http://articles.philly.com/1993-05-09/news/25964426_1_minority-students-financial-aid-first-generation-students

            One of my post-undergrad dreams is to find a way back to France, a country in which I had the opportunity to study abroad junior year. I figured that teaching English would be a way to gain experience in a classroom, keep myself immersed in French culture, and have the chance to explore other parts of Europe as well. Gaining an understanding about the White-Savior Industrial Complex, though, had me questioning my initial desires of wanting to teach English abroad. Did I want to teach abroad with the mentality of “helping” and “making a difference”? Did I subconsciously crave this opportunity as a way to please my ego? How might my own privileges as an American impact my pedagogy in the classroom, and relationship with the community? How would they differ if I were not a woman of color? These kinds of questions inspired my inquiry project into the implications and experiences of Americans teaching abroad.

BlackinAsia and English as a Tool of Imposition

In writing this and planning out what quotes I want to reference, I'm remembering that my book's pages are different than those of everyone else in this class, which continues for me the questions we began asking last class about language and translation. There is no way for any of you with your copies to find the exact page I refer to without me giving the chapter and you searching through the whole thing. There is an added level of inconvenience and disconnect beyond what would already exist by nature of me being one person understanding and expressing a quote one way and you being another person with a potentially different understanding.

Moving beyond that, I want to raise the importance of the poet Rilke, or "the Poet" as Nirmal most commonly refers to him in his journal. Much of The Hungry Tide is framed around Nirmal's descriptions of the Tide Country and the specific struggle over the island Morichjhapi, and he seems to root his understanding of the Sundarbans in Rilke's poetry: "...nothing escapes the maw of the tides; everything is ground to fine silt, becomes something new. It was as if the whole tide country was speaking in the voice of the Poet: 'life is lived in transformation'" (from end of chapter: Transformation). Also, quoting Rilke:

Here's info about an event @ HC that should be of interest to us all...

When Jenna highlighted the passage in The Hungry Tide where Piya shows the guard a picture of the Gangetic dolphin and "he asked if it was a bird," I thought immediately of the ambiguous figure of the "Rabbit Duck" (do you know this? can you see both?)

Ambiguous figures like this one are important in illustrating not only (as Jenna said) that "people with different backgrounds perceive things differently," but also that everything we perceive we might perceive otherwise (or, as I still tell my children, "you can always tell a different story"). If you are interested in thinking-or-writing more about this phenomenon (which is a visual extension of the conversation we had yesterday about the imprecision of language) you might want to explore some the material on Serendip about ambiguous figures--as a demonstration of informed guessing and (always my friend Paul's punch line) free will....

Since I wasn't able to be in class yesterday because I was sick, here are some of my thoughts about The Hungry Tide in response to Anne's class notes.

ECON 136:  Week 14Tasks

 Monday:   On Data and Persuasion    

            Background reading:

                        Data vs. storytelling      

                        Reason vs. Intuition

Wednesday:  Preparing for the Final Memorandum

 Review my comments on your written work

Review the Guide to the Final Memorandum, complete and submit through Moodle between noon on May 5 and the end of the exam period.

Friday:   We go our separate ways one last time

360:   Meet at 10 am at Pem Arch for Camden Trip