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Juan Liebana-MenaHi Zoey! I agree with you that the idea of adding "Look! What do you see?" to a library would be quite useful. I'm thinking of using it when teaching Greek and Latin roots and common cognates between English and Spanish. Are you thinking about any particular way or lesson to use it with? How do you think it would work best?
Juan Liebana-MenaProfessor Yasar’s lecture was very interesting. It was great learning about Japanese film through the work of Yasujiro Ozu, a not very well-known filmmaker in the United States, but still one of the top three post-war filmmakers in Japan along with Akira Kurosawa and Kenji Mizoguchi.
The first clips we watched depicted quite stationary movements and the height cameras were used in the Japanese house. That two and a half feed off the ground height of the camera makes total sense for the shots of a traditional Japanese family that seats on the floor. Also, the interesting thing about Ozu is that he doesn’t cut out the everyday habits of an average Japanese family.
What I appreciated most about Dr. Yasar’s approach were the questions for students he provided us with. This sort of discussion with the students makes for great analysis and curiosity. He covered topics and questions ranging from the historical background and what this reveals, depiction of the family and the family values, or technical questions about the positioning of the cameras and motion.
The final discussion about Rey Chow’s sentimental situations about Chinese cinema was quite revealing. I found many of these key themes as recurrent with American cinema or western cinema. Recurrent themes such as poverty, childhood and old age, togetherness and separation, the passing of time, or manifestations of nature are also present in Ozu. These recurrent themes give us an idea of how to understand Japanese cinema. Both Chinese and Japanese share common elements such as Confucianism. In addition, I learned about the very common Japanese themes such as the four seasons, tension between duty/obligation (giri) and human emotion (ninjo), loneliness, and impermanence and decay.
Juan Liebana-MenaThe afternoon lecture about Mao and his legacy on Contemporary Chinese Culture was quite informative and enjoyable. Dr. Michael Berry’s knowledge and approach based on how to dissect movies with our students in the classroom make it very feasible. I really valued the way that he didn’t only gave us content, but ways we can embed this content in our lessons and instill curiosity in our students.
The section of the lecture about cartoons and photography was quite revealing about the importance of injecting government values into the art that society consumes. The posters and elements of propaganda portraying General Mao with this god-like presence or even his wife as a kind of cultural czar. I was really struck by the presence of Mao’s political ideology even in the school textbooks. His presence and admiration was present even an in science and math book, which tells you how aggressive his propaganda machine was during the time he ruled.
My favorite part of the lecture was the Chinese Cinema with Hollywood Characteristics. Dr. Berry described how Hollywood or European films had a minimal influence before 1978. It was after that year, when Deng Xiaoping enacted this second cultural renaissance that all these western films started to come through. It’s surprising that even though this Cultural Revolution happened in 1978, it took 15 years until Harrison Ford’s movie The Fugitive became the first official movie to be released in China in 1993.
It was also very interesting seeing and comparing how Chinese films infuse American talent, themes, settings and ideas in order to generate their blockbusters. I learned about how modern Chinese movies operate and how they can use Hollywood actors, talent, remake American movies, etc. to shoot their big hits. The idea of invisible Hollywood that Professor Berry described was quite revealing. It is idea of invisibly investment in Chinese movies in order to benefit from marketing and box offices in China. On the other hand, it was quite eye-opening learning how Chinese investment is in modern movies. This is what professor referred to as invisible China. I didn’t know how much Chinese companies are investing in modern day Hollywood movies. Movies such as Mission Impossible, Passengers, Star Trek, Kong, and Wonder Woman are being produced or invested on by Chinese companies. It was also interesting to know about the qualifications of productions and how a movie qualified as a co-production receives a larger amount of Chinese funding, talent, box offices, etc.
Juan Liebana-MenaThe first session of this program by Dr. Suk-Young Kim was quite interesting and refreshing. I learned a lot of new things about North Korean films and K-Pop that were completely new to me.
Regarding North Korean film, I learned about the importance of the 1970’s in order to layout the aesthetics and standards of North Korean film. When Kim Jong Il was chosen as the heir in 1997, he had to prove himself as the powerful leader, and a prosperous North Korean cinema was a very effective way to do so. In addition, the easy distribution of films, the novelty of the medium, and its controlled art form make film a very important in for North Korea. This shows the essential role that North Korean films play at legitimizing the leader. Film ritualizes staging of the political authority, serves as educational propaganda, and serves as entertainment (especially the movies created after the 1980’s).
The clip Dr. Suk-Young Kim showed us about the 1984 movie Love, Love, My Love was quite interesting to watch since it presented a deviation from the standard of revolutionary themes and focused more on the individual. This movie dealt with the idea of love between two individuals and with a theme related to the government, which shows how themes started to change in the decade of the 1980’s to become a bit more entertaining and deal with ideas that before would have been considered selfish as they didn’t talk about the revolution.
The section about K-Pop was quite interesting and unveiled a way of marketing music and multimedia in a quite diverse and global way. It was eye-opening to know that artists with these massive video productions rarely tour, and when they do they can’t just survive touring in South Korean only. Hence the importance of marketing a product that looks like a live performance via super produced videos that will be consumed in computers and telephones mainly.
It’s important to notice the close relationship between K-Pop and YouTube. In fact, YouTube loves K-Pop since it brought a massive traffic to its site. Both benefit each other. K-Pop provides YouTube with content that is going to generate massive traffic and views, whereas YouTube provides K-Pop artists with a massive platform from where to launch their product to a global market and generate significant revenue.
Juan Liebana-MenaHi everyone! My name is Juan and I'm really excited about this seminar. I've been teaching for 14 years and have been with LAUSD for 10 years. I have taught taught English, ESL and Spanish both at middle and high school level. I'm also an adventurous traveler and have been to over 20 countries and counting. In East Asia, I've only been to Japan though, but I'm planning a trip to China and Korea soon, so I'm looking forward to learning more about east asian countries through the visual culture.
Juan Liebana-MenaAttached is my final essay. Thanks again so much for this opportunity. It was a quite enjoyable course to take and I learned a lot from the materials and interactions with other teachers. I'm looking forward to the second course in the summer.
Juan Liebana-MenaThis is a great resource. The website is very well organized and there are plenty of tools for teachers of all subjects and grade-levels. I particularly like how well structured the ED Tools section is and how you can differentiate by topic, tool, century, state, etc. I really like the resources on the 50th Anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr. assassination and wish I had known about this resource early in the year to share some historical documents with my students. They have covers of newspaper from that exact day, an interactive timeline, lesson plans about the Letter From Birmingham Jail and many other video resources. I will definitely use this website next year when teaching the Civil Rights unit again. Thanks for sharing.
Juan Liebana-MenaHi Alison. That's a great lesson! I love the musical approach with the musical beats and also the Kyoto letters. I have taught haiku before and must admit that it took my students a while to become familiar with the mechanics and structure of a haiku. However, I love using haikus to brainstorm sensory language in narrative writing. What I normally do is having students work on haikus dealing with a specific sense when they are working on the setting of their narratives. For example, one haiku about sight, one haiku about sound, etc. Here are some examples:
Students work on 5 haikus to brainstorm the sights, sounds, smells, touch and taste their characters experience. Then they start transfering them to the setting of their narrative during the drafting process. This simply allows students to face the drafting process from a stress-free point of view. The haiku activity is fun and creative, so once they have completed their haikus, it's must easier to translate that sensory language onto a narrative form.
Juan Liebana-MenaThanks so much for sharing your experience. I visited the Chinese American Museum a few years ago and had a wonderful time too. I just checked their exhibit schedule and think there is a great one for students to both find relevance in today's Los Angeles Asian Arts culture and learn more about Chinese history. They have a current exhibit titled "Don't Believe the Hype: LA Asian Americans in Hip Hop" that opens on May 18. The exhibition includes artwork, videos, and presentation from working DJ's and Hip Hop artists that I think many of our students may find relevant. They address topics such as sterotypes, prejudice, and challenges many Los Angeles Asian American artists encountered on their musicial and artistic journey.
Here's a link to the exhibit: http://camla.org/upcoming-exhibits/
Juan Liebana-MenaI also found connections between between both cultures regarding the importance of taking care of elders. It's interesting how, despite the quite different culture and history, some values seem universal from country to country. The value of filial piety being one of them. You put it very well when you said it is "quite common to have strong family values where we are always expected to take care of one another." This is a quite important cultural value for both countries and quite a universal one for many other countries regardless of their history, language or culture.
Juan Liebana-MenaHi Jacqueline! I agree. As a teacher, it's sometimes quite hard to teach students about the culture and history of another country simply because of how broad this topic can be and how overwhelming a lecture is nowadays. In addition, we teachers have to fight against the incredible media and online video resources that modern platforms such as YouTube of Netfil have to offer. I have been in many situations in the past years when students asked me to watch a documentary when teaching about the historical background of a story we're reading or analyzing. That's why I think this organization you mentioned about Professor Yamashita comes very handy when teachign about the history and culture of another country. I too liked how he organized the lecture and answered many of the questions or misconceptions I had about Japan but while making it interesting and engaging, which kept moving the content forward.
Juan Liebana-MenaHi Christine. That sounds like a quite interesting class activity. I think that's a great way to help students better understand Chinese culture and society and have a global perspective on the two leading economies nowadays. How are you planning on having them discuss this? Are you using any specific strategy or activity (socratic seminar, debate, etc.)? Also, is this an activity to support a unit, text; or is it a stand-alone project?
Juan Liebana-MenaProfessor Sheehan's lecture helped me understand many of the questions I had about China's growth and success. The Myths and Making of Modern China's reading is quite interesting and yields some light on how China's growth is not something as recent as I used to think. As the author explains on page 3, "What made China modern did not begin in 1949, when the CCP came to power ... Rather China's current rise has been a century and more in the making." This really helped me understand more about the rise and success of China. I, and many people I talked about, thought that the Chinese economic miracle was something of the last quarter of the 20th century. I even associated this economic rise to external countries and used to think that the motor behind China's growth was the Western World's outsourcing practices in the search of cheaper labor and manufacturing.
His lecture and use of biography as a means of accessing knowledge and build empathy with the audience was brilliant. I found his analysis of Song Feiqing biography and his approach to teaching using biographies quite useful and plan of using it more often in my daily lessons. I also liked Dr. Dube's comment during this lecture regarding biography and why it's commonly used throught all arts and siciences. His point on how an audience is quite unlikely to relate or feel a connection to a broad topic was brillian. It's true, if you make a book, movie, song about a broad topic such as war, love, the future, etc. without narrowing it down a set of characters, family, etc. that the plot follows all throughout, then your audience won't be much interested since there's no one they can relate or feel empathy to. That's another valuable reason to include biography in my lessons.
Juan Liebana-MenaIt was very interesting learning about Samurais and their origin from Professor Yamashita’s presentation. I had no idea that the bakufu (tent government) was not influenced by the most advanced political theory in Asia at the time (Chinese political theory) but by warrior theory, which was based on warriors and their own interests. One might have thought that the other territories might have adopted practices from the most advanced political theory of the area such as the rest of European territories did after the Greek and Roman empires, so that was quite a surprise. I also enjoyed learning about castles and the transition from mountain to flatland castles due to a matter of power to centralize economic, military and political power. In the Tokugawa period it was very hard to move up the social rank if you were a farmer, but it was easier to keep moving up your ranks if you were a warrior. Also, the Vendetta Registration System was something quite interesting to learn about. The rule to organize a vendetta was only if you were avenging someone from your immediate family. The funny thing is how there was an application and were you had to specify your name, family information, etc. and then apply for formal permission at your closet Tokugawa or domain office, and then it took 1-3 years. Then if you were unable to vendetta, you had to apply to desist, quite an interesting system indeed.
Juan Liebana-MenaI really enjoyed professor Dube’s Up to the Mountains, Down to the Villages lecture. I enjoyed his explanation of Mao’s move to “fight the pollution of the city” by sending them to the countryside to be reeducating and purified by the poor and the peasants. It was a great way to deal with the issue of not having enough jobs or education opportunities in the cities by sending them to the countryside. This would serve as the opportunity to reeducate the people, which would in turn avoid bureaucracy and would prevent revisionism. Particularly interesting was Mao’s message to leaders to be first to send their kids in order to set an example.
In addition, I really enjoyed learning about the western influence in today’s China and how the youth seems to be embracing materialism and western values more and more. Particularly, the case of the Tibetan couple pictures in their traditional environment and towns and in front of a global designer’s shop with a luxurious car. I can see why their story and picture contrast went viral in China’s Internet. The examples of the success of TV series such as the Big Bang Theory or Chinese’s own young TV series also serve as a great example of the validation of materialism and consumerism among modern China’s youth.
