PiA Freewrite #2: "Colonial"

February 19th, 2014 (I had been absent for a while due to a nasty bug so I don't have the freewrites from the beginning of the month. Ah well, I came back with this.)


Keyword: Colonial

What I did learn from Keywords is that the term "colonial" has changed greatly from the Ancient Greek word colonia, which meant the land owned by soldiers as reward for their service, to the colonial we know as a source of national pride. However, in doing such, the early colonists ended p becoming the people they were trying to avoid: violent claimers of land who used slavery and elimination in the name of "freedom". It reminds me of the debate we had in class weeks ago about "nation" and what defines a "fake" American where, I noticed, no one mentioned Native Americans once (professor's note: "Except for the 'playing indian' part?"). Perhaps it's this kind of contradiction that is present in the play (if I had time to read it :( ). This keyword s definitely one to really think about to see if we actuallly held true to it, beyond the physical meaning of owning land away from the mother country.

The Performance in America entries: Intro and "American"

This is a new series I'll be blogging about. In my final semester at Brooklyn College, I took a course in the American Studies department called "Performance in America" out of fascination and as a way to maintain a full-time student status (Even though I only needed two credits to graduate). At the beginning of each class, we were given about 5-10 minutes (depending on the professor present; it was jointly taught) to write freely about the topic being covered for the day, generally a "keyword" and the cases involved with it. I kept most of mine and figured, eh, why not document them on here? And so, let's begin!

Freewrite #1. January 29th, 2014

Keywords: "America", "Culture"

One thing that intrigued me in Keywords... (our textbook for the course) was that it's not a dictionary but an exploration of how the definitions came to be. In the introduction, it is important to note that there are many other terms that will be brought in but not explored deeply. In American, I thought it was interesting how the term "America" is defined as a culture and as a geographic term. It reminds me of something my Sociology professor asked, which was "What the hell makes us 'American'?" And here, it is seen how complicated it gets. The same goes for "culture", which is seen as a historical point and a lifestyle choice. It's how, as an Irish person, I'm expected to be a heavy drinker (which I'm not) because of cultural stigma versus knowing folklore, like selkies or the history of the Troubles. I will admit it was a little difficult to understand "culture" compared to "America" due to the broadness of how America was explored.