning, I heard part of this report from NPR, about a wildly popular young writer who defines himself as “the voice of a generation.” He is a pop culture figure in China, a twenty-five-year-old who sounded a bit narcissistic to say the least. His appeal to the “little emperors”– [...]
May 28th, 2009Eating Chinese
In my Understanding Asia class (required for my Asian Studies minor, and one of the most engaging classes I’ve taken), we’ve been studying Asian-American literature for the last two weeks. We’ve been looking at several major elements: 1) what does it mean to be Asian-American, and to what extent do you remain Asian while at [...]
April 21st, 2009Things you didn’t know about Wikipedia
Lately, I’ve been learning a lot about the world’s languages and the way language and words mingle throughout cultural relations and our modern lives. It all comes out in the weekly podcast “The World in Words,” available free from the same people who do “The World” broadcast on NPR. The half-hour show is filled with [...]
April 13th, 2009Wile E. Coyote and Apollo in space: eras past and future
I’ve just read the perfect illustration of what has happened to the United States; it came from the April 6, 2009 issue of Time magazine, and it was written by novelist and radio personality Kurt Anderson. “During the ‘80s and ‘90s,” he says, “we were Wile E. Coyote racing heedlessly across the American landscape at [...]
April 3rd, 2009My bread-and-butter
Having finished the first half of the semester, I have finished writing one of the two main research papers that have been assigned to me this spring. The first was the easier one, and also the less interesting of the two. The second is the one I turn to now, to focus my attention and [...]
March 8th, 2009The Way You Learn It
I’ve been learning about the Manding people of West Africa, and about the esteem to which ancestry is held in their culture. Not only does their jamu (specific lineage) determine their relative position to other people in the community, but that very same lineage connects them to the heavens and God. The way my teacher, [...]
September 3rd, 2008