Monday, September 22, 2008

Fall 2008: A New Semester, New Student Blogs...

Fall semester is already in its third week and that can only mean one thing: new students and new visual anthropology photo-journal blogs. Please scroll down to the "Fall 2008 Student Photo-Journal Blogs" menu and see what the new students are saying.

Their first post assignment is on their early impressions of Japan. (Native anthropologists blog about what they feel newcomers to Japan should know about their culture.) It is always interesting to see what new students are seeing and feeling about their new surroundings. The students this semester come from a variety of countries and perspectives but all seem enthusiastic.

It is also interesting to see how students' perceptions and ideas change throughout the course of the semester. It seems that every year students know more and more about Japan. But do their preconceptions match with their new reality? And how can they combine images with text to describe their new cultural setting?

Traditional culture, pop culture, sports, gender, religion, globalization, art and politics are only a few of the themes to be tackled in the next few months along with the anthropological method and issues of visual representation. Please visit the students' blogs often and leave comments. This blogging exercise is an attempt at collaboration in the discovery and presentation of Japanese culture, the good, bad, beautiful, ugly, extraordinary and mundane. "Making the strange seem familiar and making the familiar seem strange..."

2 comments:

N said...

It's shocking to think that the new semester's students have all arrived, and life at Kansai Gaidai is going on like usual. I miss it immensely.

I wish you luck with the new semester, and who knows, maybe I'll stop by to read every once and a while, haha.

Anonymous said...

I wish I was back there so much!!! I miss everything, especially shuwa and our circle T.T I look forward to stalking..I mean, reading everyone's blogs to see how the new students in your Anth class are doing!