Reading Old Books in a Modern World

Hello my name is Adriana Yanez and I am a transfer student from LaGuardia Community College. I am majoring in accounting at Baruch College since Fall 2014. I am going to tell you a little about myself. One of the things that I do not like is to read that much but one of my favorite books is La Ciudad de las Bestias by Isabel Allende. It is a very interesting adventure of a grandmother with her grandson going to the Amazonas to discover new things. But one of my hobbies is to listened music, dance, and watch movies with my family.

Regarding to the assigned reading for the week, Global Matters by Paul Jay, I found the following quote somewhat confusing:

“Finally, attention to the global flow of cash, cultural commodities, and media necessarily calls our attention to transnational contexts and locations of exchange, and some critics believe it does so in a way that can blind us to the nature of local circumstances, practices, and needs.”

My confusion lies in the connection that he makes between cultural transnational contexts and circumstances with the field that he wants to analyze. I am not sure what he is trying to prove but I understand that his main argument is about how globalization had been reshape literature over the long term. Also, part of my confusion in his text is the complicated wording that he used.

hi my name is Michael Guzman and i just transferred here from bmcc my major in bmcc was business administration. I am pretty much undecided and have a idea of what i might major in. i do not have a favorite book  and i do not remember the last book i read but it for my creative writing class. I am not a dedicated reader i only read books when its necessary like in class readings take home readings etc. my interest are listening to music, relaxing, exercising , art ,watching movies and playing video games.

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

this section from Global Matters: The Transnational Turn in Literary studies written by Paul Jay was confusing for me for one i get that cultures shape other cultures for instance the Romans absorbed various art techniques and cultures from different society for example Egypt the Romans borrowed culture from the Egyptians like education and gods as well as borrowing from Greeks to further their culture. so i get that cultures shape cultures but what i don’t get is what agency hes referring to and what he meant by “agency has more to do with the intelligent and imaginative negotiation of cross-culture contact than with avoiding such contact” ? i was confused by that it is a interesting read but very complex and easy to get confused but its fun to figure it out.

My name is Steven Myint and my major is finance. I’m a U.S. Marine serving for 4 years now. My favorite book is “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki because of the inspiration and enlightenment I received after reading it. I like to play all sports and try new restaurants.

The part I found confusing from Paul Jay’s text,

“The same can be said about agency, which is often linked to debates about homogenization. We tend to link agency to cultural autonomy and to measure cultural autonomy in terms of society’s ability to protect it’s cultural identity from being watered down or erased by alien cultural forms”

I’m not sure what agency is being specified in the context nor can I make a connection between agency and the rest of the context.

Hey my name is Humza Mahmood. I am from Long Island, New York. I am a junior who is majoring in accounting. One of my favorite books that I have read is probably Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. I am personally not a big fan of reading literature but I read this book in high school and it is one of the only books I really got into and enjoyed reading it as well. Some of my other interests are playing sports, going out with my friends and family, playing video games, and just having a good time.

One of the parts I was a little confused with in the reading was:

“One claim that is often made against the changes ushered in by the transnational turn in literary studies is that it has led to a debilitating fragmentation”

My confusion is that what does the the author’s aspect of the meaning of debilitating fragmentation in this context. Also how does transnational change in literary studies cause debilitating fragmentation.

Hi Everyone,

My name is Chanah Schnoll and this english class is the last class I will be taking at Baruch College. I am majoring in Small Business Management and Entrepreneurship with a minor in New Media Arts. I don’t really have a favorite book, but I really enjoyed reading the Fault in Our Stars by John Greene. Even though the book was kind of sad, It was romantic and touching in the way Hazel and Ansel lived everyday of their lives to the fullest in their short time they had left on this earth. In my spare time I enjoy cooking, baking, long boarding, working out, and hanging out with my friends. I also, currently work as the co-organizer of the New York Ecommerce Meetup, which brings together eCommerce professionals to further their knowledge in that subject and network with each other.

As for reading the, “Transnational Turn in Literary Studies” by Jay, I found the part of the text in which he describes how cultures interact with each other and which mediums affect how culture evolves to be confusing:

“And, yet cultural critics are also mistaken when they ignore the economic and material aspects of globalization. As for the 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 of uniformity is as much undone by contact with other cultures as it is enforced by it”

What Jay seems to be saying is that when reading a piece of literature it is crucial to pay attention to the material and economic conditions in which the literature takes place, and to the degree of which the global world effects the cultures of a particular place. However, at the same time he says there is no true way to evaluate a culture in it’s “agency” or purest form because of globalization and the way in which cultures interact with one another. Now, while there is no such thing as complete uniformity and homogenization of every culture because of globalization, which causes the interconnectedness of the entire world, it is important to see how that affects the material state of each place in it’s own time. To me this concept was circular in nature, and rather confusing to put into words. Perhaps that it why the Jay continued to reiterate his point throughout the text to give further clarity to his intended purpose of writing Global Matters.

My name is Zerlina and I’m currently majoring in Marketing. I don’t have a favorite book but Flowers For Algernon is the one book I can re-read multiple times. I love eating but I’m very picky about what I eat. I don’t like anything with dairy; that includes pizza, ice cream, frozen yogurt and etc. I’d take the cheese out of my pizza, substitute sorbet for ice cream, and not eat fro-yo at all. The only form of exercise I enjoy is pilates.

“In addition, I argue that it is a mistake to approach globalization itself as a contemporary phenomenon and that it makes more sense to take a historical view in which 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, rescuing it from those who see globalization as a strictly contemporary or postmodern phenomenon.”

The author Paul Jay is attempting to denounce that globalization is a contemporary phenomenon by stating that it dates all the way back to the sixteenth century. If that was the case, where is the ‘historicizing literary and cultural studies’ that prove so. I agree with Paul Jay that globalization existed in the past (i.e.. Silk Road) however globalization in literature is not as evident.

Hi, my name is Reimu (Remi) Shimode. I am a transfer and I do not have a major yet but I am going to major theater management. I love to read theatrical plays and my favorites are Sam Shepard and Tennessee Williams. I also like to read mysteries as well such as novels by Agatha Christie. I like to dance, read and watch movies. I have three cats and a dog in my parents house.

The part I found confusing from the “Grobal Matters” is …

“…but every culture is always shaped by other cultures, and agency has more to do with the intelligent and imaginative negotiation of cross- cultural contact than with avoiding such contact”.

I simply didn’t understand what he meant by “imaginative negotiation”. The whole text seems to me very confusing because the way he writes one thing and another.

Hi Everyone,

My name is Wilson Ruiz. I am a transfer student from BMCC and I have been attending Baruch College since Spring 2011 on a part time basis. My major is Computer Information Systems and I will be graduating in 2016. My favorite book is The Firm by John Grisham. I enjoy novels of mysteries coming to light. At the moment, my current interest has been music, hang out with friends. I have been running a personal “project” to maximize my capabilities in all areas of my life. The portion of the reading that I couldn’t grasp was “During the same period postcolonial studies emerged to challenge the primacy of discrete national literatures and what seemed like their insular concerns, providing a framework for studying literature and culture in a transnational context that moved beyond and explicitly questioned older Eurocentric models of “comparative” analysis.” The introduction of this book is about how globalization has impacted literature from a cross-cultural perspective. I believe that what the author says on this portion of the reading is that some of the countries that were conquered by Europeans, after they were conquered, the existing culture faded away and the new perspective of the colonial was born, but habitants were not accepting the changes that Europeans brought to the new European colony.

Happy spring 2015 semester!