Week 8 Reading and Writing

The structure of our week is arranged well. I like having a day or two to let the reading sink in before retelling based off of the material. My favorite reading thus far was definitely the free choice option, mine being Nine Ideal Indian Women by Sunity Devee, but the follow-up to that was the Jataku tale collection.

The reading notes I am compiling are definitely improving in terms of usefulness; I've found that making a short list of "just the facts" helps a lot with remembering places and people and events (not to mention the spelling!!!), while a few paragraphs about why I focused on one character or story gives me a great launch point when the time to actually write comes. I have also found that including every link I visit while researching helps substantially, and I will try to remember to include this each future reading note post. 

I am thrilled with my class project so far; I have never made an actual website before and I can't believe how easy it is to work with (Wix was my choice for site design). With that said, I think that Ashes was definitely the best piece I've created thus far. I like the starkness of it, and the weight of all that time resting on the reader.

"Save our Sisters"

 A Taproot ad campaign image, targeted at reducing violence against women; the campaign was pulled after significant controversy involving several Hinduism websites arguing that this type of imagery was a debasement of the Hindu faith, and that women, and injuries to women, should not be compared or related to the goddesses they worshiped.

One of the biggest issues I ran into throughout our reading was dealing with the roles of women and low/no-castes as described within the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. I am grateful to have been born in this era, but there are still many parts of the world where the role of a woman is simply an extension of her husband/father/brother figure's whim, and I chose this image during a closer look at Sita and other ideal Indian women. 

Looking forward, I hope to learn more about the current political situation in India and apply this to the simulated "Save Rama's Bridge" campaign. What parties would be in favor, and what parties would be opposed? I hope this will let me anchor the characters and their motivations with real-life situations and events. 

I am tremendously enjoying this class.