Most Important Concept

It is hard for me to say what the most important concept is that I learned in this course because they all seemed to have some sort of eye-opening aspect. I think it is important to remember women's rights and masculinity while also discussing race and vise versa. If I had to pick one most important concept though, I would say that our section on Davis' book because it touched on both gender and race which I think our class seemed to be based upon while we attempted to explore some American identities. This course has helped me to better understand how race and gender influence our identities.

Most Important Concepts

To me, there were two concepts that I believed were of equal importance and those were the respective genders discussed in Angela Davis' Women, Race, and Class and Michael Kimmel's Manhood in America. The reason these two concepts were the most important in my opinion is because everyone in the class could relate to them.  Everyone had the ability to share personal experiences that related to a specific idea or question that was raised in both books.  When we discussed other books that were focused more on race relations, not everyone had the ability to relate the concepts to personal experience.  Although race is a powerful subject to discuss, in my opinion a discussion is much more meaningful when personal experiences are shared and the other members of the discussion can relate to what those experiences contribute to the understanding of the concepts raised in these books.

Take Away

One of the most important takes away's from this class would have to be Michael Kimmel's book.  I have always been interested in the topic of masculinity in America, and have thought many of the same ideas that were expressed in his book.  I thought it was important because I got to learn new vocabulary to use when talking about the subject and a reference to go refer to when talking to others about the subject.  I also got to discuss something that I am interested in with the whole class and get other peoples ideas and views, which is almost just as important as the book itself; what's the point if you don't have anybody to talk about it with?  This class provided a supportive area for discussion, I guess that was the most important thing, the concept of the value of discussion.

Most Important Concept

Although there is a variety of concepts we learned in class, what I think was the most important take away was a new way of thinking. We saw a lot of different perspectives besides ones taught in high school and one that we hear about a majority of the time. I think that the idea of racial lumping was important just for the simple fact that being in the majority race, I didn’t every notice or recognize the problems with racial lumping. I mean I knew the differences were there before this class but I didn’t fully understand the problems associated with this sort of generalization. Which goes back to the change in thinking that definitely came from this class.

Most Important Concept

I think that one of the most important concepts we learned about in American Identities was in the book Whiteness of a Different Color.  I think that this was very important because it taught us about white european immigrants and how they were judged and treated when coming over to the United States for a better life.  A lot of times we never understand the perspective of the european immigrants and how they were treated by the original colonist, but this book helped me understand their perspective equally.  Another important concept that has to do with the overarching theme of the class is the idea of diversity.  Throughout this class we examined multiple texts, with a lot of them dealing with diversity and immigration into the United States.  I think this class definitely taught me how to view culture in a critical framework and gave me a much better understanding about how to view and understand ethnic and cultural studies.

I think that this image sums up almost every topic we have discussed this semester about Diversity and American Studies.

Most important concept

For me, the most important concept I learned was the notion of contextualizing history in regards to men as gendered individuals. I had never really read anything like Kimmel's book before, and so I gained an important new perspective on cultural and historical studies. Of course, you hear about feminist movements and arguments all the time, but you don't always get the chance to understand important historical events and eras in terms of masculinity and manhood. I actually ended up using Kimmel's argument and ideas in a paper I wrote for another class as well as in some poetry I wrote for my poetry seminar. I feel it's extremely important to get a glimpse of both women's studies and men's studies in terms of identity in America, so this was an excellent unit to cover.

I guess this is what Kimmel argued against in his book, but it's still pretty funny:

Important concepts

This may sound cheesy or cliché, but I don't think there is one most important concept that I have learned in this class. A lot of what we covered I have learned or been exposed to already. This class really helped to open my eyes to everything that we have talked about. The information covered a vast variety of topics that I think can all be related back to each other. There is no way to determine what is more important when it comes to talking about human life and relations. If anything I think that talking about how people act in certain situations may help to explain or exemplify what we have covered in a broad sense.