It has been a very busy quarter and as you can see I was so swamped that I did not blog at all. I took three classes and one independent study for a total of 13 credits. My classes were fantastic, my professors mostly good and my fellow students, AMAZING.
The most memorable of the classes was Palestine and Israel Conflict, it totally blew my mind. It was taught but a female, Palestinian women whose parents were forced into Lebanon during the 1948 war. She attending University in Lebanon and got her Ph.D at Purdue. She was absolutely one of my most favorite instructors I have ever encountered. Each class was more riveting then the next and their was no busy work, each assignment had a specific purpose and each book read was excellent. I focused my final project on Christian Zionism; the American churches support and response to the conflict/occupation. As part of my project I was able to interview my dear friend Molly who is currently living in Cyprus on a mission to eventually live in Israel and support the Jewish people. We had a great dialog and I was able to learn much from her emails regarding her beliefs. It is to much to go into the entire project and everything I learned but I will say that although I understand the Christian perspective of supporting a Jewish state, I am not in total agreement and I am disturbed by the treatment of the Palestinians. The gross injustices that have been going on are heartbreaking and I couldn't help but think of the words that Jesus spoke, to love your neighbor as yourself and do good to those who hurt you. As an indigenous person to this country I can understand the pain of having your land forcefully taken away. As I was reading the texts I kept thinking of how if I were Palestinian I would be furious at the idea that some other country could just endorse the giving away of my country to people who had not lived their in three thousand years. It was a challenging but tough class to sit through. I am still processing but will report back later on my thoughts. The two texts are Sharing the Land of Canaan and One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.
I also took North American History 1850-present. Great readings but our professor had never taught the class before and it was horribly unstructured and much class time was wasted. We read, Howard Zinns second part to A History of the United States, the Twentieth Century, we also read Kaleidescope which is a collection of stories from the US that relate to history. Zinn is amazing, if you have never read his books you have to go out an buy them right now. Kaleidescope was ok, I hadn't read first hand narratives of slaves except for Fredrick Douglas, it also had some great Native authors, Alexie, Silko ect... The papers required were mostly reflections on your place in history which was a good process.
Power, privilege and diversity rounded out my class schedule, I have taken lots of these kinds of classes in the past and I always enjoy them. We read Takaki, A different mirror and a text book on racism. Great times with other students!
Please excuse my scattered words and bad grammar. I am just processing and don't have the energy to edit my post!
