Reflection

[Nira Sun]

I’ve always enjoyed USC seminar due to its varieties of topics and rich information. I was very interested in gender and generation in general. This seminar provided an opportunity for me to learn gender and generation situation in East Asian countries that I’m able to bring back to my classroom.

Gender:

A lot of times, we focused too much on traditional values and perspectives when learning specific language or culture. We tend to overlook the change in perspective in contemporary society. I found it’s interesting to learn about Ban Zhao who concluded the “Instruction for Chinese women and girls”. All the virtues and skills introduced in this book set a certain expectation on women and girls’ behaviors that have been passed on to this day. Not only will it help students to gain understanding towards traditional values on women, it may also trigger students’ curiosity in regards to how the expectation looks like in modern society. Meanwhile, students can learn to compare these values to western perspectives to investigate the similarities as well as differences. For example, as students learn the societal reasonings behind foot binding, we may guide them to compare the reasonings behind cosmetic surgery. The fundamental motivation behind both behaviors was to “please the outside world by changing one’s certain physical features”. As opposed to foot binding being IMPOSED MANDATORILY on women only, cosmetic surgery is a VOLUNTARY decision that applied to both men and women nowadays. In addition to that, cosmetic surgery is becoming a trend in both eastern and western worlds. I can imagine this being an interesting topic to my students.

Generation:

From Ban Zhao’s standard of being an exemplary woman, we can ask students to consider what “being exemplary” means to them. There will definitely be differences from person to person and from girls to boys. I’m thinking about having students to select one character (ancient vs. modern, eastern vs. western) to represent the most important value(s) that fit their expectations. From all these characters they select, we will get to discuss how expected virtues have changed along with the progress of the society. For example, why are those Korean boy bands so popular even among students in America? I remember my students used to tell me that their songs are so catchy. There is a concept called “fast food culture” which describes a sudden but brief success of a thing or person. Such culture also leaves significant impacts in our perspectives towards relationship, family, and other aspects of life. This is something that’s definitely unique in our generation.

 

Overall, I definitely felt the need of being more knowledgeable as a teacher in order to guide students to successfully perceive different cultures. In addition to learning language only, such topics will intrigue their interests in understanding in how language is influenced by culture in general. This is one major benefit that I’m bringing back to my classes.