“Over the past few days, Twitter has been overrun with posts about Kobe Bryant’s sudden death. As with the recent deaths of Juice Wrld, Toni Morrison, and Cameron Boyce, a celebrity’s death often causes the entire country to grieve with the deceased’s loved ones. In my discussion this week, I’d like to focus on the role of celebrity specifically within American culture and I’d like to define celebrity as anyone in the public eye, who we most likely don’t know personally – authors, musicians, Instagram models, activists, politicians etc.”
02/16/2020, The cultural importance of food – olivia Barney ’21 and josh zhuo ’21
“Food is a fundamental component of our lives and yet, is not acknowledged with appropriate merits. In an effort to underscore the multi-dimensional impact of food, it well serve as this week’s central theme. It is our belief that our perceptions of food is very much a function of our experiences, and thus, should remain as personal as possible. The broad-based nature of this discussion will hopefully narrow into something more specific as we share more of our memories of food.”
“For discussion this week, I have been inspired by my Spanish seminar (New World Literature) and would like us to consider the topics of colonialism/neocolonialism as well as how these two intersect with other fields (eg. feminism, race relations, international affairs, etc.).”
03/01/2020, Surveillance – Jordyn Marlin ’20
“For this week’s discussion I wanted to discuss surveillance. I was thinking about the problems New York is having with the increased police presence on the MTA. People have been calling the choice to put more officers in the subway classist and racist. I think this raises interesting questions on what surveillance looks like, who gets surveilled, and why.”