The cultural projects varied greatly by depth, seriousness, and topicality. I was particularly drawn to the ones about Israel because I have a trip planned after this semester (just two weeks from now!) and I was very interested to learn about their culture, and in particular, the Israeli Defense Force. It is such a different country based on so many different ideals and representations, and it was great to learn a little about its defining characteristics.
I also enjoyed the project about music that Caarn presented. He seemed personally connected to it because he listens to that genre, and it must have been a really interesting topic to research because it is so relavent. Music is also one of the things that I think are very universal in that anyone can enjoy another culture's music, despite language and cultural differences. Additionally, everyone perceives music differently which makes it particularly striking as a topic of study because what one person hears can be vastly different from another. So while I may have learn very ethnic sounding music, Caarn may have picked up on the similiarities that the music had to contemporary American hip-hop. This dichotomy is quite complex and definitely something that MLC 105 touched upon. After learning about anomie, I was able to identify it through hearing about the other languages and also when I studied my own topic.
We all seemed to have a similar experience of learning more about something that seems simple enough on the surface, like smoking hookah, but then upon further research, learning about so many more aspects of it, like the social norms attached to it.
The cultural projects were interesting and insightful.
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