Noah Blackman

Hello & welcome to the introductory 2019 Global East Asia China blog post! My name is Noah Blackman, a rising junior studying International Relations and Economics.

This will be the first in a series of updates to both our travels in China and the progress of our research projects as they develop. These updates will be written by different groups of students as the program ensues. The first day of our Maymester began with a unique icebreaker. Professor Sheehan instructed us to write two “twitterographies” about a classmate that we hadn’t met before and then present them to the rest of the class. The result was a funny and memorable way of being introduced to each person. One thing I remember was being astounded by the variety of interests of my peers regarding China.

After that, we talked more on the necessities for traveling to China and the professor gave us a checklist to help us prepare. Besides preparing us for traveling, we began assembling our analytical toolkit, which we will use when inspecting marketing techniques in China. Understanding the concepts in the readings will help contribute to our toolkit as we navigate the effects of globalization on the consumer culture of China. That’s it for me tonight, soon you’ll hear from my group members Megan Bennett & Emma Cockerell, pictured with me below.

Global East Asia China scholars (left to right): Noah Blackman, Megan Bennett, and Emma Cockerell

Fight on!