Reading Old Books in a Modern World

Hi, my name is Vicky. I’ve been majoring in Computer Information Systems since last semester, I was doing accounting before and decided it wasn’t for me. I don’t have a favorite book, but I do like to read a lot. Mostly non-fictions like memoirs, personal finance, food related books and things of that ilk. Currently I’m reading Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, and New Elite by Jim Taylor and Doug Harrison. I like to cook, play pool and swim. I go to off-Broadway shows at least twice a week, I also go to classical music concerts. I’m only recently getting into attending galleries and museums. I plan to pick up the violin again and if I could, get some piano lessons in there, too.

In regards to the Paul Jay writing, I largely wasn’t confused by it. I understood his message but it’s his way of wording that I find somewhat difficult to understand. He words things in a flowery way and repeats them over and over which makes it tedious to read. I did have to read his work a couple times to fully understand that all he’s trying to say is globalization has an impact on every aspect of life, and he’s going to go into detail about how it affects the literary part.

I do like the part where Paul Jay said

“…globalization is dated as beginning in at least the sixteenth century and covering a time span that includes the long histories of imperialism, colonization, decolonization, and post-colonialism. This is both a historically sound approach to globalization and it has the practical benefit of historicizing literary and cultural studies…”

I find myself agreeing with his definition of globalization to start when the world was exploring itself and ideas started to exchange.

My name is Fathia Adam and this is my first semester at Baruch. I am majoring in Entrepreneurship under Management major. My favorite book is Who Was Rosa Parks. On my spare time, I enjoy going to the park, drawing, reading, working, hang out with friends, and watching movies. I will like to own my own business one day so majoring in Entrepreneurship will give me a great start. Likewise, business will allow me to take risks and experience many different things which is exciting.

In my opinion, reading Jays text was very challenging because of the language and the vocabulary that the author has used. The authors statements that is still confusing to me is,

 “We tend to link agency to culture autonomy and to measure culture autonomy in terms of a society’s ability to protect its culture identity from being watered down or erased by alien culture forms; but every culture is always shaped by other cultures, and agency has more to do with intelligent and imaginative negotiation of cross-culture contact than with avoiding such contact”.

 What leaves me to question about this statement is the author argues that agency has more to do with intelligent and imaginative negotiation of cross-culture contact than with avoiding such contact. In my opinion, my understanding of agency is the ability to make one’s own decision so does the author mean that agency is still restricted to curtain extent because he described it to be imaginative?

     Hello. My name is Joshua Mendoza and as i attend Baruch college i will be majoring in Accounting. Out of the books i read in 2014 my favorite was And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. It was a really great book about mystery. I like hanging out with my family as much as i can and my hobbies include playing basketball, video games and working out.

As for the reading from Jay’s Text i actually felt that the whole text was confusing but a little repetitive. It kind of seemed that the author kept making the same statements but just rewording them.

“The field continually builds on the strength of new critical approaches and paradigm shifts, which may seem at first as though they are fragmenting the discipline when in fact they are renewing it.”

This is one of the many statements in the text that confused me. I understood the statement but did not really know what the author was referring to when talking about the field.

My name is Michael Martello and I am a marketing major graduating next fall. I don’t particularly have a favorite book of all time but recently have read a few that have stood out to me: Defending Jacob and Gone Girl, so I guess you can say I like contemporary murder mysteries (and New York Times bestsellers). I like to go to the beach frequently (when it’s warm), longboard, write, and adventure to new places in the city, state, and around the country.

The one line in Jay’s text that confused me and had me rereading it a few times is the following:

As for homogenization and agency, there are no such things as pure, autonomous cultures that are not “contaminated,” as Kwame Appiah puts it, by productive contact with other cultures. Indeed, “homogenization” has emerged as something of a false villain in debates about globalization, in that similarity or uniformity is as much undone by contact with other cultures as it is enforced by it.

The reason this confused me is the wording. The last sentence in particular seems to be too wordy and I am still not exactly sure what he means by this sentence. I understand what he must mean by “false villain,” how homogenization is not the “culprit,” but I don’t understand how “uniformity is as much undone by contact with other cultures as it is enforced by it.” Does this mean each culture forces particular cultures to act, think, and abide by their rules and morals? The next few lines about how alien cultures shape other cultures does not necessarily suggest that because alien cultures are simply “shaping” other cultures almost naturally rather than “enforcing” rules or cultural doings. It’s not clear to me the connection he is making.