It seems appropriate to reflect on the Human Core course on the final blog post so, I will reminisce and look back on the past year. I will like to argue that Human Core has taught me a lot of history and has been a very interesting course which can become useful in the future. 

     I will focus mainly on the past two quarters since I have already discussed the first quarter before. I will say that reading The Aeneid and discussing the Roman Empire was by far my favorite part of the course.

     In the second quarter, we covered the Inca Empire which was very insightful. In the past, I had not learned much about the Inca besides their origin story, a little bit of their culture, and the fact that the Spanish conquered the land. In Human Core, we learned about the political aspects and how culture and politics go hand-in-hand in society.  In addition, it was interesting to learn the historical events that took place by reading primary sources of the events such as the fall of the last Inca and the Tupac Amaru events. It taught me that, although I unconsciously knew this, the Inca Empire did not fall without a fight. What I truly value are the small details on how history took its course such as comparing the tools and weapons of both the Inca and Spanish, how these weapons were used, and that history could have been extremely different if smallpox didn’t spread so quickly. 

     After the Inca, we read The Tempest, a play by William Shakespeare. To be brutally honest, I do not like Shakespeare’s works so I thought this was going to be an excruciatingly annoying part of Human Core but, due to intriguing lectures and fantastic guidance and analysis from my Seminar Leader, it became manageable. What topped this section off was having to read another adaptation of the play as well as watch many film adaptations of the same play. These movies were a lot more interesting than the original work but, from what I understood, the adaptations did not capture the essence of the original since they would be directed by people who would create an adaptation with similar but different themes. The most valuable part of this section was the discussion of Empire and how language could be used to create an empire as well as destroy one as we see in The Tempest.

     After the play, we moved on to the history of India and its independence. Like much of the world’s history, high school rarely went beyond the borders of the U.S. so many Americans have no clue about the history of other countries in the world. Analyzing Gandhi’s philosophy and discussing them with a group of people led to very interesting discussions and ideas. Beyond just learning a little bit more of history, I also learned how to think more critically about things since, although Gandhi is praised for liberating India, many of his values were a bit questionable. This thought provoking section was quite fascinating for me.

     Starting Spring quarter, Professor Block discussed slavery and the racial and gendered struggles that occurred in it. Once again, high school did not discuss this part of slavery in America since it is too inappropriate for the youth. After that, Professor Vo discussed America’s imperialism in the Philippines, it’s history, the Vietnam War, and the affects the war had on other places such as Cambodia and Laos. I think that these lectures were the most important of the quarter’s lectures because of the atrocities that happened to Cambodians, Laotians, and the Vietnamese which are never discussed since Americans seem to try to forget about the Vietnam War. These events are very important, especially since the U.S. played a role in causing these atrocities.

     After learning about the Philippines, Cambodia, and Vietnam, we learned about Iran and its history towards independence. For us Americans, I believe that it is extremely important to learn and understand Iran due to the aggressive tension that exists between the two countries. The struggles and tension occurred a few years ago but are still having an impact to this day. We read Women without Men which was an interesting book but it slightly bothered me that the story was all over the place; the film adaptation was even more confusing. This book gave us insight on the culture of Iran during the protests and how women were treated in the country. After this book, we watched an animated film called Persepolis which portrayed the life of an Iranian women in and outside of Iran. This movie was wonderfully animated and had a good story to tell while teaching us about the struggle of identity that Iranians go through when they are in another country. I appreciated the fact that we watched Persepolis because although it is centered around a women with an Iranian origin but the discussion on identity and accepting who you are and where you came from can apply to all kinds of people. This course has taught me all that it could about Empires and Ruins and has guided me enough for me to think critically about the world around me. Hopefully many other people will receive a similar form of education to understand and respect people of other cultures an help improve humanity as a whole.

Works cited:

Gandhi, Mohandas. “Hind Swaraj” and Other Writings. Edited by Anthony J. Parel. Centenary Edition. Cambridge University Press, 2009. ISBN 9780521146029.

Parsipur, Shahrnush. Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran. Translated by Faridoun Farrokh. The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2012. ISBN: 1558617531.

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis. Film, 2007.

Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Signet Classics, ISBN 9780451527127.