ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS

The Reflection assignments aim to help you build understanding of and reflect on the topics discussed in readings and lectures, your own course project, and your learning in the course.
In your regular Reflections, only use evidence from assigned readings and lectures in crafting your responses. Include in-text citations for any sources quoted, paraphrased, or summarized. Avoid including lengthy quotes. Instead, paraphrase and explain the relevance and significance of the selected passages or video segments in your own words as much as possible. For in-text citations, give the author’s name and the page number, if there is one. Include a Works Cited as the last page of your document.

Word count: 500-750 words
COURSE DESCRIPTION

Our MMW 122 course examines some of the most significant ideas, movements, and trends that have defined our world, from approximately 1750 to the present. Beginning with the Enlightenment and ending with climate change, this course explores the complicated notion of modernity and the emergence of its assumed components – liberalism, democracy, the nation-state, and capitalism – in the context of slavery, empire, war, decolonization, neoimperialism, and ecological crisis.

We will examine how the concept of “rights” has persisted and changed since the mid-eighteenth century; trace the development of capitalism and industrialization from its emergence in the eighteenth century through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the problems of urbanization and global warming in the present; examine revolutions – political, social, and cultural – and the responses to them; see the complex causes and effects of war; and delve into the complicated legacy of imperialism and neoimperialism.

We will center race, gender, sexuality, and their intersections. This course argues that the processes, systems, structures, and events that shaped the modern world were, and are, simultaneously global and local.
Reflection 2 introduces you to the general format of the rest of the quarter’s reflections.

Purpose (paragraph 1): Consider the lecture topics, course readings, and themes from the last three weeks (Weeks 2-4) and identify how the assigned readings and the lecture are connected to each other and to the themes of this class. In your answer, make sure to explicitly state the specific topic and theme that you focus on and explain why you’ve chosen it. You should cite at least one of the readings and at least one of the lectures from the relevant weeks.

Connection (paragraph 2): What new insight does your chosen topic, theme, or text(s) give you into your own project for this course?

Synthesis (paragraph 3): Keeping the specific topic and theme that you stated in your Purpose section in mind, identify a connection between that topic and theme and another topic, theme, or text(s) that we’ve examined in this course. What connections do you see between the two? Why does the additional topic interest you? What makes it worth pursuing? In your analysis, cite at least one additional reading and at least one additional lecture.

Reflection (paragraph 4): What is one thing that you’ve realized about your own learning since arriving at UCSD? How did you come to this realization, and how have you (or will you) adjust your work or study habits to accommodate it?

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