Camiren's Humanities Story

 2021 Books

I did not do a whole lot of reading this year.  Most of the things I read were required readings from classes.  I do plan to read more books following the pandemic when it is safer to go out and check some out for the library or buy from a book store.

Christenson, Allen J. Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Maya. University of Oklahoma, 2007.

• A translation and interpretation of the original story of the Maya.  Explains how people were created from maize as well as what the world was like before people.  It is both informative and exciting.

Coontz, Stephanie. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. Basic Books, 1992.

•  Author Stephanie Coontz talks about the bad history of family structure that families of today's era consider the "good ol' days."  I have not finished the book, but the author does talk about how people glorify the families of the past when in reality those families were no better than those of today.

Holmes, Seth. Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States. The Regents of the University of California, 2013.

• This book explains Seth Holmes' personal experience of him putting himself in the shoes of migrant farmworkers.  It does a great job of raising awareness for the injustices that the migrant farmworkers face.  

 Theme Project

For my humanities class, we did group projects surrounding themes that we selected in the beginning of the semester.  It was a great way of summing up everything that we did throughout the semester.  It was my first time working with a group since the pandemic so it felt pretty good collaborating with classmates again aside from just providing other individual classmates with feedback.  I worked on this project for about 7 hours, trying to split my time over the span of two weeks rather than procrastinating and make last minute edits.  You can see my group's project by clicking here.

Human connection

Looking back at my first week of this humanities class, I don't think I really knew what to expect out of this class other than I'd be learning about the history of Latin America.  By this I mean the cultures that were formed in Latin America and perhaps how they are seen in the present.  I was originally looking for a class to satisfy a requirement, but this humanities class caught my eye.  Not to mention that one of my friends had taken this class in the past, so I was excited to take it myself and learn the things I did over the course of this semester.  Now that we're reaching the end of the semester, I think my definition of humanities has changed.  I would think of humanities as the events and teachings of our history that connect us as humans.  As far as my goals, I would say that I completed most of them, but a habit that I am still stuck on trying to break is procrastinating.

Latin American flags and connections

The thing that interested me the most about this class is the readings that we did over the course of this semester.  I found them to be very interesting because they are reputable sources and really opened my eyes to some of the cultural aspect of Latin America.  I learned a lot of things in this class.  I learned about the Olmec which was one of the earliest known civilizations in Mesoamerica.  I learned that some of the things we do today dates way back to the time of the Olmec and Mayans.  I did not really know much about Latin America prior to this class other than the existence of the Maya, but now I know aspects of their culture that are still seen in today's world.  I learned of specific locations that these civilizations resided such as San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan and La Venta.