Freshman Seminar Fall 17 LC06

Author: z.li23

The Complexity of Love — Arden/Everywhere

In October, Tony, Murphy and I went to the Baruch Act Performing Center to watch the play for our class assignment, “Arden/Everywhere”. The play is based on “As You Like It” written by William Shakespeare. The story talks about the complicated love between the characters. The play revolve around the conflict between Rosalind(Helen Cespedes) and Orlando(Anthony Cason Jr.) As Rosalind fell in love with Orlando at first sight after a wresting match planned by his brother Oliver(Kambi Gathesha), to kill Orlando, each of them had to flee to the forest of Arden to escape their death. Ultimately, Orlando and Rosalind overcome numerous hardships and married.

This is not just a simple romance, it is filled with the love of family, sympathy, and the pursuit of dreams. The interactions between characters made the play more enjoyable.  The director used breaking the fourth wall by the characters to increase interactions between the actors and the audiences. There is a fighting scene that amazed me the most during the entire play. They used slow-motion and lighting to capture the motions of the characters.

Over the play is meaningful and has a happy ending. This is a rare comedy play from William Shakespeare, and it’s a great production of theater. I like the play because of the production of this play is phenomenal, my favorite part of the play is at the end of the play, Orlando married Rosalind, and Duke took back his throne, and last but not least, everyone has a happy ending.

Blog Post #2 Jason Li

 

During the weekend, I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art located in Upper East side of NYC. The MET is one of the world’s largest and finest art museums. Its collection includes more than two million works of art spanning five thousand years of world culture, from prehistory to the present. There is a particular piece of art attracted me. A pottery from Tang Dynasty of ancient China.

“SHE”, a “Figure of a Seated Court Lady”, was made during the 8 century in China, however, due to the large amount of pottery arts were produced during that period of time, the artist who made this classic piece of art is unknown. It’s a very charming pottery figure at the Imperial Court of the Tang Dynasty, of a young lady, meant to be buried with the deceased to keep him or her company, and to entertain them. Things like this were made actually in fairly large quantity, however, at the same time they were finished individually. Each one of them may have an individual character. This tells us about a particular period of time, the so-called Golden Age of the Tang Dynasty when China had constant and frequent contact with the rest of the world. And she is sitting on a drum-shaped stool, imported from South Asia, over the seas. The little puppy that she has is very likely imported from Europe. China was a very cosmopolitan culture, an age when a woman sat on the throne and ruled this vast empire. It was also a time of fashion. The hairdos that she had is one of the thirty-some hairdos of the time. At that time, people had a different concept of beauty. Particularly during that period of time, being skinny was considered poorly fed, it represents lack of money of the family, so having a full body was a representation of wealthy or royal at that period of time. She has a very round full face and she has a full figure. She’s in a private moment, probably was holding a mirror, trying to put on some more makeup. Her little puppy is playing with her slipper. You can tell that she’s very conscious of her beauty. It really shows the real life, you can feel there’s the life force moving around.

This classic pottery of the Tang Dynasty, “SHE”  is a significant cultural heritage as an evidence that shows us the inspiration, combinations with different cultures, the exchanges between the ancient Chinese culture and the other cultures. It’s this exchange, not just materials, but also the different ideas, the different concepts. It also tells us about human nature, about this constant and eternal pursuit of beauty. The luster may go away as time goes by, but this pursuit will never fade.

  

Blog #1

On August 31st, I attended one of the Student Life Workshop, the TITLE IX workshop that hosted by ISSC of Baruch College. The TITLE IX workshop is about what TITLE IX is and what kinds of activity or behavior are considered the violations of TITLE IX. By statistics of things like sexual harassment happen in colleges and the examples, this workshop taught me a lot.

Before I participate in this workshop, I have a few pieces of knowledge of what TITLE IX is, the only thing I knew, it’s about sexual harassment. According to the research from the host, there more than 90% of college students have been or experienced sexually insulted during their 4 years college life. Then the host introduced different types of sexual harassment by giving different examples. Not only men assaulted women, there is also a high rate on women assaulted women. Most of the violations of TITLE IX are language insulting and body touch. At the end of the workshop, the host, and the staffs of ISSC provided us the ways to find assistance at school and ways to protect ourselves. They also mentioned that it’s very important, if you see someone is being insulted by another, you should step in and get help for the person.

Overall, I think this experience is meaningful, cause the way I recognized what TITLE IX was wrong, and before the workshop, I never thought about that sexual harassment are happening so frequently and close to us. So it really a good experience to acknowledge the TITLE IX and to learn how to protect me and the others.