Cultural Studies: East Asian and North American Perspectives, Student Responses to the First Semester
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(Japanese) society is analyzed in this seminar in ways that I had not imagined at all, and so I have been able to discover something new. Even if the arguments are about the whole society, I feel that the subjects are close and familiar to me.
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As a space of production this class has been so attractive because of its discussion-based style. Students in the seminar discuss and argue together, and from these discussions I have had a lot of feedback, knowledge, and stimulation, and also some change in my way of thinking.
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I’m enjoying this class. I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t. The reason I continue to attend is that I am interested in the way we define culture. My goal in education is to study journalism, and I felt that taking Professor Ewick and Professor Sadria’s joint seminar would change my view of culture. A good journalist should be able to see things that many people cannot see. Studying in this seminar has made me realize many things that I was not aware of before. Professor Ewick often talks of the included and the excluded in any text or discourse, and I am beginning to understand the concept. When I begin studying journalism I don’t want to be trapped in someone else’s discourse. I feel that this course is slowly taking me to a position from which I can better avoid this.
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Sometimes the topics, concepts, and epistemology
of the seminar are familiar to me, but the content of the class and the
atmosphere give me fresh understandings of cultural studies, and I enjoy
this. One thing that might be added to the class is analysis of the negative
/ positive axis of cultural theory, in other words, more consideration
of the weak points of cultural studies.
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This cultural studies seminar is exciting for me, even though I have sometimes felt that the arguments are too epistemological. The course in my understanding provides a new point of view to help us grasp the correlation of people and their activities. The arguments for me have often moved away from reality, but the seminar still has been intellectually challenging.
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To be honest, at the beginning it was difficult to understand the ideas of cultural studies. However, as time has gone by I have felt that cultural studies is about the ways society is constructed or organized, what people think and how they act within a society, and what we ourselves actually think about society. The important thing in this seminar is to bring out a topic and to discuss it with other people. The conflict and fusion of discussion, in other words, I guess is the way cultural studies could be described.
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I think I am able to think about my own standpoint. The main argument in the seminar is that when I talk about something I should be conscious of where my eyes are. And I should not forget my own worldliness. I have learned that the world has centers and margins.
