Leah James & Ana Lucia
Our second class began bright and early on a great note with Jadon bringing in a cheesecake for the class, and Adam assigning himself for snack duty due to the late-to-class bring a snack policy. We began our day confirming everybody’s flight plans, since many are flying on their own instead of on the group flight due to their own travel plans after our time in China.
Right after we wrapped up the flight details, Papa Sheehan finished his lecture on the geography of China. We learned about “China Proper” and how to differentiate the north from the south and the east from the west. We learned that the north is characterized by flatter land and produces wheat whereas the south is known for producing rice and silk. Professor Sheehan tested our knowledge, at first with easy pictures but then used pictures with more complex possibilities. Through the exercise, not only was he able to trick us, but he was also able to exemplify that, like most things in life, there are always exceptions and nuances to the rules and everything is not as straightforward as it seems.
In terms of our research projects, we all went around the table and shared our possible interests in order to form groups. A range of topics were discussed like coffee shops, footwear, toothpaste, public restrooms and more. Professor Sheehan gave us two useful ways of thinking about our potential projects. One, that the issues we are looking at have enough similarities so that the differences are meaningful, and the other, that there are so many differences that the similarities are interesting. We were all able to find groups with similar interests, with some compromise, and planned rough ideas for what our topics will be about.
After our group meetings, we discussed the readings that were due today, which led to learning helpful terms like hybridization, but also led further questions such as the actual relevance of acculturalization and the existence of true authenticity, since we often forget there is more than one way to look at any particular situation. One of our main takeaways from the discussion was that in this class we are not trying to define globalization, instead we are trying to analyze situations and ask ourselves “what type of globalization is this?” We concluded our second day with a practice quiz examining a bike advertisement in order to understand how to use our tools while analyzing an ad and how to properly form a thesis statement.
