MLO 3: Secondary Culture
- Students describe concepts of culture and use that understanding in their comparison of the target culture with the second culture.
- Students will analyze and make connections among the ways of thinking and perspectives, behavioral practices and cultural products of a second culture.
Narrative
3.1
I took Span 308: History/Culture of Aztlan to fulfill Second Culture MLO. This course covered the history and culture of the Mexican American people. Although I did not have any assignments directly asking me to compare Mexican culture to my target culture, I found myself doing this anyway throughout the semester. One thing I noticed immediately, was how different Mexican culture is than Japanese culture. Japan has one of the longest uninterrupted histories in the world, dating back almost two thousand years, whereas, Mexico gained its independence after America did. Furthermore, Mexican Americans still are having troubles today fully comprehending their own identities in the context of having the US government label them as Hispanic/Latino, even though they might not identify as such. Japan is a much more homogenous society, where people eat similar foods, attend similar style schools, watch similar TV programs and all-around have a much more solid foundation on which to live on. 3.2 Assignments like the Chapter 1 & 2 Analysis and the Seminar 1 timeline helped me establish the history of the second culture which I learned about. For the Analysis, I gave a brief summary of the Chapters from Gonzales' Mexicanos textbook and also gave my own opinion on what I found interesting in the text. I like how the teacher wanted us to think analytically and insert our own opinion into our writing. It allowed me to really think about not just the historical events, but also what it meant to the Mexican peoples how it affected them. In the Historical Writing Document, I basically took what I learned from the text and created my own version choosing what I found to be the important parts of the Mexican-American people's history. This paper helped me better understand their perspectives and practices. Finally, for the annotated bibliography I chose to research Corky Gonzales, who was a famous figure in the Chicano movement. He was most famous for his poem I am Joaquin which is one of the most famous poems (cultural product) in the Chicano movement. I did have some challenges while taking this course, the first and foremost being that I was in capstone at the same time. Being a 300 level upper division Spanish Culture course, the class involved a high volume of reading and writing, but I managed to get the work done somehow. I'm glad I chose this class for my second culture requirement. The text was interesting and the assignments well thought-out. |
Courses Completed Toward MLO 3
Span 308: History/Culture of Aztlan
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sem1_2analysis_silbert.pdf | |
File Size: | 56 kb |
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sem1_timeline_silbert.pdf | |
File Size: | 201 kb |
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steven_silbert_sem3_historical_writing_document.docx | |
File Size: | 283 kb |
File Type: | docx |
steven_silbert_sem4_annotated_bibliography.pdf | |
File Size: | 1039 kb |
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