Quarter Review BlogPost

The thing that I am most struck by going back and rereading my blog posts is how much I have learned throughout this quarter both in class and by doing the readings.  It is sometimes hard for me, in the thick of it, to realize how much it is!  I'm always caught up in the day to day of working, seeing friends, eating, but this class has truly been extraordinary.  The amount and scope of reading (and watching and of course, discussing) we have done is incredible.  I think back to the first day of class, I didn't anticipate how much this class would change me, but it has. 

I think I still have a lot of questions.  There are many untied ends. Can someone be transracial and was Rachel Dolezal treated unfairly?  How can we understand the era of our nation's founding today?  How can we write history about it, when there are so many narratives that are virtually impossible to tell with the sources we still have?  How should we treat the Founding Fathers today? As a history major who has studied the founding era, and someone who has been raised to idolize these "Great Men" especially people like Hamilton and Washington, this class has been instrumental in challenging my viewpoints and making me look deeper at what I previously thought was undebatable.  What is the role of drama in racial identity?  Beyond early American history, I loved the discussion about Native American identity, and I wished we had gone deeper into that and the discussion of Hispanic Identity.  We only spent one class on that, and I felt there was more we could have talked about given LatinX peoples are the largest non-white racial group in the nation according the 2012 census.  I also wish we had explored the juxtaposition of racial and religious identity.   However, these are the limitations of being on the quarter system, there are always things left out!

Overall, this class was easily one of the most thought-provoking I have ever taken, and I will be truly sad to leave the classroom tomorrow.

Josh

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