GHS208-05 Fall 2019 China and the Islamic Middle East
Global and Historical Studies at Butler University
Earlier today, it was announced that one of the most wanted terrorists in the world, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed in a US military raid in Syria. Of course, this is a huge deal, not only for us as Americans, but for those affected in the Middle East as well. Because of the fact that …
Continue reading “Trump’s Comments on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Death”
I am really excited to read The Cairo House in this class, because one of my friends read it a while back, and recommended it to me. Of course, since it was a recent recommendation, it was at the bottom of my seemingly never-ending list of books I would like to read. It is a …
Continue reading “Yay Islamic Middle East Unit!!! (Oct 22 Class)”
In Ha Jin’s story, “The Woman From New York,” traditional gender roles are shown very soon into the narrative. As talked about in class, and as many people likely know by now, it is traditionally the woman’s job to be a housewife and keep everything clean, everyone fed, and everyone happy. In the story, after …
Continue reading “Gender Roles in “The Woman From New York” (Oct. 3 Class)”
The story, “A Bad Joke” in Ha Jin’s The Bridegroom is a classic example of censorship and the lack of freedom of speech that plagues China. In the story, a man makes a joke that is at first innocent with no namedropping, but through the grapevine it gets twisted into using the name of the Chairman, …
While watching the documentary over the weekend, I found the women’s viewpoints on gender roles interesting. I already knew that culturally, Chinese parents preferred to have a son, because that way the family name could be carried on and any possessions, such as land, could be passed on to the son once the father got …
I went to the lecture featuring Dr. Douglas, Dr. Jett, and Dr. Logan on Tuesday night because I am in Dr. Bauman’s class that is associated with the lecture series. We had the opportunity to have dinner with the speakers beforehand, and it was really nice to have personal one on one conversations with them. …
Continue reading “Incarceration, Christianity, and Black Bodies”
If I am going to be totally honest, the GHS Reader that we use can often be very boring and I tend to enjoy Ha Jin’s short stories much more, but this time the reader was actually really engaging. The whole section to me seemed like a book of fables, and I found that fascinating. …
During class, we had a really interesting discussion about what counts as something good, and what counts as something evil that went along with the reading that day from the GHS Reader. We also briefly referenced the Friends episode in which Phoebe and Joey try to find a selfless good deed, only to find that there …
In the second half of Tao Te Ching, number 68 really stood out to me. It talks about how it is never good to be aggressive or have a bad temper. I think this is super important, because in real life, such negativity doesn’t get you anywhere. It is important to be patient and understanding …
I was browsing the web and I happened to come across multiple articles, but one in particular, that mentions the closing of Confucius Institutes at various colleges and universities. I didn’t feel it to be related to my previous post on Confucius and thought it was so interesting that it was deserving of its own …
Continue reading “Randomly Interesting and Totally Unrelated Confucius Topic”