Lesson 01: Introductions

Let’s get to know each other. Why did you choose this concentration? What do you most want to get out of this class? 

We will also go over the syllabus together and discuss the introduction to Suzy Hansen’s Notes on a Foreign Country. Be prepared to engage Hansen’s provocative and sober reflections on her experiences writing about places foreign to her and to many Americans. 

Assignments

Reading assignment:

  •  Suzy Hansen, Notes on a Foreign Country, Introduction (pp. 3-28)

Written assignment:

  • Select and be prepared to present a recent piece of international journalism that you admired/appreciated.

 

Agenda
  • ROLL CALL
  • CLASS INTRODUCTIONS
  • GO OVER SYLLABUS
  • LEAD CLASS DISCUSSION OF HANSEN INTRODUCTION
  • STUDENT PRESENTATIONS OF SELECTED JOURNALISM
  • EXPLAIN ASSIGNMENT FOR NEXT CLASS
Hansen Introduction: Discussion Points
  • Notes on a FOREIGN country? WHICH COUNTRY?
    • Opens with a quote by Ariel Dorfman – WHO IS DORFMAN?
      • Chilean writer, advisor to ALLENDE – WHO IS HE?
        • President of Chile, marxist, overthrown by CIA backed coup REPLACED BY?  
        • PINOCHET WHO IS HE?
          • suspended the Constitution, and began a persecution of alleged dissidents, in which thousands of civilians were kidnapped, tortured, and murdered – ruled till 1990
      • Back to Dorfman: He’s also a critic of north american cultural imperialism (How To Read Donald Duck) (NEXT SEMESTER: WILL LOOK AT THIS MORE DEEPLY)
  • What do you know about Turkey?
  • Marshall Plan p. 4
  • Caner 
    • Could see things in Turkey I could not
    • Could see things in the world I could not
    • “But that attitude about your objectivity is political in and of itself” p. 6
  • Hansen’s surprise p. 10
    • Americans are surprised by the direct relationship between their country and foreign ones bc we don’t acknowledge that America is an empire; it is impossible to understand a relationship if you are not aware you are in one
  • Terrifying resilience of my own innocence p. 11
    • For all their patriotism, americans rarely think about how their national identities relate to their personal ones, particular to psychology of white americans – who do not know that is what they are 
    • Exploration of tough issues, and of privilege
  • SHE ASKS THROUGHOUT: Who do we become if we don’t become Americans, at least not in the way we always understood the world? Her years abroad were shattering and shame – DID THIS MEAN ANYTHING TO ANYONE?
  • P. 12, journalist as postmodern spy. THOUGHTS?
  • Her fellowship and the US reputation in the early 20th century
    • P. 13, King-Crane Commission WHO WANTS TO COVER THE MIDDLE EAST/TURKEY? WHAT WERE SOME OF THE FINDINGS?  – Woodrow Wilson and the 14 points, US as “least harmful solution” 
  • Mid p. 15 → does anybody want to refine the group she’s talking about? Americans?
  • “We” post 9/11 p. 16 — WHICH WE?
  • Also p. 16 “I was inflicting myself…” → DOES THIS RESONATE WITH ANYONE? 
  • WHO IS HER DEFAULT NEW YORKER, AMERICAN? P.17-18
    • P. 19  “New Yorkers (tastemakers) seemed to be the provincial ones… if they didn’t understand their own country, I wasn’t sure any of us could possibly understand the world.” SO? 
  • P. 19 “Empathy was infrastructurally impossible” THOUGHTS? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR JOURNALISTS SPECIFICALLY?
  • THE AMERICAN MIND → we are going to unpack this in this class; and from the process, hope you will learn the technique in unpacking any other biases you might have given the other ways your personal mind could be characterized
  • WHY BALDWIN?
    • The first person to explain who I was: a white american w/ a lot to learn
    • “this is the way people react to the loss of empire, for the loss of empire also implies a radical revision of the individual identity” p. 21 THOUGHTS? YOUR GENERATION? ALREADY USED TO IT AND WANTING TO EXPRESS IT?
  • On American foreign journalism – pause on this and ask them thoughts…
    • P. 22: I would go, as a journalist, to write a story about Turkey or Greece or Egypt or Afghanistan, and inevitably someone would tell me some part of our shared history — theirs with america- of which I knew nothing. I would feel as though I could not write that story, just as I could not write the story of the coal miners, because when I asked, “what happened” I was more often than not met with a response that spanned 60 years. And if I didn’t know this history, then what kind of story did I plan to tell?”
  • “REFLEXIVE ASSUMPTIONS” IN THE NEXT SENTENCE – WHAT ARE THOSE? BIASES
    • → one of Hansen’s central biases: p. 22 “I always believed in our inherent goodness, in my own. I would never have admitted it, or thought to say it, but looking back, I know that deep in my consciousness, I thought that America was at the end of some evolutionary spectrum of civilization, and everyone else was trying to catch up”
    • WHO SHARED THIS BIAS? DON’T BE AFRAID, SAFE SPACE
      • HOW CONSCIOUS WERE/ARE YOU OF IT?
      • HOW DID YOU LOSE IT?
    • CRUX OF THE PROBLEM: → 
      • trying to learn about foreign places w/o having done the work of deconstructing your own biases, especially our collective one as Americans, is impossible
      • How could I as an american understand a foreign people when unconsciously I did not extend the most basic faith to other people that I extended to myself?  WHAT DOES SHE CALL THIS? RACISM? IGNORANCE? → CALLS IT NATIONALISM, INSIDIOUS ONE
  • Twilight of the American Century
    • Perhaps the first time Americans are confronting a powerlessness that the rest of the world has always felt, not only within their own borders, but as pawns in a larger int’l game. Globalization it turns out has not meant the americanization of the world; it has made americans, in some ways, more like everyone else
  • Calls to internationalize history
    • Erez Manela p. 24: entire nations, billions of lives, cannot be studied w/o considering the intervening history of the US 
    • (HOW DOES THIS APPLY TO JOURNALISM? TO THINK ABOUT ALL SEMESTER LONG) 
  • Hansen on p. 24 on what anti-Americanism is… “It is a broken heart, a defensive crouch, a hundred-year-old relationship, bewilderment that an enormous force controls your life but does not know or love you.”
    • “just as black American writers once desperately urged their white friends to come to terms with their violent but intimate relationship, foreigners have been constantly asking Americans to listen to them.” P. 24
  • → By  looking at race, suggesting it has to be understood, studied, even as you think of int’l coverage as a separate entity
  • There’s a wealth of story ideas in this introduction – ie. exploration of American influence in all these other places THOUGHTS?
  • DOES ANYONE WANT TO ARGUE AGAINST HANSEN’S SUGGESTION ON P. 25 “Perhaps Americans have to more deeply understand what that imperial identity was in the first place. If America was an empire, was there even a difference between “home” and “abroad”? Was it not all the same kingdom? Were we not locked in the same intimate relationship? Was not their pain very much ours? Might this relationship even be one, as Baldwin said, of love?”
  • AND WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOU AS JOURNALISTS? “But, ma’am, I have a question for you,” he said. “Why didn’t you come before the fire? Why didn’t you think of us before?”
Explain Assignment for Next Week

Read the articles below. Analyzing each sentence, highlight in yellow what the journalist observed personally. In blue, highlight what the journalist learned by interviewing someone identified in the story whether or not it’s presented as a quote. Use green for what is an easily substantiated fact or assertion. Lastly, with pink, highlight words/sentences/paragraphs that offer context and/or analysis/interpretation that isn’t attributed to a specific source but is presented as an uncontested given. Circle any word choices that are not necessarily neutral terms. Have these printed out so we can discuss together in class.