Clio Fregoli - Final Entry No.7

To begin, most importantly I think that this class has given me a new perspective with which to approach the study of political science, history, and news in general. What has really given me this new perspective has been learning about the middlemen, the tricksters, and those who produce knowledge. I think this view is seriously lacking in political science and IR in particular in which a state model is the go-to approach. This view allows us to go beyond the state model, and question different levels of power. I think that is something that was really insightful from the first couple classes, in which we looked at the microcosms of power, and looked at bottom-up approaches instead of top-down.

Second, this class has pushed me to open up my perspective about objective/subjective knowledge. Sometimes I think that I too easily believe that objective truths can be found, and this class forced me to look beyond that idea and recognize the subjectivity in all productions of knowledge. I found this very insightful when we were reading Latour, and he/we were talking about how science and politics are so intrinsically linked that they both affect one another. I used to think about science as always so objective, but my perspective has started to change in more recent years, and this class helped confirm my new perspective. It was also very important for me, as I was able to apply it to other topics I find very insightful and inspiring, such as feminist theory, and feminists such as Judith Butler who think that sex-determinism (and I would argue science more generally) is dependent on social and cultural inscriptions.

In terms of the format of the course, I really think that I learned a lot from this type of blog posting. I am usually quite nervous to express my personal opinions and theories about different topics, but by posting our papers on the blog, it was quite inevitable to share what you thought. I think I was really pushed out of my comfort zone, and it also forced me to reflect more thoroughly on the texts we were reading. In class, I think that Prof. Kosmatopoulos has been really good at making everyone in class speak. By forcing each student to talk, I found myself speaking more than I normally would in a class in which I do not have a strong background in the topics already.

In addition, the format of the class allowed the students to work off each other. I felt that it created a type of support system in which you helped each other out through the different blog posts and were exposed to different analyses of the readings. I find often in different classes throughout university, my peers have extremely interesting points and perspectives, but it is hard to really grasp each other's since it is only brought up in discussion. However, being able to read each others work online really allows for the understanding and appreciation of each other's perspectives.  

This class has been a great learning experience!! THANK YOU!!!!!!