Cultural Diversity in Japan - Week 2

Nacirema

A North American group with a highly developed market economy and a focus on ritual activity related to the human body.

Notgnihsaw

The Nacirema's culture hero, known for feats of strength.

Shrine

A household location devoted to rituals concerning the body's appearance and health.

Charm-box

A container within the shrine holding magical potions and charms.

Holy-mouth-men

Specialists the Nacirema consult due to their horror of the mouth, performing rituals to maintain oral health and social relationships.

Latipso

The temple where medicine men perform elaborate ceremonies to treat very sick patients.

Vestal Maidens

A permanent group who assist in latipso ceremonies.

Listener

A witch-doctor who exorcises devils from the heads of bewitched people by listening to their troubles and fears.

Logistics

An explanation of the Writing Center and updated course policies including transparency on genAI use under Writing Guidelines.

Assignments Motivating Independent Work

Assignments where students feel confident without using ChatGPT include open-ended questions, synthesis of complex ideas, collaborative assignments, creative assignments, shorter assignments, interesting assignments, and specific topic assignments.

Assignments Prompting ChatGPT Use

Assignments where students are more inclined to use ChatGPT include those that improve writing style/tone/grammar, long essays (brainstorming, structuring), assignments with a vague/unclear range, straightforward assignments, unfamiliar topics, fact-based writing, dense readings, second language-related tasks, math/programming, and tedious/low-gain tasks.

Types of Learning Assessments

Open book exams, closed book exams, in-class quizzes, take-home exams, online quizzes, worksheets, response sheets, reports, papers and presentations.

Nacirema Article

Article discussing the rituals of the Nacirema people.

Private Mouth-Rite

A ritual involving inserting hog hairs into the mouth.

Holy-Mouth-Man

A specialist who supervises the private mouth-rite.

Latipso

A temple where the sick go (hospital).

Vestal Maidens

Nurses at the latipso.

Listeners

Psychiatrists.

Notgnihsaw

Washington.

Cultural Studies

Cultural studies refuses to reduce human life or power to one dimension and aims to hold onto the complexity of human reality.

Key Questions

How did X come to be? How do people make sense of X? What is going on? Whose perspective do I not have?

Construction

The making/building of something.

Social Construction

Humans create ideas about what is real/true/normal that construct the social world.

Normal as a Social Construction

The ideas that we create about what is real, true, and normal.