It has struck me when I found how popular K-dramas and K-pops are in the US. It's not that K-drama and K-pop are popular in China (they are VERY popular), but because of the power dynamics between US and Korea, it would make sense to me if American drama and American music are popular in Korea but K-pop is not a thing at all in the US. Instead, I found my roommate sometimes watches K-drama all night, and my other roommate has shown great interest in Asian guys. There are also some friends who show me their music playlist and it is full of K-pop. 

What TV shows do Bryn Mawr students watch? What music do Bryn Mawr students listen to? How have these TV shows and music shape Bryn Mawr students' aesthetic sense? 

For the project of analyzing contact zones in the context of Bryn Mawrs history, I would like to focus on the college's past with LGBQIA+ members. I know that President Thomas was a lesbian, and that in itself was a progressive stance during her time, but I would like to know more of the details. Was she out during her time as president? Did she give leeway to other lesbian students? Also, who were the first students who identifies outside the standard "straight cis female" role? When did the college start accepting such students and did they go through the same struggles as the first Black students? How did the college deal with a student who decided to begin their transition during school?

     The NMAAHC is a project of U.S. nationalism which is in conflict with sensibilities of the ways many define and recreate blackness. The new Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture rises from slave ships to the mothership, an ascendant course that oversimplifies a narrative of subjugation and injustice that is eventually redeemed by blues, funk, and hip-hop. The lowest-level galleries which depicted the slave trade and the Middle Passage are narrow and confining. The galleries opened up to an expansive entrance for the struggle for liberty and justice, which evidently continues today.

The short story "Bloodchild" by Octavia E. Butler explores the complexity of the relationship between Gan and T'Gatoi.  T'Gatoi is a Tlic, which is a powerful kind of creature who needs to implant its eggs in another living creature in order to reproduce. Gan is a Terran, which are the Tlic's favorite vessels. The relationship between their two species was influenced by decades of violence, revenge, and efforts towards peace. "Bloodchild", however, focuses less on the history of these conflicts and more on the relationship between the two individuals. Gan and T'Gatoi's lives are complexly woven together, but their relationship is heavily complicated by the power dynamics of their two species.

One idea that I think would be interesting to pursue for the long-term project would be contact zones involving sports.  I could look at the contact zone between the athletes and non-athletes on our campus.  Contact zones between other athletes could also be interesting to learn more about.  This topic interests me because I am an athlete at a school that is not very involved in its Athletics.  I would figure out if there is a big separation between the athletes and other students and if there is tension or peace in this contact zone.  I might determine that there isn't even a contact zone.

Content warning: deaths of Emmett Till and people I knew

 I am still in awe of the NMAAHC. I just wish I had more time in it, time to regroup with classmates and talk about what we found, to experience the museum together. There were parts of the museum that I didn’t get to see at all or barely looked at because I was in a hurry. Rushing is not a good way to move through a museum and I think it’s absolutely not the way this museum intended visitors to move through it. I think the deliberation in the curation and artistry is quite obvious at the NMAAHC and it deserves to be savored, slowly and carefully. With time for reflection. 

After reading Teju Cole’s The White-Savior Industrial Complex, I start to question the way I set up to define the slipping, in which, first of all I make judgement to a statement by two dimensions: correctness and intentionality. And there are four combinations of correct, incorrect, intentional, and unintentional: correct and intentional, correct but unintentional, incorrect but unintentional, and incorrect and intentional. I name this four: good way of expression, pure slip of tongue, slipping, and let it go. And I view June Jordan’s thinking process in Report froam the Bahamas as a slipping.

Last class, we performed skits for the class of what we interpreted as play. In one skit, there were four children who were going to play a make believe game. However, they argued on who got to be who and changed their minds about which character they wanted to be. Similarly, in another skit, there were three children who pretended to Beyoncé, Joan of Arc, and a princess. These make believe games made up most of playing for many children, including me. 

In the essay, “Playing in Industrial Ruins: Interrogating Teleological Understandings of Play in Spaces of Material Alterity and Low Surveillance,” Edensor and three other authors argue that

an attentiveness to playfulness in industrial ruins offers an opportunity to think about the role of ‘wild’ spaces within the contemporary city, and the potential ‘wildness’ present in more managed urban spaces which might offer possibilities for playful transformation (77).