Web Paper or Special Event

Allie Cavallaro

Paper #10

14 November 2014

Why Bother

I think, assuming, as humans that we have the willingness, knowledge, and ability to fix large scale environmental problems is foolish. Even if we could unite the planet in a common goal (unlikely) to make a change, who is to say that we have the knowledge or technology to do so? Without the both knowledge and willingness, there is no ability, but even if there was ability, knowledge, and willingness, who are we to claim that we are superior enough to make a change that actually matters? How can we matter when in a matter of years, us and everything we’ve ever known will be crushed into a layer of rock no thicker than a cigarette paper (Kolbert #)? We really don’t.

Sydney Huff

ESem Paper #10

November 14, 2014

T

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.

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.