What issues regarding the voyages of Captain Cook and the Polynesian reactions to them have struck you in the last two weeks? DIscuss how these issues relate or don't relate to the theme of history and knowledge.
Monday, November 26, 2012
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Blog Three: Thinking about museum displays
Hi everyone,
For this week, please take some time to write some of your own thoughts about the two museums we have visited this semester. Think about which displays were particularly informative or interesting or just striking and say why. Please try to address issues such as the overall purpose of the museum, the degree to which a museum works or doesn't work with "source communities" (i.e. the communities who are connected to those who produced the objects that the museum displays.
You might also want to look at the websites for these two museums and talk a little about the strengths and weaknesses of each website, both from a design point of view and also from a content point of view.
Things to think about: How does the museum present itself? What kind of language does it use to describe objects and/or it's own activities? Who gets highlighted in the museum's self-representations: Staff? Donors? Source Communities? Visitors? How much time and space does the museum devote to talking about where objects come from or what they were used for or their cultural significance? Are there differences in terms of the way different kinds of materials are treated?
You don't have to answer all these questions, just use the blog post to address a few of them. Responses to posts should try to extend the conversation.
cheers
Chrs
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Am I the first?
Hi Everyone! Here we go, eh!?
My name is Art Stadnik and I'm from Whitman MA. My college career spans a number of years but I'm getting there! In 1982-1983 I went to what was then the University of Lowell. I was an Environmental Science major with a concentration in fun! During that year I found out I was going to be a Dad so I dropped out, went to work, got married and had three kids. My sons are 28, 22 and 19... ya, I'm old! There great kids! The oldest is taking classes at UMB now too, we haven't actually run into each other yet, but it is kinda funny. My youngest is a sophomore at the University of Illinois and he loves it. My middle son is loving life; still unsure what he wants to do, which is fine because 22 is a great age to really enjoy life. Their Mother and I divorced in 97, and being tied to a job that gave me no fulfillment, I decided to go back to college.
In the Fall of 2001 I enrolled in two classes at Massasoit Community College: English Comp I, and US History. I was leaning towards making history my major because I've always had a passion for it and at the same time I had always loved to write and thought maybe English was an option (even though I had hated it in High School!). I did really well and a funny thing happened. I was invited into their Honors Program. That was funny to me, because knowing my past academic experience, I wasn't Honor Student material! I thought of it as a challenge that would only help me in the long run, so I signed up, and continued to do well (to my surprise). At the end of my second semester another funny thing happened. A flyer advertising an online Shakespeare class was passed out. At this point I was considering an English major over History. I knew if I wanted to pursue English, at some point or other there would be some Shakespeare along the way. Ughhh!!! I hated the idea of it! But, if I was going to narrow my major choice, why not take this class and see? I was intimidated because I knew very little, but I took the course anyways and till this day it is one of the best courses I have ever taken!
I continued with my part-time student status and graduated MCC in 2005 (with a 4.0 to boot!). I was psyched and awarded a scholarship to UMB. I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed being a student. However the challenge was very difficult (I had to take four classes minimum), balance that with the midnight shift at the Post Office and my middle son was living with me at the time. Family issues began tolling up and after three and a half semesters I had to walk away from my scholarship to tend to them. It was a sacrifice I had to make; no regrets.
Five years later with the Post Office in trouble it was time to fill my life with that positive energy of being a student again. I took three classes over the summer and I have eight more to go. I love being back and it feels like I never left. I still have a thing for history and this Summer had an article published in The Brockton Enterprise about the local history of my neighborhood. I look forward to learning more about the Mayans, Captain Cook and my classmates as well.
See ya's in the blogs!
My name is Art Stadnik and I'm from Whitman MA. My college career spans a number of years but I'm getting there! In 1982-1983 I went to what was then the University of Lowell. I was an Environmental Science major with a concentration in fun! During that year I found out I was going to be a Dad so I dropped out, went to work, got married and had three kids. My sons are 28, 22 and 19... ya, I'm old! There great kids! The oldest is taking classes at UMB now too, we haven't actually run into each other yet, but it is kinda funny. My youngest is a sophomore at the University of Illinois and he loves it. My middle son is loving life; still unsure what he wants to do, which is fine because 22 is a great age to really enjoy life. Their Mother and I divorced in 97, and being tied to a job that gave me no fulfillment, I decided to go back to college.
In the Fall of 2001 I enrolled in two classes at Massasoit Community College: English Comp I, and US History. I was leaning towards making history my major because I've always had a passion for it and at the same time I had always loved to write and thought maybe English was an option (even though I had hated it in High School!). I did really well and a funny thing happened. I was invited into their Honors Program. That was funny to me, because knowing my past academic experience, I wasn't Honor Student material! I thought of it as a challenge that would only help me in the long run, so I signed up, and continued to do well (to my surprise). At the end of my second semester another funny thing happened. A flyer advertising an online Shakespeare class was passed out. At this point I was considering an English major over History. I knew if I wanted to pursue English, at some point or other there would be some Shakespeare along the way. Ughhh!!! I hated the idea of it! But, if I was going to narrow my major choice, why not take this class and see? I was intimidated because I knew very little, but I took the course anyways and till this day it is one of the best courses I have ever taken!
I continued with my part-time student status and graduated MCC in 2005 (with a 4.0 to boot!). I was psyched and awarded a scholarship to UMB. I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed being a student. However the challenge was very difficult (I had to take four classes minimum), balance that with the midnight shift at the Post Office and my middle son was living with me at the time. Family issues began tolling up and after three and a half semesters I had to walk away from my scholarship to tend to them. It was a sacrifice I had to make; no regrets.
Five years later with the Post Office in trouble it was time to fill my life with that positive energy of being a student again. I took three classes over the summer and I have eight more to go. I love being back and it feels like I never left. I still have a thing for history and this Summer had an article published in The Brockton Enterprise about the local history of my neighborhood. I look forward to learning more about the Mayans, Captain Cook and my classmates as well.
See ya's in the blogs!
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Second Blog Post: The Classic Maya Writing System
Hi everyone,
Sorry about the LOOOOONG delay in getting the blog up and running. Here's the prompt for the second blog post:
What has struck you most forcefully about the Maya Hieroglyphic Writing System as we have studied it so far? What would you like to know more about? What kinds of issues does this writing system and the way it is used raise for you in the context of the course?
Things to think about: medium (what is the writing written on, and how is the writing produced e.g. carving, painting, other??), form of writing, relationship of writing to art, relationship of writing to performance, relationship of writng and art to politics, relationship of writing to sculpture specifically to monuments, relationship of monuments to notions of time and space.
What if anything does this writing system tell us about Maya society?
Hope this will be a prompt to get you started on thinking about your papers for the first part of the course as well.
Please post as replies to this post. Replies to replies should show up as threaded posts.
cheers
Chris
Sorry about the LOOOOONG delay in getting the blog up and running. Here's the prompt for the second blog post:
What has struck you most forcefully about the Maya Hieroglyphic Writing System as we have studied it so far? What would you like to know more about? What kinds of issues does this writing system and the way it is used raise for you in the context of the course?
Things to think about: medium (what is the writing written on, and how is the writing produced e.g. carving, painting, other??), form of writing, relationship of writing to art, relationship of writing to performance, relationship of writng and art to politics, relationship of writing to sculpture specifically to monuments, relationship of monuments to notions of time and space.
What if anything does this writing system tell us about Maya society?
Hope this will be a prompt to get you started on thinking about your papers for the first part of the course as well.
Please post as replies to this post. Replies to replies should show up as threaded posts.
cheers
Chris
Friday, September 28, 2012
FIrst blog: please introduce yourself
Hi everyone, and welcome to the first actual blog post. This one is a bit of a freebie as you don't have to respond to anyone's post (although you can if you want).
Please introduce yourself to the group. Say where you are from, and/or where you are connected to, and give us an example of something you care passionately about. I'll go first. Mine is a bit long (because I've been around for a bit longer than most of you), so don't feel like you have to go into as much detail as I do. But something along similar lines would be good.
Soooo. Here goes:
My name is Chris Fung and I am a fifth generation Chinese New Zealander. When I was young, my family moved to England where I lived for 8 years so this has influenced the way I think about myself quite a lot. In some ways I am culturally more English than anything else. I studied in Beijing for 2 years right after college but I don't really feel all that connected to Beijing, especially since it's changed so much since I was there.
I have also lived in the US for a long time now, I came to Boston to go to grad school and mostly lived across the river in Somerville. I now live in Dorchester which I actually like a lot better than Somerville (sorry Somerville). For ten years I lived on O'ahu in Hawai`i. I lived in the ahupua`a of Makiki for most of that time and for a short while I lived in Kapahulu/Waikiki.
My mother's family come from Jung Sing and my father's family come from Siu Hing. These are counties in Guangdong Province in southern China. My mother's father owned a fruit shop in a place called Fielding, in the lower North Island of New Zealand. His father (my great grandfather) was a terrible gambler and actually lost the shop several times through gambling debts.
My mum's dad was not a very nice man apparently. While he begrudgingly allowed my mother to attend college (she was one of the first Chinese New Zealand women to do so), he would only allow her to major in Home Economics instead of Literature or Physics which were the majors she wanted to do.
My dad's family were early converts to Christianity in Guangdong. According to family lore, my great grandfather on my dad's side was actually thrown out of the village for converting. During the 1930s my grandfather and my great uncle in particular were pretty high up in the Chinese Baptist Church. My dad remembers when Guangzhou fell to the Japanese and they had to flee into the hills and live on grass and leaves boiled up into mush because there was no other food. After the Wars ended, my dad's family initially stayed in China but then left in the early 1950s after my great uncle died (family lore says he was poisoned by the Communists, but my dad thinks this is probably incorrect).
My dad's family went to Hong Kong and then my grandfather was sent to New Zealand to be the pastor of a Chinese Baptist church in Gisborne on the East Coast of New Zealand. He was then sent down to Wellington, the capital, to be the pastor there where he remained until he retired. My grandfather loved to talk (this is probably where I get my own over-verbal lecture style from). He died from hypertension (too much salt in his diet) in his late 70s.
I have two children now. The oldest, my son Isaac (14), lives in Kenya with his mother. She's a marine biologist with the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute. We met while I was teaching anthropology back in New Zealand, and she was getting her masters in marine bio.
I go to see them every summer but it's hard since I can only see him once a year and he's now a pre-teen. Luckily Kenya is in some ways, a little less challenging as a place to be an adolescent than the US is.
My daughter Leomana is almost 11 months old. She has her mother's eyes, a beautiful smile and is just about to start walking. She is very interested in people for the most part and is a wonderfully good-natured baby. Being a parent is wonderful but pretty tiring as well. I'm sure it's going to be just as wonderful and just as tiring for the next 20 years or so. My wife and I were counting up all the places Leomana is connected to by heritage and potential citizenship and we came up with eight different countries!! Figuring out which other languages she should learn is a pretty algebraic proposition, so we'll probably start with Spanish (which is not native or heritage for either of us).
The last thing I would say about my connections is that I have been a musician specializing in traditional West African, Afro-Cuban and Afro-Haitian rhythms for close to 35 years now. I started out playing in the engine room of a Trinidadian steel band based at Weslyan University in Connecticut and have studied drumming with a number of teachers over the years. The most important are Nurudfafini Pili Abena and Jah Amen Mobley (who were students of Babatunde Olatunji at the Elma Lewis Center in Roxbury), Fode Oulare, Reggae MacGowan and Moussa "Pico" Bangoura. I have been a semi-professional musician but I really love playing for dance classes. I have worked with a number of amazing and generous dance teachers in Boston, Cambridge, Chicago and St. Louis and strive to be worthy of all my teachers as a human being and as a member of several different musical lineages.
I am very proud to be a teacher at UMass Boston. I have worked at four other universities, private, public, elite and overseas, and I am 100% certain that UMB is the place I have been happiest at. It's partly my colleagues, the students and the location, but its also the urban mission and the sense that education is a real gift that has value to people in the UMB community. It's not seen as an entitlement or a mere transaction here.
Please introduce yourself to the group. Say where you are from, and/or where you are connected to, and give us an example of something you care passionately about. I'll go first. Mine is a bit long (because I've been around for a bit longer than most of you), so don't feel like you have to go into as much detail as I do. But something along similar lines would be good.
Soooo. Here goes:
My name is Chris Fung and I am a fifth generation Chinese New Zealander. When I was young, my family moved to England where I lived for 8 years so this has influenced the way I think about myself quite a lot. In some ways I am culturally more English than anything else. I studied in Beijing for 2 years right after college but I don't really feel all that connected to Beijing, especially since it's changed so much since I was there.
I have also lived in the US for a long time now, I came to Boston to go to grad school and mostly lived across the river in Somerville. I now live in Dorchester which I actually like a lot better than Somerville (sorry Somerville). For ten years I lived on O'ahu in Hawai`i. I lived in the ahupua`a of Makiki for most of that time and for a short while I lived in Kapahulu/Waikiki.
My mother's family come from Jung Sing and my father's family come from Siu Hing. These are counties in Guangdong Province in southern China. My mother's father owned a fruit shop in a place called Fielding, in the lower North Island of New Zealand. His father (my great grandfather) was a terrible gambler and actually lost the shop several times through gambling debts.
My mum's dad was not a very nice man apparently. While he begrudgingly allowed my mother to attend college (she was one of the first Chinese New Zealand women to do so), he would only allow her to major in Home Economics instead of Literature or Physics which were the majors she wanted to do.
My dad's family were early converts to Christianity in Guangdong. According to family lore, my great grandfather on my dad's side was actually thrown out of the village for converting. During the 1930s my grandfather and my great uncle in particular were pretty high up in the Chinese Baptist Church. My dad remembers when Guangzhou fell to the Japanese and they had to flee into the hills and live on grass and leaves boiled up into mush because there was no other food. After the Wars ended, my dad's family initially stayed in China but then left in the early 1950s after my great uncle died (family lore says he was poisoned by the Communists, but my dad thinks this is probably incorrect).
My dad's family went to Hong Kong and then my grandfather was sent to New Zealand to be the pastor of a Chinese Baptist church in Gisborne on the East Coast of New Zealand. He was then sent down to Wellington, the capital, to be the pastor there where he remained until he retired. My grandfather loved to talk (this is probably where I get my own over-verbal lecture style from). He died from hypertension (too much salt in his diet) in his late 70s.
I have two children now. The oldest, my son Isaac (14), lives in Kenya with his mother. She's a marine biologist with the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute. We met while I was teaching anthropology back in New Zealand, and she was getting her masters in marine bio.
I go to see them every summer but it's hard since I can only see him once a year and he's now a pre-teen. Luckily Kenya is in some ways, a little less challenging as a place to be an adolescent than the US is.
My daughter Leomana is almost 11 months old. She has her mother's eyes, a beautiful smile and is just about to start walking. She is very interested in people for the most part and is a wonderfully good-natured baby. Being a parent is wonderful but pretty tiring as well. I'm sure it's going to be just as wonderful and just as tiring for the next 20 years or so. My wife and I were counting up all the places Leomana is connected to by heritage and potential citizenship and we came up with eight different countries!! Figuring out which other languages she should learn is a pretty algebraic proposition, so we'll probably start with Spanish (which is not native or heritage for either of us).
The last thing I would say about my connections is that I have been a musician specializing in traditional West African, Afro-Cuban and Afro-Haitian rhythms for close to 35 years now. I started out playing in the engine room of a Trinidadian steel band based at Weslyan University in Connecticut and have studied drumming with a number of teachers over the years. The most important are Nurudfafini Pili Abena and Jah Amen Mobley (who were students of Babatunde Olatunji at the Elma Lewis Center in Roxbury), Fode Oulare, Reggae MacGowan and Moussa "Pico" Bangoura. I have been a semi-professional musician but I really love playing for dance classes. I have worked with a number of amazing and generous dance teachers in Boston, Cambridge, Chicago and St. Louis and strive to be worthy of all my teachers as a human being and as a member of several different musical lineages.
I am very proud to be a teacher at UMass Boston. I have worked at four other universities, private, public, elite and overseas, and I am 100% certain that UMB is the place I have been happiest at. It's partly my colleagues, the students and the location, but its also the urban mission and the sense that education is a real gift that has value to people in the UMB community. It's not seen as an entitlement or a mere transaction here.
Blog ground rules
Blogging Guidelines:
Blog
assignments: Entries will be
posted by students in the class page on Blackboard every two weeks or so on readings
or lecture topics chosen by the student. These entries are not reading
summaries but will demonstrate the extent to which the student is engaging
thoughtfully with the materials presented in class. Each entry will be 700 words (about 2 regular pages
double-spaced) in length minimum.
Blog
Responses: After each round of blogs is posted, students must respond to
blog posts by 2 other students (total responses = 12). Responses must be 1-2 paragraphs in
length minimum and must be constructive and analytical. The goal of responses
must be to add to the original post in a way that adds to our understanding.
Students may respond to a blog response on one of their own posts, and/or
engage with other commentators.
Exchanges which
are identified as worthwhile (by the students) will be given extra-credit
points.
Hostile, or non-constructive responses will
immediately be deleted by the moderator.
IMPORTANT: Write your blog post in a
word-processor program BEFORE you
load it onto the website.
Otherwise you run the risk of the website crashing and taking your post
with it. This is very frustrating
and can lead to all manner of bad language.
Other tips:
1. Try to read the source you choose actively. Ask yourself the following questions:
Who are the people involved here. What
issues does this address directly? What historical or political issues are
being drawn upon here by the author of the piece or by the people who the
author is referencing? What are
the other issues this raises that people are NOT directly addressing? Don’t worry if you aren’t able to come
up with the “right” answers initially:
If everyone were able to do this well, it wouldn’t be a class. Instead
2. This means reading the article or piece you have chosen for
each blog session at least twice. Once to get the overall idea and then again
more carefully bearing the discussion questions in mind. THERE ARE NO SHORTCUTS. You may think
you can speed read your way through all these articles but you cannot speed
read for substantial content.
3. Respond carefully to your classmates’ emails. Say why you agree or disagree with
someone’s interpretation of the reading.
Don’t just say “I don’t agree” or –even worse “you suck”. The
goal of any email exchange should be to increase the knowledge flow and give
people a chance to discuss WHY they disagree with one another. This is not the same thing as shouting
one another down or trying to score points off one another.
4. Be
respectful of other people’s opinions. It’s easy to get caught up in your own
opinions online and sometimes it’s tempting to put other people down in a way
that you wouldn’t if you had to talk to them face to face. Bottom line is, if you wouldn’t say it
to someone face to face, then don’t say it online. This is really very close to point 3 but I thought it was
worth saying again.
I will be monitoring the discussions very closely so anyone
who flames others or who acts in a way that is disrespectful of others will
draw a reaction from me.
This is not to say that you cannot express your opinions,
but that you have to be able to
phrase them in a way that is an accurate reflection of how you feel, why you
feel this way and with an eye to treating other people with respect. A good illustration of this dynamic in action can be found
at
You don’t need to focus on the math itself. The tone of the discussion is the most
important part of the thread to pay attention to.
5. Be ready to
take the discussion beyond one response and one response to a response if you
think something needs to be clarified or explored in conversation with someone
else.
Referencing:
You don’t have to have a bibliography in your post, but do
refer to the sources you use in such a way as to allow your reader to identify
what it is.
E.g. “In a recent post on the “Indian Country Today” website, …” or “I like what Sissons says in chapter 4 where ...” or “ In
class yesterday you said …” or “This is confusing because in Trask’s article
“Lovely Hula Hands” she says …”
Greetings
I think I have finally found a home for the UMB Honors 490 blog. If you've been invited, you can post or comment freely. I will have a list of topics up in a minute, but for now I'm going to stop here. There will be two separate posts with the first blogging assignment (basically just an introduction), and the ground rules.
cheers
Chris
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