Modern language department faculty, left to right, front: Mary Jo Ramos, Heather Duran, Shimin Zhou, Marisol Maura (chair); rear: Andrea Geyling, Jenny Stortz, Ellen Lewis, Jim Ryan, George Fernald, Ana Colbert. Missing from the photo: David Eastburn, Bill Moore, Michael Murray, Bernard Planchon, Marie Annick Schram.
Define Ethnocentrism Class often begins with the comment, “Have you seen the front page of the Times this morning? Before they can get to the front page, however, Laura Warren’s anthropology class must understand two key concepts: ethnocentrism and cultural relativism. Cultural relativism and ethnocentrism are the two lenses with which students study different societies and cultures. Whether reading from the text or discussing current events, Laura asks students to be aware of what lens they are using. Even in the most difficult of discussions, those dealing with human rights, students in Laura’s class primarily use the lens of cultural relativism. Whether the discussion be about female genital mutilation or infanticide, Laura says her young, idealistic students, put aside their own beliefs, suspend judgment, and try to understand the way that a particular culture sees the world.
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An example of the way contemporary dilemmas connect with course work emerged while the class studied the impact of development upon indigenous people. The class discussion focused on the Innu Eskimos in Labrador. According to a New York Times article, government relocation in Labrador that caused the Innu to give up their nomadic way of life has resulted in poverty and substance abuse. Of the 2,000 members of Labrador’s Innu Nation 1,200 are addicted to sniffing gasoline. The large number of addicted individuals and the high number of childhood deaths led native leaders to ask the government to remove the children from their families and the village. According to Laura, although the students tried to look at the situation in Labrador without making judgments, they were disturbed by the issues raised by the article. Students cycled back to the elements of this situation many times as they moved through later discussions.
Bernard’s French 5 literature class was recently discussing Jean Giraudoux’s 1935 play La guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu (The Trojan War Will Not Take Place). The plot engages the proponents of war and the pacifists in an intense debate on the value of war and the nature of heroism; the result of the debate will be war or peace with the Greeks. “I was struck,” Bernard says, “by the similarity between some of the characters’ lines in the play (Demekos, the official poet of the War, says, “There is no greater cowardice than not dying for your country.”) and the statements made by Senator Bob Kerrey in The New York Times Magazine about his involvement in a Vietnam massacre 35 years ago (“The worst thing is not having to die for your country, but having to kill for your country”). I brought the article to class and we had an exciting discussion about war, patriotism and heroism, underlining the connection between a seemingly distant experience and a current, painful and intimate situation. All of this took place in French, of course.” “I don’t think there’s a single situation when we’ve read a work without considering it in a social context,” says Christine Onyung (Class I), a student of French 5. “What is your own reaction to these ideas, we ask ourselves in class, whether it’s about hero-