My classes

Tomorrow we arrive at hawaii, which is pretty much the "buy all the stuff you forgot to bring" country in my case it's just suncscreen and tons of cookies... hot chocolate is about $2 the glass so its quite expensive to buy snacks, but then again they feed us quite well so I can't complain... much. In a couple of minutes i'll have my Global Studies class, which is required for any SAS student, so I'll just post the classes I'm taking with the formal summary and a brief personal comment, which will be posted in blue.

SEMS 101 Global StudiesSubject: GeographyProfessor Richard Farkas
This interdisciplinary course focuses on the countries visited and is tailored especially to meet the global and comparative approach of Semester at Sea. It is mandatory for all students. In addition to providing basic information about the countries on the itinerary, Core also provides a meaningful framework by which to compare data, examine issues, and develop concepts. Participants learn how to understand cultural and social phenomena with which they are constantly coming into contact during the semester and to highlight both commonalities and differences from one society to another. Core equips participants with observational and analytical skills for encountering societies different from their own, and different from each other, a key factor in facilitating the integration of class work and field work for all courses. Objectives: 1) To provide basic information about the physical and cultural geography; key historical events; the current social, economic and political situation of each country visited. 2) To present regional and global issues which in various ways affect the countries on our itinerary. Examples include race relations, population, poverty, ethnic/religious conflicts, technology, and status of women, human rights, environment and globalization. 3) To emphasize the similarities and differences in the variety of human experiences and to assist students in developing the observational and analytical skills needed to draw cross-cultural comparisons. Method of evaluation based on four or five objective tests.

Now this is the class everybody has to take, the teacher is nice, he’s a good speaker but up to this moment nobody knows what the class is going to be about. Really, he keeps on talking about what kind of generation we are, supposedly we are called the Millenials. This really bothers me because he is all the time talking about “we the Americans”, “we”, “we”, “we’ and not everybody in here is American, we are a very minuscule minority but still… “we”s tends to be problematic. However I can say that I learned one thing and that is where to find, or more appropriately, see the federal express arrow. Just in case you have never seen it I’ll give you a clue: it is white. And then again since he’s giving the class to 500 hundreds students in an auditorium called the Union, it’s a great time to finish other homework while he makes silly jokes that only baby boomers could get.

SEMS 157 Writing and Reading Creative Non-FictionSubject: English WritingProfessor Tom Klein (Syllabus - 109 Kb PDF)
Variously called the new journalism or literary non-fiction, creative non-fiction is a form of writing and seeing which employs the techniques of the creative writer, the poet, the playwright and the novelist, to dramatically render a picture, a place, a person or an idea. Where standard non-fiction like explanation or exposition focuses on concepts, ideas and facts, creative non-fiction uses story, imagery, quotation, description, metaphor and the personal voice of the engaged author to bring alive an experience. We will read memoirs, journals, personal narratives and travelogues, many situated in the countries we will be visiting, by accomplished writers like Erika Warmbrunn (Where the Pavement Ends: One Woman’s Bicycle Trip), Andrew Pham (Catfish and Mandala), Barry Lopez (Arctic Dreams), and Peter Hessler (River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze), examining their technique and method, and then practicing these with students’ own travel journals. Methods of evaluation include attendance, presentations, in-class exercises, occasional quizzes, and field work journals. Prerequisites: None.

This class is a little bit werid since it's given by two teachers and not any two teachers but a married couple. Up to this moment the dynamic is great and they really balance each other. Basically, although writing has always scared me a bit, I’m really exited about what I could create while taking it and anyway, for the rough times I’ll always have my Webster thesaurus near to guide me… jaja seriously I hang out with a dictionary pretty much all the time, though I haven’t used it, it gives me some kind of psychological reassurance, words are on my side kinda thing... so to each its own.

SEMS 111 Introduction to World CinemaSubject: Film StudiesProfessor Joan Mandell (Syllabus - 105 Kb PDF)
What can we learn from cinema about the countries on our itinerary? This course is an overview of aesthetic, structural and thematic aspects of films and video from each of the countries we will visit, through the study of characteristics that distinguish the cinema of these countries. Investigating the ways societies are represented on screen, students will learn about the culture of these countries and how they have influenced and been influenced by global trends in popular culture. This course will also examine productions by directors who are living in diasporic communities. Some of the topics explored in the course will be: fiction and documentary form and narrative, the ways audiences perceive meanings, broader political and social contexts for world cinema and film as medium. Students will be evaluated on their Class preparation and participation, Quizzes, A short one page response paper for each country visited, and In-depth classroom presentation on observations of the movie theater experience, and a group presentation. Suggested Pre-requisites: None.

Now this one is a great class, so much that there have been really long waiting lines of people who wanted to get in and couldn’t, but I did so JA!. We have already seen some interesting movies from Hawaii, we’ll go to a Bollywood studio in India and the teacher happens to speak Arabic fluently so she’ll be our informal guide in Egypt which is awesome. Also I happen to seat next to a girl who shares my love for anime and even though none of us speaks Japanese we are so going to see Miyozaki's newest movie on theater once we get. For those of you who have none idea of what i'm talking about, Miyozaki is like the greatest director of japanese anime continuously breaking expectation and box office records in Japan, he's has almost divine status in Japan media world. Some of his most famous movies are Princess Mononoke and Howl's Moving Castle.


SEMS 391 Great Asian Religious TraditionsSubject: History of Art and ArchitectureProfessor Larry Silver (Syllabus - 89 Kb PDF)
SAS students will encounter the two great missionary religions of Asia: first (chronologically and in sequence) Buddhism and (later) Islam. The former, which arose from a historical prophet figure (born ca. 563 BCE) in north central India, quickly spread through China and Japan, as well as the Himalayas and Southeast Asia. The latter, focused around another prophet figure (b. ca. 570 CE/AD) in the Arabian Peninsula, has grown to be most geographically far-flung of all religions, extending from the Western Mediterranean to Southeast Asia. Both competed for adherents with the indigenous religion of subcontinental India, Hinduism. We shall examine their overlaps and marked contrasts, examining the character of each religion through its art and architecture as well as the historical conflicts with the others, which still characterize their interactions today. This course will examine the principal tenets and the basic history of each religion but will also focus on the visual culture–both architecture and art–that arose to serve their communities. It will be organized both historically and geographically to encompass the wide range of diverse practices and art forms in different periods and regions. Evaluation will consist of: Two comparison papers based on shore experience and research from ship library, and a final examination of comparative essays, using basic knowledge of visual material. Suggested Pre-requisites: any course in world religions or world history.

I love this class, my love goes to such extends that I made a 2 hour line to get it, and added it even though it required me to buy 6 more books. Yet its is great it’ll be like philosophy, sociology and anthropology through art the teacher has a very interdisciplinary approach and is walking encyclopedia, i have never been so interested in Buddha and all his variations in my life. I’m pretty sure it’ll make my trips in countries far more enriching. And, he happens to take tai chi with me everymorning at 6 am on the top deck so he's really one of this cool old guys you just love to hang around.

Coommunication
To those that lost the paper I gave you, or to whom I couldn’t give the paper, here are all the postal addresses were you can write me. It costs 84cents to send me a letter and you should send it two weeks before I get to the postal address you are sending the letter. Anyway, they give you all the directions (with suggested airmail date – that is last day to send them).

http://www.semesteratsea.com/voyages/fall2006/fa2006_communicatewship.html