Reflections

In the course of two quarters, this blog has evolved from  making connections from one literary piece to another to connecting what I was being taught in Humanities Core and my Criminology course and noticing that these two disciplines discuss the same questions with different methods.

The School of Humanities approaches their area of expertise with the intent of giving others an interpretive perspective of texts and artifacts in order to provide a glimpse of a culture or time in history. The School of Social Ecology, in which the Criminology discipline falls under, approaches their studies in the gathering of data and statistics to prove hypotheses and advise other people and institutions on how to approach their problems, they provide a glimpse into our current culture and society. Essentially, in my mind, they are the opposite sides of the same coin: one gathers qualitative information (Humanities) and the other quantitative information (Social Ecology). 

With that being said, while I was able to merge ideas from both disciplines to create the second half of this blog (Winter Quarter) I also realize that I did not represent both schools equally and thus effectively, my original goal back in January. With an approaching research paper in the months to come, I hope to be able to apply both of these disciplines (my majors of English and Criminology) and do them both justice. With the two different approaches taught to me, I endeavor to give both qualitative and quantitative information on current, and may I venture to say deeply rooted in the past, societal issues. 

I hope to focus on the U.S. military and possible topics to pursue in the spring may include:

• Media portrayal of troops: the evolution of still media, such as photographs and illustrations, to moving media, video and film, and how these types of media present soldiers and war 
• The history of people of color in the military and possible lack of opportunities as visible in other areas of American life
• The conditioning of American soldiers through the use of "torture-tainment" to decrease emotional and moral reactions in order to complete the task at hand: emerging from the War of Terror as the victors. 

In the end, whatever the topic of the research paper, I hope to continue to combine my two majors and further participate in the discussion of our time: The nature of War and all of that which it encompasses.