Welcome to Cultures of Migration (CULT
454/554). As participants in a research seminar, what you learn from this
course will depend greatly on the quality of discussion we have in and out of
class. Ideally, class discussion and blogs will reinforce each other, where
comments made in one context will be taken up and discussed further in the
other. To that end, each of us (myself included!) will keep a blog this
semester, in which we take our ideas out of the classroom and try them out in a
public forum.
A blog is a public journal, a record of
your thoughts on any given day. Often putting your thoughts into writing is a
good way to figure out just what those thoughts are. A blog is not formal
academic writing. But you do want your ideas to be clear. After all, the point
of a blog (and comments to a blog) is communication. Keep in mind your readers.
Is your reader going to be able to understand your main point? Do you provide
enough information to make your opinion clear? Do you provide examples? Do you
analyze or explain those examples? Are you undermining your credibility (and
irritating your reader) with careless typos and spelling mistakes?
POSTS
I have marked
places in the syllabus where I expect that at least a few of you will write
blog posts related to the course materials (and I will also give you prompts
from time to time). You are required to write a minimum of five posts of the
seven indicated (plus the one about your final project) during the semester,
but I hope you’ll find this a useful process and post even more regularly. Did
you see a TV program that highlighted immigration issues in an interesting way?
Tell us about it in your blog. Did you come across an interesting web site?
Tell us about it. Did you have your own “immigration experience” applying for a
student visa or getting your residency permit here and want to link it to class
discussions? Tell us about it here. You get the idea!
COMMENTS
As well as being
a place for you to record your thoughts, at its best, a blog is also a place
for discussion and the exchange of ideas. Thus I would also like you to respond
to your classmates’ blogs. You should write comments to at least one post every
time a blog opportunity is indicated in the syllabus. This means you’ll write
at least seven comments (I hope far more!) over the course of the semester plus
responses to final project proposals. These responses may be only a few
sentences, but please do address the content of your classmate’s post and
attempt to take the conversation further. “Great post!” is a nice way to start
a comment and may make the poster feel good, but is not enough in itself. Tell
them what you liked about the post, what you thought they did well, or on the
contrary, where you disagree with them and why. You can also simply expand on
something or provide another example. You can also ask questions.
For this first
week, if you choose to post, you may, of course, note any questions that the articles,
readings or audio and video files raised for you. But please also consider
writing about your reactions to the music. Is it what you expected? Are you a
fan of rap, in general? Is it an effective genre for communicating political
messages? I would also be very interested to hear your reactions to the film by Can Candan that we watched in class last week. He asks some very provocative
questions. When does someone stop feeling like a foreigner? When does the
foreigner become an immigrant? Did this film raise any echoes of your own
experiences?
Please remember
to post your blogs by Sunday morning, let’s say noon, for this first post, so
that everyone has time to read and respond to them.
Happy blogging
and see you in class on Monday.
