Intercultural Studies - portfolio by Michelle Puig by https://padlet.com/michellepuig611/juwy35vwrkapq1r3 en-us 2022-09-06 14:31:50 UTC 2022-11-03 03:52:21 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet.net/icons/png/1f4dc.png 1- What is culture? michellepuig611 https://padlet.com/michellepuig611/juwy35vwrkapq1r3/wish/2284789179 Saba F. Safdar describes culture as "like water to fish", and quotes Triandis who says "Culture has been broadly defined as the human-made part of the environment, including material and subjective elements of culture". She then goes on to explain how culture can be seen through the way in which we insult others and the types of jokes we make. 

]]> 2022-09-06 14:46:02 UTC https://padlet.com/michellepuig611/juwy35vwrkapq1r3/wish/2284789179 2- Language and the way we think michellepuig611 https://padlet.com/michellepuig611/juwy35vwrkapq1r3/wish/2307689225 This short video compiles different bilingual people and professors talking about how they feel about the statement "Do we think differently in different languages?". There is a brief mention of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which we discussed last class, and also the Thinking for speaking hypothesis, which posits that language-specific structures direct the speaker's attention to specific aspects of objects and events. At around minute 3:24, professor Panos Athanasopoulos makes a statement which I found very interesting. He says that a very good reason to learn another language is to gain a different perspective on the world]]> 2022-09-21 23:36:47 UTC https://padlet.com/michellepuig611/juwy35vwrkapq1r3/wish/2307689225 3- "Race is everything" michellepuig611 https://padlet.com/michellepuig611/juwy35vwrkapq1r3/wish/2318408603 Little fires everywhere is a short series based on the book of the same name written by Celeste Ng. The series deals with many different subjects, but the main ones are race, class, and motherhood.
The story unfolds during the late 1990s in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a planned community with manicured lawns and beautiful colonial houses not far from Cleveland. This place was founded on utopian principles, it was one of the first planned communities in the US, it had integrated schools and has always prioritized diversity. The contradictions between Shaker Heights ideals and its inhabitants becomes one of the central conflicts in this story.
It all starts when Mia Warren and her teenage daughter Pearl, whose race is not identified in the book but are represented by black actresses in the show, arrive in Shaker Heights and encounter Elena Richardson and her family. Elena happens to own an apartment which Mia and Pearl rent during their stay in Shaker Heights. From this moment on, both families begin to build a web of relationships based on white-saviourism, ignorance, and microaggressions. Both mothers begin a -not so silent- war of motherhood as they try to protect their children from each other.
This show covers many important topics, each one being expanded upon in a different chapter. For example, during one of the first episodes, Lexie, Elena's eldest daughter, needs to write about an experienced hardship for her Yale application. Growing up in a very protected environment she can't think of anything worth writing, which is why she decides to steal Pearl's story of how she was denied to get access to a higher level math class due to being prematurely judged by the admissions teacher and not given a fair change to prove herself. Her boyfriend, who is also black, gets very mad at her but she can't understand his reasoning and thinks it's not a big deal.
I could not recommend both this series and book enough! It is currently available on Prime video, it only has 8 chapters so you could easily watch it during a lazy weekend.
]]> 2022-09-29 00:14:05 UTC https://padlet.com/michellepuig611/juwy35vwrkapq1r3/wish/2318408603 4- Growing up Native in America michellepuig611 https://padlet.com/michellepuig611/juwy35vwrkapq1r3/wish/2328403075  In this video, youtuber Ellie Dashwood tells us what it was like for her to grow up as Native American. She explains that her mother is white and her father is Native, so even though she is mixed (she is a part of the Muscogee and Seminole tribes), her mother tried her best to raise her honoring her Native American culture. Ellie then provides some information from teachingforchange.org which states that children have a core sense of racial/ethnic identity developed by the age of 5. This is why she explains that she felt very much Native American (or Indian, as she describes herself), but also white at the same time. However, by the time she was in school, she discovered that she “passed” for white, and that this conditioned people to view her as a part of a different race/ethnicity depending on their background. ]]> 2022-10-05 23:41:43 UTC https://padlet.com/michellepuig611/juwy35vwrkapq1r3/wish/2328403075 5- Suffragettes: Emily Davidson michellepuig611 https://padlet.com/michellepuig611/juwy35vwrkapq1r3/wish/2356110809 In this video, journalist Claire Balding delves into the death of Emily Davidson, the woman who eas run over by the king´s horse during Derby day in 1913. Emily is often seen as a martyr, but her "sacrifice" was not an isolated case. She was a part of the WSPU, was arrested and force fed multiple times, and was also involved in numerous types of protest to achieve suffrage. 
This thorough investigation shows that Emily did not actually commit suicide, but that she was hoping to attach something to the king´s horse during the race. Footage of that day is shown, where Emily can be seen holding something white and trying to present it to the jockey riding the king´s horse. 
The item that Emily seemed to have wanted to attach to the horse was an original suffraggete silk scarf. This scarf was acquired by a writer through auction. The story behind it is that it belonged to the daughter of a clerk who was working on Epsom during that Derby day and found it in the course after the incident. 
There is a rule under civil law that states every subject can make a petition directly to the king. This could possibly explain why Emily tried to approach the king´s horse directly and present an object to it. Unfortunately, she miscalculated the speed at which the horse would hit her and the injuries that would ultimately be fatal. ]]> 2022-10-25 20:02:15 UTC https://padlet.com/michellepuig611/juwy35vwrkapq1r3/wish/2356110809 6- Second wave feminism: Mona Lisa smile michellepuig611 https://padlet.com/michellepuig611/juwy35vwrkapq1r3/wish/2362308142 Mona Lisa Smile is a movie set in 1953, which coincides with the beginning of the second wave of feminism. Katherine Watson, our protagonist, is an history teacher who accepts a position at Wellesley College, a women-only institution. Throughout the movie we discover that her students deal with many difficulties as they navigate the experience of being a young woman in the 1950s. In this context we can observe how many of the students end up getting married before being able to finish their degree, since the sole purpose of doing so was to demonstrate their high social and economic status. 
Katherine tries to show the girls that they have other choices besides becoming mothers and wives, and we can see how frustrated she gets every time one of her students gets married and leaves the school. In adittion, another topic the movie covers is the appearance of contraceptive methods. One of the students gets a condom through the school nurse, which is heavily criticized by her classmates, and results in the nurse being terminated. 
Ultimately, the film does a good job of showing us that second wave feminism was all about proving to women that they had other choices, and that they no longer had to abide by men´s rules. ]]> 2022-10-30 19:52:08 UTC https://padlet.com/michellepuig611/juwy35vwrkapq1r3/wish/2362308142 7- Multiculturalism in the UK: michellepuig611 https://padlet.com/michellepuig611/juwy35vwrkapq1r3/wish/2362452042 At the beginning of the video, the presenter shows the percentages of UK´s ethnic groups in the population. The numbers determine that the vast majority of the people are white, and only a few of them are black, indian, pakistani, or from other smaller groups. Kwame McKenzie, , explains that most of the people from these ethnic groups had come from the colonies to the UK during labor shortages in the 50s and 60s, right after the second World War.
Then, he tells us that the most common dish in the UK is checken tikka masala, which is actually a dish that originated whithin the South-East Asian community in England. He uses this as an example to explain how English people are happy about multiculturalism as long as it does not become an economic issue. ]]> 2022-10-31 00:29:21 UTC https://padlet.com/michellepuig611/juwy35vwrkapq1r3/wish/2362452042