H Block Rotation Summary (sorry to be a bit repetitive)

Hello fellow H Blockers:

As my "blog rotation" is coming to an end I wanted to give you guys a quick synopsis of what we have done this past rotation:

We began the rotation with our guest speaker, Milton, who spoke to us about eugenics and race science and how the idea of race has come to be as a result of the past. He emphasized the role that thinking critically plays in his study of eugenics how we can learn a lot about ourselves through studying the events and ideas of the past. We discussed the three articles that we read in class, which all highlighted a specific aspect of eugenics and its origins (science, race improvement, and ranking according to race). Although our discussion ended somewhat abruptly we were able to uncover some deep ideas that left us asking more and more questions.

Our next class we discussed the idea of denial and related it to the very timely visit of Iranian President Ahmadinejad to Columbia University who is an active denier of the Holocaust and whose visit to the US brought about a great deal of controversy on whether or not he should be allowed to speak at the University. In the writing lab we explored different aspects/figures related to genocide denial and for homework wrote a "Letter to the Editor" regarding our stance (if we had one) one whether or not the President of Iran should be allowed to speak at Columbia. (Congrats to Leo who was published in the San Francisco Chronicle!)

In our most recent class we began our study of the Armenian genocide. After going over the basic facts of when and where the genocide took place we discussed in depth many questions that arose about the genocide itself to the Turkish government's denial of such an event. W also found ourselves trying to answer the question of "Why is it that so many people are familiar with the Holocaust and not the Armenian genocide?" Our discussion went down many paths from foreign policy to the idea of Euro-centrism.

I hope that this was not too lengthy for you guys...
Looking forward to many more exciting and engaging classes in the future!