reflection 1

sorry i just figured all this blog stuff out so i hope this goes well
I think we have had a lot of good discussions in class. I think they have gotten better as the we go because we have more references to discuss and connect certain books to eachother. With confederates in the Attic we discussed the culture differences between the north and south. That there is a much higher number of southerners that are actively involved with civil war re-enactment than northerners are interested in the subject.
With Playing Indians there was a very productive conversation. I believe this is because Native Americans are still dealing with hardships and racial inequality today. Indians have been molded and twisted into a character that white society has used for pop culture, sports, and stories. The true identity of what it is to be an "indian" has been lost because of education in school and because of what has become culturally acceptable. We connected PLaying Indian to confederates in the attic because both books had people acting as historical characters that have become modernized in some way.
Little Women was my favorite discussion because it really dealt with woman's identity in both history and today. We discussed how Joe is more modern than the other girls but in all actuallity it could be one of the other girls that would fit in better in modern times. Women are still expected to behave more emotional and are still considered the weaker sex by most cultures. It suprised me to find that the image of women in American culture has not change a great amount from the 1800s to now.
Our latest discussion about Custer was interesting but we tended to get a little off topic. I think we could have related Custer to playing indian because of the depiction of native americans in the battle if little bighorn was false. People saw Custer as a national hero and saw the indians as savages. What is clear from all of these readings is that people have been misconstrude through out history.