I am an international student who has studied in the United States for five years, I am yellow, I am Chinese, I am part of a minority group in China, I identify myself as a woman, I am a daughter, and I am a granddaughter. All of these identities have been present in my life in turn or at the same time. Culture is a meaning maker and culture is everything we do in our life. So, all of my identities are somehow involved in Cultural Studies Conversations. I am familiar with these identities, but before entering the Cultural Studies Mater Program, I don't think I understood my identity and was not able to learn well from it, as well as perceive and learn about my environment through my different identities. I am now creating this portfolio as a summary and review of my two years of graduate study, and as an answer to myself, my family, and whoever cares about me and the subject matter I am studying.
When I first started as an undergraduate student who study in IAS (Interdisciplinary Arts Studies) majors were required to take BIS 300 in their first quarter. Luckily, my advisor for this class was Christian Anderson, who is also my current Portfolio advisor. BIS 300 was my first exposure to the concept of "Portfolio" and how to create it. It was also the first time I learned to understand the concept of Interdisciplinary. After BIS 300, I took a number of courses related to Cultural Studies as an undergraduate, and the papers I wrote can be found in the Capstone I created as an undergraduate. Those courses helped me to understand Cultural Studies as a major, and I began to love it to want to learn more about it. These stories have led to the person I am now, and I continue to learn about myself, society, and things I know and do not know through the lens of cultural studies.
The COVID-19 epidemic have started when I start my journey in Cultural Studies Program. There are also several problems have exposed during this time. Trade wars, public opinion wars, etc. between China and the U.S. are also arising and festering in various events. As an international student, I had the chance to see media reports from many different countries and different political stances. This is the first identity I got to locate myself as an interlocutor and a participant in Cultural Studies conversation about global hot topics related to China in a Western social context.
This position allows me to analyze and compare how media coverage differs in different environmental contexts when I am exposed to different information. How and why the focus of Western and Chinese media coverage of the same event is skewed. I received a Chinese education until the end of high school, and then came to the United States to study abroad during my college years. Such a multicultural and intercultural background allows me to handle and understand the reports and public opinions that are guided by different cultural backgrounds well. There is a downside to my identity in participating in Cultural Studies conversations like this one. As a non-native English speaker, I am not able to analyze the word choice of English stories in detail and with sufficient depth. Sometimes I only see the surface and do not understand the deeper context of the writer. Also, some words or concepts are very different in different cultural contexts. Therefore, when analyzing, there are also omissions and shortcomings. In the second year, as I continued to follow the world's hot topics about China, I wanted to study more topics that were relevant to my Chinese cultural background. One of my focuses is on the distinction and study of the events of the Cultural Revolution in China and that period in history. I think this topic is relevant because it is a recent history that took place during my grandparents' time when they were young. My identity as a granddaughter makes me want to tell the story of that era.
I hope that this is not just a portfolio. I hope that this is a place where I can reflect on my work and improve it, and I hope that I can continue to add work-related to Cultural Studies to this portfolio in the future, and that I can give it a voice in different forms, even after I graduate. I also hope that this is a portfolio that I can share with others at any time, regardless of whether they have never heard of Cultural Studies or already have background knowledge about it. More specifically, I also hope that the international student community will learn more about Cultural Studies and what we can learn from it. I hope that when I can use my major to present and analyze the events and history that Chinese students are familiar with, it will also be a process to make them more aware of and interested in Cultural Studies. Many of my friends are curious and concerned about these events, but they don't know about Cultural Studies or what it can do. The international student group if exposed to Cultural Studies, can develop it to more places than just under the Western dialogue. People are gradually becoming more educated, and I hope people are also spending more time studying and thinking once their basic standard of living is secured. Focus on social issues, marginalized groups, and disadvantaged groups. At the same time, under different cultural backgrounds and political correctness, more people thinking independently means more voices are heard.