ECL 305 Final Takeaway

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Throughout our class there have been several things that have stuck out to me through the readings and in class discussions. However, what stood out to me most and what I learned how to become better at as a result of this class ,was close reading and how to critically analyze the most important information from what I was reading. Close reading allows for me to find the deeper meaning behind what the author is trying to say, it allows for good class discussions, and it will help me in my future as someone who wants to work in public relations (PR).

First, close reading allows for me to find the deeper meaning behind what the author is trying to say. Often times when I read a text, I do not fully understand everything I read initially. By re reading and also close reading, this allows for me to break down and dissect what the author is trying to say. Close reading also helps improve my critical thinking skills, because it forces me to pay additional attention to details in order to figure out what is being conveyed by the author.

Second, close reading allows for strong and thought-provoking in-class discussions. By close reading as a class, I was able to not only share my own perspectives on what I understood from the text, but I was also able to listen and hear from other students and what their own perspectives were on the reading. I strongly believe in-class discussions were beneficial to my success in this class because they challenged me to converse with others and understand different viewpoints that were all interconnected in someway.

Last, I believe that through continuing to practice close reading, this will help me in my future as someone who wants to work in public relations. This is true, because working in public relations requires only keeping the most relevant information apart of press releases, while still being concise and accurate with the information that is being presented to the public. Close reading will ultimately improve my writing skills, and creativity, which will help me be successful in my near future.

week 15

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In chapter 5, Yetu has gone through looking out into the world without much thought and has stuck her that what is she going through is the feeling of being free and memories can slow you down and remember emotionally that affects her mental and physical state of her body. Feeling happy is freeing when there isn’t much to think about except the one good moment and reality hits back to state stability.

what is reflecting about her having this feeling freedom is that she states that “When she tried yo convince herself that she should go hunting for meat, she passed out again from fatigue and pain”(70). Usually this type of moment isn’t the most interesting but it has shown that there is a part of forgetfulness in this context is a form how memories are with you and has an impact your stability. The memories of others have taken over her mind physically and then gives her the privilege to not let It get it to her too much. Most People try to run away from horrible memories and try to forget them and leaving them behind.

Final Post

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Before starting this class I was unsure how vastly mermaids and merfolk stories correlated to our environment. Furthermore, my understanding of mermaids was limited to the more widely told Western stories such as “The Little Mermaid.” I entered this class with an open mind, ready to learn, and as each week passed I found myself bewildered by all that merfolk tales communicated about the world, and how we impact it and are impacted by it. It is due to this class that I have seen how humanity and the environment are so interconnected. Whether that be through history, language, societal expectations, and how people identify. 

I believe the moment that the class really was around week six during our reading of Melusine. I really started to understand exactly how people’s views on the environment shape our understanding of our world and how we tell stories. This insight also comes from our class practice in close reading, which indisputably helped in my understanding of the texts that we read. My close readings, especially from Melusine on, are what has helped me most in my learning of this class. There is an art to taking what is simply on a page and making observations and an understanding of it. 

Moreover, I appreciate that we were able to look beyond Western stories for learning about merfolk and the environment. As we have learned from this class, our tellings of history are flawed because we do not have perspectives beyond the ones we deemed were worth telling. Yet history is not just what is in the textbooks we receive in school, history is in art, architecture, and especially literature. So to be able to get a more rounded view of merpeople folktales and the environment of other peoples and cultures, is the opportunity to learn a history yet unheard by a majority. It is from this class that I have learned about what it means to read stories in critical and thoughtful ways. I have learned to look beyond the conventional perceptions of stories and question what the story is asking of us.   

Final Thoughts

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At the start of this class, my knowledge of mermaids was very limited since it mainly consisted of Disney’s The Little Mermaid and H20: Just Add Water. Within the first week of class, I learned that mermaids have a rich and complex history that has been circulated for centuries. Literature such as Melusine, The Deep, and many others showed me that natural environments are as alive and vivid as humans, removing the passivity of nature and anthropomorphic ideology that was taught to me in previous classes. This helped me open my eyes to see that not only do humans hold history, but that nature itself is an archive of history that allows us to learn so much about a society when we look at its environment and the stories they tell about it. Looking at literature and stories about mermaids as a way to learn about the environment helps us connect to nature, since they are able to exist as a mediator between humans and nature as a result of their hybridity. These beings become more than just a mythical creature and transform into a representation of the problems that affect humans and the environment. 

Using mermaid literature from a multitude of different cultures also helped engage the idea that there are voices and histories that have been silenced since they don’t line up with a traditional Western idea of history. Looking at these other tales then gives marginalized communities a chance to be heard and recognized, since their history is often deemed as “folklore.” In turn, we are taught to look at the environment as more than just a backdrop and see that it is a place full of life worth conserving and learning from. Rather than simply learning from history books, we can look to nature as a way to discover more about ourselves and events from the past. Whether it’s the Ocean or a forest, this class has shown the importance of connecting to the environment and being grounded in nature as a form of learning. 

Besides highlighting how awesome mermaids are, the course has ultimately taught me that humans cannot and should not see themselves as separate from the environment around them. We exist in the context of our surroundings, and our actions have a direct impact on our environment. Subsequently, we must look at nature as being part of our lives since it’s something that we interact with daily. Seeing nature as a separate entity only serves to further destroy it since it is only viewed as a resource and not as a place full of history.

Final Blog

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I honestly didn’t know what to expect going into this class. I knew it was an environmental literature class, but after finding out we focus on that through the lens of mermaids I was even more excited. Before finding out we had a theme of mermaids, I thought this class would just be based on writing about nature and talk of climate change but I ended up getting so much more out of it! I really enjoyed this class and I think that’s mostly because of how much I learned through our discussions. Every text we read showed me a new way of thinking about the environment, human responsibility, history, and power. Even when I didn’t fully understand a reading at first, our conversations helped me see it differently. 

If I had to name my biggest takeaway from this class, it would be that humans and nature are NOT separate. This idea sounds simple at first, but it completely changes how you see the world. So many of the texts we read pushed back against the idea that humans exist over here and “nature” exists over there. Instead, they kept showing how tangled together everything actually is and how our choices, economies, stories, histories, and the land itself are all connected as one.

Before this class, I think I unconsciously saw nature as something you go into, visit, protect, or escape to. Now I see it as something I am already inside of all the time. What we eat, what we buy, where we live, how we travel, and even what we value all shape the environment in real ways. At the same time, the environment shapes us and our health, culture, fears, and futures. There is no clean line between the two.

That’s why this idea is so important. If we believe humans and nature are separate, it becomes easier to exploit land, ignore environmental damage, and treat environmental issues as optional or distant. But once you realize we’re part of the same system, environmental harm is no longer something happening “out there.” It’s something happening to us, too. That shift makes responsibility feel personal . 

This class taught me that environmental stories aren’t just about trees, oceans, or animals, they’re about people, power, memories and connection. I’m leaving this class with a new perspective and I now know how important it is for us as a society to change our cultures to protect the earth in which we depend on to survive.

Final Discussion Post

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What I have learned:

In the beginning of this course, I was very unsure of the course content and what exactly I would gain from this experience. Not in a bad way, but I thought it would simply be a fun class about mermaids (which it definitely ended up being!). However, I also gained much more than just an enjoyable period. I learned a lot about critical thinking and close reading, especially considering stories I have already had prior knowledge of like the Little Mermaid. I also learned a lot about human perspective and how everything is subjective. For example, everything depends on having an “other” in order to exist, like we know something is what it is based on the fact that we know it is not another thing. The most interesting and impactful idea that I have taken from the course I think is the importance of the ocean. We have talked a lot about territorializing and land-centric ideas with roots in our very language, thus shaping our worldview to elevate human importance. I learned that I definitely have fallen to that skewed worldview all of my life, and finally learning to shift my entire perspective is impactful when trying to open my mind and branch out of my limited views. This skill is transferable far beyond this class and shifting from land-centric to inclusive, fluid, thinking about the ocean, but it will also aid me later on in life when trying to see from other people’s perspectives who share different experiences and identities than me.

Mermaids and the Enviorment: A Reflection

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In my first introduction to this class, I was skeptical in regards to how a “mythical” creature such as a mermaid could teach students about the environment. I quickly realized I had underestimated their teachings. Mermaids have shown me how much of an effect humans have on the environment when we ignore its warnings. The Ocean itself – so vast and limitless – contains resources that have sustained human beings since the creation of our kind. Our selfish habits have had negative impacts with not only the Ocean, but also climate, land, and other organisms. Using mermaids as a lens for retrospective thinking, we can see how our choices affect others’ homes. Our actions shape our future. What will become of us if we do not limit our exploitation of Earth’s resources?

Mermaids not only allow us to view the environment in a different way, but they also have shown me how humans form relationships with their environment and people. Mermaids are connected with the water in a way modern humans have forgotten. We first evolved through water, we traveled by water, we are water. It is the mermaids who reminded me and I’m sure many others of our unique history as a people, filled with unique cultures and identities, connected by Ocean. Mermaids represent the unknown, what is yet to be discovered. Their thirst for knowledge and journey, to a world they have never known, is a direct representation of humans seeking out what they cannot possess. Why should we as modern humans claim ownership of an Ocean, when mermaids do not claim ownership of unknown land? 

Mermaids have given me such a strong reflection on human exploitation and the boundaries created by others meant to be restrictive. Why must we abandon our Ocean history for a “superior” form of knowledge? Why do we focus on what we can gain, rather than give respect to what has been provided? How can we, as modern humans, reshape our beliefs and language to allow Ocean back into our everyday lives? What other mermaid history and knowledge is out there, waiting to be taught to modern humans?

week 15

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As I read through Chapter 5-7 There seems to be a question asked if a culture should be solely dependant on the past or the actions of current culture.It seems much of the mermaids value tradition and history ,while yetu herself continues to wish to live in the present like many of her species.The actions of her entire community seem to bring these doubts where Yetu questions their origins by saying that “how strange we wouldve looked to the first mothers:wild screaming fish creatures,scaled and boneless”.This statement begs the question if the amount of time changes a culture entirely and if their still the same culture from the ones they started from.This draws a parallel to the blue humanity’s in which should the investment that we have on the oceans be based on previous research where lacked the methods of investigation or should one start from the beggining in order to truly understand the oceans since they are everchanging.As yetu leaves her species it seems to show a close point of similarity to wanjinru where they seem to be running towards a history to relieve it and yetu is running toward a new history to learn from it.Yetu herself seems to be a different species all together from the wajinru and seems to be yearning for a place where there could be like minded individuals like her.

The Blue humanities

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My final project proposal is about the Blue Humanites ocean thinking and history that involved the meaning of the ocean floor and what does it mean to people who perceived the ocean as a non living we don’t care about and in the article from Eric Paul Rooda and what he interprets how do we communicate with the ocean and how it impacts our own lives like in politics and history itself with meanings that humans don’t understand.

For my thesis statement in progress: In modern history the ocean isn’t recognized that much and how do humans interpreted as something to forget or use of a tool instead of thinking as one with the Earth core elements needed for others to survive and hustle humans have done so much damage that we tend to ignore Enviroment as if were nothing. This explores the idea of what it means to have an understanding of the Ocean as a place to be named and how should we the value in it.

Weightless

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In chapter 5, Yetu goes through the motions of something that she has been wanting— to be free of holding all the memories. She describes going through the water and feeling “weightless” a feeling that is out of the ordinary for her as the weight of the memories not only dragged her down emotionally but also took a toll on her physically. Showing just how much our mental state also affects our physical state, that in order to be happy and feel free within out means we must be mentally okay to transition this feeling into the rest of our body.

Even during after her deep she reflects on what she is feeling stating, “Rememberings didn’t haunt her. She was just Yetu. She wasn’t quite sure who that was, but she didn’t mind the unknowing because it came with such calm, such freedom from the pain.”(70) Although she didn’t know who she was, the relief of not being consumed with the memories of others was freeing. The memories of others had overtaken her physically and mentally and now she is in the privilege to be left alone, away from the memories. It is a privilege to not have to hold the dark information of history, and it is a privilege to move along the day without recalling that information. It is not something that most people do anyways, we do not spend much time learning the depths of our countries history unless it is required of us.