The modernist movement of the early twentieth century was fueled by poet Ezra Pound's slogan: “Make it New.” Ironically, the saying itself was likely repurposed by Pound from an ancient Confucian text. Nonetheless, it suited the modernist time period, a creative uprising in which writers and artists aimed to break the mold of an industrial, post-WWI society.

As a creator of information, your goal is to say something new, but all knowledge is still built upon the work of others. As discussed in other metaliteracy quests, such as the Collaborative Creation challenge, the creation of new knowledge, especially in the digital age, is a social process. In the Produce Challenge you can learn how to create information from a variety of sources in order to develop content. For this challenge, in order to create new knowledge, you will bring together a variety of perspectives and sources to create something new.

You will prepare to expand your horizons by exploring a topic from multiple perspectives across generations, in the following essay written by a UAlbany student.

Generation, Memory, and Baseball

Generation matters because it relates to changing social and political conditions over time. When it comes to the representative symbols of generation in my home country, the first thing that comes to my mind is baseball.

I grew up in the golden and the dark age of baseball in Taiwan. I still remember the first time I came to watch the professional baseball game with my father, uncle, and cousins, although we were late to the stadium due to traffic jam. For those of you who are interested in the baseball culture such as the cheerleading in Taiwan, here is an interesting video made by western fans:

I never forgot how the gambling and game-fixing scandals of Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) disappointed the fans like me. Then, I witnessed the resurgence of baseball in association with the popularity of baseball films and the pride of adult national baseball team in international arena. For example, the 2014 film, Kano, portrayed the story of how a multiracial baseball team in Taiwan under Japan’s colonial period advanced to the final of Japanese High School Baseball Championship.

The rapid rise and fall of baseball inspires my interest in exploring how the activity of baseball would look like in my father and grandfather’s generations. In this essay, I provide a short list of questions that can help you expand your horizons of looking for symbols that are representative throughout different generations in your own country.

The Frame: Memory of Generation

Memory is a crucial component to understand the features of a generation. Sports and music are typical symbols which can create continuity with the past and tie the society together with a sense of community. The term “collective memory” refers to the historical narratives, traditions, and symbols, which establish an organic bond among group members.

For instance, the literature shows that baseball history in Taiwan is largely influenced by the development of nationalism, an important topic in the study of political science! More specifically, it was used to assimilate local Taiwanese with ruling Japanese in the colonial period (i.e. my grandfather’s generation) while it was also exploited by the nationalist government to bolster collective solidarity during the 1960s and 1970s (i.e. my father’s generation).

However, in my generation, the gradual bifurcation of Taiwan’s national identity after democratization incited the suspicion over the agreed name of “Chinese Taipei” to participate in various international events. Just like the NFL star Colin Kaepernick who protested the US national anthem, some Taiwanese athletes and audience did not solute to the national flag due to their belief that such political symbols were created by the hands of mainlanders instead of their own.

Questions:

1. What things do you think can best represent your generation? Can you remember a pastime or event from your lifetime that you particularly enjoyed?

2. Are your memory and interests in this event or activity different from your friends, peers, or general public in the same generation? Are they different from your father and mother’s generation? Who inspires or what motivates your interests in these things?

3. Have you changed your attitude toward these things? What causes do you think are related with the change of your attitude?

REFERENCES:

Belson, Ken, “Barred from Baseball (in Taiwan)” The New York Times, October 6, 2016.

Britton, Dee, “What is Collective Memory?” memorialworlds.com

Morris, Andrew D. “Baseball, History, the Local and the Global in Taiwan.” The Minor Arts of Daily Life: Popular Culture in Taiwan, January 1, 2004, 175-203.

Thanks to Yi-hao Su for his contributions to this quest.

Now you will expand your horizons by exploring a topic from multiple perspectives across generations.

For example you might consider a particular technology or pastime that has changed over time. i.e. What was the role of this pastime in your parents’ and/or grandparents’ generation? What did this technology mean to those generations? What does it mean to your generation?

1. Pick a topic that is a symbol of your culture.

2. Gather information about that topic from an older generation’s perspective. You may approach this step in few different ways:

   • Interview an older relative (or two), such as a parent, grandparent, great uncle, etc. If necessary you could interview an older acquaintance such as a neighbor or professor.

   • Research the topic using a primary source from a past generation (newspapers and advertisements can be useful resources).

   • Refer to a secondary source that discusses the topic from a multi-generational perspective.

3. Create a Voicethread slide that discusses the topic from the perspective of at least two generations (your own and an older generation).

   • Upload an image or video clip that represents the topic.

   • Add a comment (video, audio or text) discussing what the symbol means to your generation.

   • Add a comment (video, audio or text) discussing what the symbol means to an older generation. This could be an actual recording of the interview you conducted, or a summarized report on what you learned.