My name is Ella, and I'm a first year Global Studies student at the University of Sydney. I created this blog to stay in touch, to make connections, and to express myself in a forum that to me truly symbolizes practically everything we learnt this semester - that the time is past when we could view the world as a collection of separate but interacting nation-states. We are one big functioning interactive collective unit, and beyond barriers of language and culture and politics, beneath all those layers which humans have scraped over themselves for protection from "the Other" (an idea that has haunted us since the first caveman had a peek over at the guys in the cave over the river and decided he didn't like what he saw) ... there is a common humanity.
"Remember your humanity and forget the rest."
Wow, there was a long sentence. I'm spending too much time in the company of Persians ;) Nazanin & Arash know what I'm talking about.
In starting this blog, I was heavily influenced by what I've read about Iranians who blog because their print media, under the control of the government of Iran, has basically failed them. Did you know that, after English and Chinese, Persian is the third largest language of blogging? I find that amazing. Check out my friend Nazanin's blog if you're interested; she is doing her PhD on this topic:
and a really interesting article was written about it by Bill Berkeley:
Boos, tsuβ & jaa mata
E.
2 comments:
Hello, Ella,
Prompted to come here after the charming note you put on my Françoise Hardy post.
That's an interesting fact about Iranian bloggers - whenever I hit a random blog in Blogger, it seems to be in Spanish. I have two very old Iranian friends - I mean, they've been friends for a long time, not that they're very old - they're about my age - although doubtless you'd consider that ancient - and I think they'd be excellent bloggers, although they seem to have channelled their creativity elsewhere (films and journalism). But there's time, and hope, especially since we haven't been sucked into a Swiss black hole this week.
One question - what exactly is Global Studies? It sounds pretty all-encompassing.
Hi Tim!
That was very nice of you. I really do admrie your blog - correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you wrote a post a long time ago on Haruki Murakami?
"He writes about loners, but loners who are at worst disgruntled, rather than tortured souls. He also seems to have a thing for pretty, damaged girls who won't go all the way, but don't mind giving you a hand."
It really made me laugh, and it's so true.
I know, it's just fascinating about the Persian bloggers! I try to follow the ones who write in English, as my Persian is really poor. If your two friends ever start a blog, let me know =)
Ah, Global Studies. Well the short version is that it's the Arts version of International Studies, but that's not wholly true. At elast, it is in the sense that it focuses mroe on culture, hsitory, etc than economics, business, politics etc. VERY interesting. We're required to major in an Area Studies (in my case Asian Studies) and a language (Japanese). Yes it is pretty all-encompassing - or was last term, when we studied everything from colonialism to globalization to translation to the holocaust.
I see you live in Thailand. Envy! I went there once. Do you speak Thai?
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