Over the course of these past few months, we have learned about many different ways in which identity and environment interact. Beginning with the story of June Jordan, “Report from the Bahamas,” and the writings of Mary Louise Pratt’s “Arts of the Contact Zone,” we began to investigate ourselves in relation to others. Moving onto reading of Minnie Bruce Pratt, we got a chance to see how one’s identity affected the environment and how it perceived them. In Eli Clare’s “Exile and Pride,” we learned how of one can be shaped by their identity and found in escaping it. In our study of play we learned about how our environment as a child, freed or constricted, can have a large impact on the way that we come into adulthood.

gendering in persepolis

-she return to iran, interaction with customs “sister” and “brother”— non-offensive way to tell people to fall in line; brings familial relations into it, equalizing? aggressive? passive aggressive..

discussion of misgendering, how it can be aggressive/microaggressive. 

power dynamics of terms of endearment. 

* what particular contribution can the genre of the 

November 12, 2014

Curriculum Project

Introduction/rationale

This chapter focuses on the relationship between humans and neanderthals. Kolberet goes into the history of neanderthals and their extinction around thirty thousand years ago. She explains their ways of life, which were very animalistic compared to modern humans. Then she explains the modern theory for the cause of their extinction: us. Once humans started expanding out of Africa, they began encountering the neanderthal and procreating with it and then, eventually, killing the species off. The point of this chapter is to realize how humans and neanderthals are similar and different. Many humas have around one to four percent neanderthal gene in them. However, the chapter points out how the ability of language can separate two species to the extent of extinction. 

    For the past several weeks I have participated in a book club created by two professors and a handful students for the women of ABC prison. The women represent a wide variety of ages and ethnicities and most return to the book club sessions weekly. There is some turnover in participants as new people join while former members leave ABC, but the group overall has remained largely cohesive. Each session is about two hours, albeit with a significant amount of time lost to calling down to each cell block to ask for all the participants.

Finding Our Identities through our Capital