Read “Should a Chinese Citizen Celebrate Western Festivals?”.

Global Perspectives on Society not only challenged students to come to terms with sophisticated concepts and texts, but also to connect those concepts to their everyday experiences and unique cultural backgrounds. In addition, students worked to join authors of multiple texts in inquiry-driven conversation. Hancheng worked toward this essay by first analyzing James Rachels’ inquiry into the uses and limits of cultural relativism and Charles Taylor’s theory of cultural identity and the “politics of recognition.” He then moved to identify a “personal stake” issue, a relevant concrete example that he could analyze within a conceptual framework drawn from the Rachels and Taylor texts. In drafting his essay, Hancheng added Kwame Anthony Appiah and Martha Nussbaum’s thinking about cosmopolitanism to the conversation, creating in the end a rich and timely essay relevant not only to his own personal experiences and concerns, but also to those of the greater NYU Shanghai community.

—David Perry, Lecturer in the Writing Program

Read “On Post-Genocidal Reconciliation”.

Tri Hoang wrote this essay for Global Perspectives on Society (GPS), Writing Workshop II. The assignment asked students to write an argument-driven essay that uses GPS readings and their own research to shed new light on a contemporary topic figured in a supplementary article or film for the course. Tri used Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract, John Baker’s Equality: From Theory to Action, and scholarly sources he found on his own to address the question of post-genocidal reconciliation in the documentary film The Look of Silence. His essay does an attentive job evaluating sources, discussing and responding in detail to their arguments about the politics of the apology and the notion of equality. Moreover, Tri presents a clear-sighted critique of the prevailing powerlessness of the victims in Indonesia today and provides a nuanced response to whether an apology – as important and urgent as it seems to the viewer after watching the film – is really enough. This essay is a model of thoughtful research, careful evaluation of sources, and clear, eloquent prose in academic writing.

—Alice Chuang, Lecturer in the Writing Program