I have to say that as I looked over everyone else’s blogs, my first reaction was jealousy. Everyone offered thoughtful and offbeat responses that really made me think. They take what we’ve learned in class and explored them in the real world. I can only hope that I’ve done this in my own posts...
Let me call out a few posts that really summed up what the semester has meant to me:
I enjoyed Sarah’s course wrap up, and not only because I agreed with much of what she said. It is hard, regardless of being a communications major or not, to keep up on the different world’s perspectives of what is going on. Having said that, I, and I think Sarah would agree with me, am indebted to having this course teach me again that my world is not only my own. This sounds so simple, but it really resonates with me. As I have said in previous posts, I am now reading Al Jazeera’s English site as one of my news sources on a regular basis. It reaches a broader scope of international news that I wish the New York Times reported on. For instance, I read all about the Ghanaian elections on Al Jazeera, while I had to search the Times for an article that was run by Reuters. I guess I have a personal interest after studying in Accra and having many Ghanaian friends calling me during voting because they know how excited I am about elections in general. (Mind you, these were the same people who were up at four in the morning just for news that Obama had been elected, so they clearly also take an interest in politics.) I appreciate the new news source. When I lived in Paris I got used to reading the International Herald Tribune diligently and it became my source for English news. It makes me happy to have a third paper to add to my repertoire of reading in the morning over, as Dariwish said perfectly, a virgin cup of coffee.
Another blog that struck me was Jen’s. She wrote that she felt apprehensive about sharing her thoughts in class, and I relate to that more than I wish to admit. Helga came up during a group exercise that we were doing after we read “Arab in America” and called me quiet. I came home to my apartment and was so perplexed by the comment that I shared it with my roommates. This was awhile ago, but I remember them laughing and saying that they could never imagine me being quiet. I appreciate that a classroom setting is a bit intimidating, but I thought our class was quite open and I tried to express my opinions. My view of the world is different than I imagine most Americans to be, and maybe this has made me bashful in my expression of what is happening. For example, when I called an Egyptian friend to ask him what he thought of Ramadan TV, he said that is was an improvement of what his parents were used to, but that it was basically bullshit compared to what we watch in the US. He has lived in the States for some time, but I think I was expecting him to praise the way that TV brings his family together. Corny, but I guess I really have absorbed those readings from class. I know that individuals exist across the globe, as do individual experiences, but I can’t shake the feeling that I get from my Arab friends that a lot of their shows they watch when they’re with their families at home are copycats of “western” shows. To be honest, I wouldn’t point fingers and say this, but when they do it’s hard to ignore it.
Jen, I’m sorry to pick on you, but this quote is priceless: “America does have great qualities and principles what gets me is when we try and enforce what works for us on to everyone else.” Americans’ condescending attitude is something that haunts me every time that I am abroad or read about America’s diplomatic strategies. The issues that come with globalization and modernity haunt me to a certain extent. I love that I can sit in my apartment in New York and listen to music that was produced thousands of miles away, but I’m not sure where this leaves stereotypes or even the question of the Clash. I guess these hybridization questions are unanswerable, as much as we’ve tried to address them and look at them closely. Sometimes I wish that I could have a clear black and white answer, but that wouldn’t be life, right? My hope is that many of these questions become moot in my lifetime because people will be so over stereotypes and pitting themselves against “the other” to discover themselves. I guess only time will tell.