Ancient Literature in our Modern World

Hello!

My name is Melanie Camacho and this is my second semester attending Baruch. I find interest in traveling,  dancing and reading. One of my favorite books is “Sam’s Letters to Jennifer” written by James Patterson.

I had difficulty understanding the following section of Paul Jay’s Global Matters: The Transnational Turn in Literary studies:

 “Many scholars insist that globalization characterized as it is by the exchange of cultural commodities central to the fashioning of identity and the exercise of social power, facilitates new forms of agency, while others lament what they see as the oppressively homogenizing effects of cultural globalization. Whereas scholars once ignored the role of gender in studying both the impact and benefits of globalization, over the last ten years gender has become a crucial object of analysis in the study of globalization.”

What confused me was when Paul Jay wrote “oppresively homogenizing effects of cultural globalization”. What does that mean? What would he say are some oppresively homogenizing effects and how can they effect cultural globalization? I would also like to understand why the scholars ignored the role of gender and what else might have been ignored when studying both the impact and benefits of globalization in the past.

Hello everyone! My name is Maria Janiza Joy Gesmundo. I have a long name but you can call me Janiza! This is my first semester at Baruch as a transfer student. I am an international student and I just moved here 2 years ago. My major is Computer Information Systems because of my love and interest for computers and business. I enjoy web coding, programming, digital marketing, graphic design and dancing! My favorite book is “Florante at Laura” by Francisco Balagtas. It was a reading for my Philippine Literature class back in high school when I was in the Philippines.

This portion of Paul Jay’s Global Matters that I found confusing:

“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 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 a society’s ability to protect its cultural identity from being watered down or erased by alien cultural forms…” I didn’t quite understand what he was trying to explain about the whole homogenization in this segment. The linking of agency and cultural autonomy confused me more as I read it further. The author having it mixed had me confused throughout the paragraph.

Hi,

My name is Anand Patel and I am a 1st semester transfer student majoring in Accounting. I don’t read often and if I had to pick a favorite book it would be The Great Gatsby, which was a book I enjoyed to read which also had a movie release.

The section from the text that really threw me off was:

Page 3 midway down                                                                                                                                   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 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 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-cultural contact than with avoiding such contact. Agency from this point of view is a function of that negotiation, not…

The part where I italicized is where I was thrown off. I couldn’t put together what Jay meant by Agency. He states it multiple times as you read further but just the way he wrote it made it really confusing to me. I also wasn’t sure what he meant by “we tend to link agency to cultural autonomy”. Hopefully we discuss this in class so I can better understand this section.

Hello, my name is Samuel Cheung, and I am currently a senior studying accounting.  Some of my interests include hanging out with friends, and building customized computers.  I read pretty regularly, but I have not read an actual book in quite some time; most of my readings are online articles.  If I am to choose something I read in the past that I found enjoyable, it would either be The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, or Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow.

One part of Paul Jay’s Global Matters that I am unsure about is in the middle of page three: “And, clearly, agency is variously enabled and circumscribed by gender.  The study of globalization both inside and outside of literary studies will not work without attention to this gender difference.”  He moved from agency between nations and cultures to gender rather suddenly.  I am not totally sure how that part connects with the rest of the paragraph.

Hello, fellow classmates! My name is Marc Densing and I am a Corporate Communications major here at Baruch. At the present moment, my favorite book is Noli me Tangere (Touch Me Not) written by one of the national heroes of the Philippines, Jose Rizal. In my spare time, I involve myself in my dance team, managing three non-profits, being a foodie and exploring new places in the city, and SoulCycle.

The following quote from Jay is the one I found to be the most thought-provoking:

“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-cultural contact that with avoiding such contact.”

I agree to an extent that every culture is always shaped by other cultures, but each culture must also be able to develop and come into its own identity. I just feel that his thoughts and concepts in this particular paragraph were a little unclear and were not conveyed as well as others.

My name is Adriana Roteanu. My major is Finance with a minor in International Business. My dream is to make money while I travel. Although it sounds cliché, the idea to be able to move from place to place and discover different cultures in their own nest, makes me really excited. My favorite book is “the lost symbol” by Dan Brown. I enjoy a good mystery book.
In Jay’s book, the following text really confused me:
“It is certainly true that the globalization of literary studies challenges some traditional and often valuable practices in ways that have become controversial. It is no surprise that globalization studies, especially to the extent that they are associated with department of English, are often seen as a threat to the already transnationalized fields of comparative literature or postcolonial studies.”
How did it become a threat?

Hello all,

My name is Oly Carrasco and this is my second semester at Baruch.

Back in my country I completed 129 credits in Civil Engineering, but later in my life I decided that my true call was the business field. I obtained an Associate’s degree in Business Administration-Accounting last year and decided to come to Baruch and pursue my Bachelor’s degree in Accounting with a minor in Organizational Psychology.

I work full time as an HR Operational Assistant at a company called Allied Barton Security Services handling union benefits paid to the employees. My interests academically are business operations, math, and generally everything related to numbers and money!

I’m also happily married and have 6 year old boy, he is the love of my life!

My favorite book is “The Secret”. I read it and feel that it changed my life. Before reading that book I didn’t believe in any of those theories of energy and the fact that you can attract good and bad things to your life and that is the book is all about. But I realized that if those principles are so true in physics (one of my other favorite fields) why not applying them to our own life?

The portion of the book I didn’t quite understand is the following:

“My goal in this book is to review and intervene in each of these debates. First of all, I challenge the idea that the transitional turn in literary and cultural studies can simply be linked to recent developments related to what we have come to call “globalization”. In fact, this turn has roots that run back through theoretical developments in the humanities and social and political movements outside of the academy that began in the 1960s. In addition, I argue that it is a mistake to approach globalization itself as a contemporary phenomenon and that it makes much more sense to take a historical overview in which globalization is dated as the beginning in at least the sixteenth century and covering a time span that includes the long histories of imperialism, colonization, decolonization, and neocolonialism.”

During the entire reading it was kind of difficult for me to identify which “side” he was supporting. Especially in this paragraph the author seems to be arguing against both theories instead of leaning towards one.

Hi class, my name is Rafael Cortes-Escamilla.

I know my last name is long, so Raf, Rafa or Rafael are fine. I’m currently a junior at Baruch College, I planned on majoring in Advertising and Marketing Communications. So, yeah business major.

One of my favorite book is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

A few of my interests beside staying at home and being on Netflix is spending time exploring the city and traveling to all 5 Boroughs. I love spending time with my dog, Hachi, he’s a Shiba Inu. Bouncing around bars and have a nice chill time with friends, family and strangers as well. That’s a bit of me.

The part that I found confusing 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 whither cultures as it is enforced by it.”

What I’m not able to understand is if in this writing are they trying to prove that cultures are contaminated by other cultures and people or if its just a single idea still being under construction and without any real foundation to it.

Thanks !

Hello All,

My name is Muhammad Ahsan but you can all call me by my middle name, Yasir. Currently, my major is Finance and I’m double majoring in Communications and Industrial Organizational Psychology. My favorite book, one of which I am not yet done reading, is “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” by Susan Cain. I’m sort of a foodie and love eating food that comes from different cultures and try to visit a new restaurant every week. I enjoy doing cardio and lifting weights and it’s become a daily routine to add to my healthy lifestyle.

In Jay’s text, the first paragraph on page 4, he states “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. Principles of coherence that have guided the field for decades have given way to a focus on pluralities, differences, hybrid identities, and complicated transnational geographies that are seemingly incoherent and unmanageable. I do not agree, because I believe that literary studies as a field has always thrived on fragmentation and challenges to coherence.”

What I don’t understand why he believes the fragmentation caused by the transnational outcome of literary studies after globalization is what makes the field thrive. There are of course different perspectives to a study done by different people but that does not mean that one should continuously study a single culture when it has been studied before. This same attitude is, from my perspective, what prevents literary studies from thriving because recent and unstudied topics aren’t given attention.

My name is Lukasz Pienczykowski, and my name clearly presents that I came from another country.  Lukasz is a Polish name that translates to Luke in English. I wish my last name translated into something shorted in English to make my life a little simpler. I major in Computer Informational systems which is also one of my best interests.  In addition, to informational systems I’m interested in healthy living, music and history. Depending on time allowance I enjoy combining some of my interests. My favorite book is Robinson Crusoe which I read when I was a kid but I still consider it as one of my best readings.

I decided to quote the following from Jay’s text:

“Furthermore, in my view the debate over whether globalization is an economic or cultural phenomenon is based on a false distinction. We cannot neatly separate Economics from cultural commodities….”

I was always under the assumption that the two are independent of each other.  The author provides some brief explanation as to his standing in the matter but I find it confusing to have the two mixed. I never researched this subject but perhaps reading the book will help me understand his point.