My Website!

Here's the link to my website for my final project!
Please take a look around and let me know what you think!

http://annastew.moonfruit.com/

Reflecting on International Week

International week is definitely one of my favorite weeks.  I am lucky to be attending such a diverse university because these events occur frequently, they are just more concentrated during this week.  I'd like to take this opportunity to reflect on a few of these events.


One of the most notable events happened last Monday.  Arun Gandhi, the grandson of the Mahatma Gandhi, spoke at MemAud.  I thoroughly enjoyed the talk, however, I was really interested in the reactions to the talk.  I heard several critiques claiming that the general audience would not have found the lecture to be so profound if he hadn't happened to be the grandson of Gandhiji.  To be honest, there was really nothing radically new or life changing I heard at the talk.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed listening to Arun's experiences and his take on Gandhi's philosophy.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, I heard many fluttering around about the chills they got from being in the same room of Gandhi's grandson.  Again I thoroughly enjoyed the event and have read Arun's books before, but I felt this reaction defeats the purpose of much what Gandhi wanted to get out there.  Gandhi's teaching don't lead me to believe he was someone who would want someone's blood to be the root of their popularity or fame.  Why can we not just appreciate Arun Gandhi for his own message, his own experiences and his own perspective on his grandfather's legacy?


I also attended a talk on an ancient Hindu epic, the Ramayana.  Again, I thoroughly enjoyed the event and got a lot from it.  However, I happened to have a general understanding of the topic before going.  If you didn't, you were probably lost the whole time.  I felt many of those students were lost.  I appreciated the event.  Yet, I dislike that the audience seemed to be made up of sleepy students trying to get extra credit for a class.  There were actually few international students there.  


Finally, I can't forget about the street fair!  Although I believe last year's may have been better, it was still a good time.  Of course, the best part is the food.  I was a little disappointed to see less food there than years prior, that's probably why I liked last year's better.  Anyways, I had some tasty Indonesian food and got a little toasted from the sun that finally decided to show up in Ohio.  

Senior Dance Concert

This weekend was the Senior Dance Concert.  The title pretty much gives it away.  The concert is a series of solos and group pieces composed by members of the senior class of the dance department.  As I am doing a BA (Briefly, the BA program is more intensive than the minor and less performance intensive than the BFA) in dance, in addition to anthropology, I am very biased to the success of this concert.  However, I realize many people do not feel the same way.  So what genre of dance is this, you ask? Modern.

Modern is a relatively new genre of dance that only emerged around 100  years ago and has radically evolved.  It first emerged out of artists protesting against the strict structure of ballet.  Since then, modern dance has continued to rapidly evolve and constantly be influenced by cultural, social and political movements.  There was even a post-modern era, which I'll admit, was a little out there.  Most people don't consider eating a sandwich on stage or walking up a brick wall to be dance.  But hey, movement is movement.

So nowadays students see this not-so-familiar form of dance and they don't know how to react.  In between pieces they whisper about "what...the...hell...was...that?"  It seems the only pieces they understand are the ones that heavily poor emotion to the point of almost being theater, So You Think You Can Dance style or hip-hop.  It is so unfortunate for artists in the dance world to be solely represented by competition dance shows on TV.  It is like saying that what is on top 10 radio is the epitome of all music.  Or that a Thomas Kinkade painting is the only true and accurate form of painting.  While I'm not so far out there that I will be painting my toenails on stage and calling it a dance, I am totally for the exploration and investigation of movement in an artistic environment.  It can just be frustrating that when many students go to a music concert in the school of music they don't expect American Idol; yet, when they come to the school of dance, they think they were supposed to be at ABC studios.  Let dance be an art form, too, not just entertainment.

A version of my interview

Despite living here for nearly a decade, Asha doesn’t see herself as an American.  She still strongly defines herself as Indian and as Hindu.  Not that she sees being an American as a bad thing, she respects all cultures, but she is quite satisfied with her own identity.  Yet at the same time she doesn’t find every culture as an atmosphere comfortable for her.  Smoking and drinking are out of the question.  To do this around Asha would be disrespectful.  When she arrived in the U.S., Asha found herself having trouble understanding concepts like “personal space” and “bubble.”  This concept doesn’t even exist in India.  Yet now she was paranoid about invading this invisible wall around people.  Regardless of having good English, there were and are many phrases Asha doesn’t always understand, but she’s now no longer uncomfortable explicitly asking for a meaning. 

Some South Asians in this area find themselves mostly socially interacting with individuals within regional proximity to their home, Asha does not.  She believes it is more important to cherish the Indian community as a whole and not specific regional identifies.  She also finds it important to take advantage of this culturally diverse atmosphere and immerse herself into other subcultures.  Recognizing that some individuals in the community are slightly more exclusive and perhaps even look differently at Asha for branching out, she is bothered by the idea of actually cutting off her ties to the community.  These connections link her to her homeland.  She still cares for them very deeply like family. 

Adjusting to and living in this country wasn’t always easy for Asha.  She finds herself dealing with generalizations about Indians being smart or like the characters off of Slumdog Millionaire.  There are also personally discomforting and awkward moments.  For example, Asha had trouble explaining why she still cannot bring herself to eat that veggie burger because it was grilled on the same grill as one covered in beef grease.  It’s difficult to find a line between following your religious beliefs and being respectful towards your host.  For her this is just a reminder of how important it is to learn about other cultures.  So taking the opportunity to cross many, what she claims to be easily permeated, borders between cultures, she learns about other ways of living.  Even if she finds herself having bad experiences, it’s a reminder that one must see the bad before they can value the good.  Most importantly, Asha wishes her family could be here to share the experience.  

An Audible Culture Shock.

Language is, no doubt, a big part of culture.  The concept of accents is kind of weird if you think about it.  The fact that just by hearing the words coming out of someone's mouth you can know where they are from....crazy.  A few days ago as I sat in the doctors office in my hometown, the accents I heard around me seemed more noticeable than before.  Those drawn-out sounds, that bit of a twang-it just sounded more exaggerated than normal.  How does it work?  Even just two hours south of here people have accents that seem much more southern than just two hours south.  How is it that some people have heavy accents and others, who have also lived there their whole lives, have accents half as thick?   How is that my accent fades away when I leave the area?  Those accents seemed bolder than ever.  I found myself thinking in and constantly reverting back to speaking with that draw the entire day.  

#AmericanDiversity#Patriotism#OsamabinLaden

I spent the past few days in Washington D.C. getting more acquainted with the university I will be attending for graduate school: George Washington University.   That is to say I spent the past few days digesting overwhelming feelings of anxiety as I recognize the transition from living in Athens to D.C. will not be an easy one.  Most of all I will probably miss the cheap rent.   More than taking in the pecuniary downfalls of this city, I noticed the cultural diversity on this specific trip than any before.  I'm not just talking about actual ethnic diversity.  We all know that this city holds a lot of diversity.  It's seen in the prevalence of international food markets and restaurants and it's heard in the myriad of foreign languages being spoken.  More than just colors of skin, varying distinct cultures thrive here.  Beyond the obvious, I noticed the presence of insider and outsider cultures.  It is not hard to pick out the city inhabitant walking fast off the metro knowing exactly where they are going and the Midwest American tourist looking for the Lincoln Memorial in a dilatory manner.  It's astonishing how the vibe changes from street to street based on whether it is full of natives or visitors.  How is that the man next to me on the metro that just openly acknowledged he speaks no English is more at home in our nation's capitol then many life-long inhabitants of this country.  If that doesn't highlight the diversity of subcultures in this country, I don't know what does.  Is there really even an American identity? 

Now, not to digress but I actually find the trending topic of #OsamabinLaden applicable to my recent visit to D.C.  Last night as I watched the crowd of GWU students in front of the White House I couldn't help but to think a.) "I was just standing there 24 hours ago, weird" and b.) "GWU? Well that's my new school, those will soon be my fellow peers, also weird."  Then as I saw Abbottabad, Pakistan pointed out on a map I had another thought.  "I was just in India several months ago, standing by the border looking into Pakistan."  Then I headed on over to Google directions and thought "gee, at one point a few months ago I was 4 hour and 33 minute car drive away from Osama bin Laden."  I'm not sure of the signficance of these thoughts, if they have any at all, I was just struck by the strong spatial recollection I had at that moment.  

 

I'm sure we could all write blogs and blogs about this historical moment but I have no desire to do so.  I understand the significance of this event.  We have socially constructed Osama as the symbol of terrorism and his death appears to be the symbolic death (or triumph?) of the war on terrorism.  But why do I find myself feeling torn?  I'm an American and shouldn't I be as happy about this as the people outside screaming? Instead I find myself sickened.  I cannot celebrate the death of an individual.  I do not, and never would, condone Osama's action-but I cannot celebrate the death of any human being.  I cannot let these feelings of patriotism get the best of me and jeopardize my individual morality.  I just heard a NBC news reporter refer to Afghanistan and its people as "primitive."  I didn't know we still used this word to describe those cultures and individuals that are different from us.  My facebook newsfeed is filled with people dogging Obama.  Are we really going to use this opportunity to once again rag on our President?   The celebration of one person's death makes me feel like the money spent on this war, the lives damaged and the lives lost over the past decade were all for this moment.  Oh and what other secret operations are going on that we don't know about?  I don't feel like I have given justice to my argument and I could indeed go on, but I said before that I didn't want to do that.  To some this will just seem like banter or prattle but, no matter how opposing arguments are, it is important for each to be heard.   

 

The daily closing Ceremony at the India-Pakistan Border

A Response to Stranger with a Camera

Being from Appalachia myself, Stranger with a Camera struck close to home.  I found the documentary effective but it also left me with feelings of ambivalence.   As times have changed and modernity has spread, there are fewer cases as severe as the one depicted in the film...but they do certainly still exist.  After watching this in class I, unconsciously, kept questioning my position as if it were my own hometown in that film and came to the conclusion that I was split in three ways.  


1.  My first instinct is something I'm not proud of.  At first I was taken aback by how impoverished, narrow-minded and uneducated these people were.  Dare I say the word "backwards?"  This country is supposed to be one of the most well-developed nations in the world and you're taking your shotgun to someone who just took a picture?!  Murder is Murder.  I've been to communities like that and there are enough well-off and upper-class people to offset those not-so-sharp mentalities.  In fact, I felt like one of those upper-class Kentuckians of the time as I internally shook my head and wagged my finger at those journalists for generalizing that community the way they did.  Those places really aren't like that. About 30 seconds later I realized that reaction was narrow-minded itself.  I was so quick to judge because those are the reactions that much of American culture and media has embedded within me.  I almost forgot to think for myself.


2.  No, I did not grow up in those conditions, per say, but I sure did witness them.  That kind of environment is my home and the home of my parents and their parents.  It really is like that!  Those images that rolled across the screen were no different from the pictures I see of my great-grandparent's home, what I see when we drive down the streets of my parent's hometown, and certainly no different from what I see when I just drive two or three miles away from my own home.  The difference is that we never knew, I never knew, that it was bad.  It was just what we knew and that's all there was to it.  That part of me is okay with how Appalachia has been documented.  No, it has not always been shown in the best light, but I know very well that that doesn't defeat the sense of pride those individuals have.  That is there home, their life and they work hard for everything they have.  At first their demeanor may seem disturbing, but they are some of the true images of the American Dream.  There are few people with as much pride and gratitude as them.  The man with the shotgun was just a product of his own culture, just as we all are.  


3. Okay, so perhaps both the stereotypical portrayal of Appalachia and the murder are morally wrong.  Yet, I'm totally okay with how these cases are shown to the American audience on one condition: I want Americans to try and understand the causes.  First, it should be well noted that people don't choose to live in those conditions.  These conditions exist because of flaws in the institutions that run our society.  The flaws continue to exist because our institutions are not quite comfortable with change.  While how our social institutions prohibit prosperity for all places and people is a whole other polemic, it just important to remember the term accessibility.  Such locations as seen in the film do not have access to all of that those do in other parts of the country.  They do not choose to send their children to inadequate schools; they do not choose to live in unstable housing; they do not choose to live without healthcare.  The list goes on.  The point being is that access is limited for the inhabitants of these environments.  With that notion of limited accessibility, individuals must adapt.  Thus, they create a new culture and their offspring only become products of the same culture.  Patterns are terribly hard to break.  Just remember that no matter how foreign or problematic Appalachian life may seem, it is not a conscious choice, it is a cultural phenomenon that has resulted from structural flaws in the institutions of our society.  




For fun I'd like to leave you with some examples of modern cases that raise some of the same ethical dilemnas that those images of Appalachia did over half a century ago...


This is where I'm from.  There are definitely problems concerning weight and health here.  But from a first hand experience, generalizing and broadcasting on national TV the whole city as obese did NOT go over well at home.  

This is a clip from a documentary that has become quite popular.  I have even watched this in classes during my time at OU.  Boone County is not all that far away from my hometown.  For that reason, I usually find myself slinking down in my seat and cringing at the remarks and generalizations most students have after watching this film.  Introducing The Dancing Outlaw: Jesco White...