Everyone in the Cormier Honors College took a class called “Citizen 110” but we all have different takes on this subject. This is my take on the class.
This specific section of the class was called “Bodies and Citizen” and we studied how citizenship of a specific person would be determined based on how their body would look throughout American history. In this class looked through history to discover how the government and wealthy would treat those of lower class and those who they could not understand. The purpose of this was to try and understand the reasons why those of the African American, LGBTQ, Latino, and family-planning communities were abused, shunned, looked down upon, and weren’t given the chances they deserved.
Typically, history has always been my worst subject and one that I have had the least amount of interest in but this class seemed to always grab my attention. This class used a group discussion type of learning style that would allow every student to display their knowledge and opinion of the topic being discussed. I found this style of learning to be the most beneficial and entertaining at times because everyone could ask questions they may have had or contribute to the discussion by adding in their opinions or thoughts. Sometimes there were questions that would lead the whole discussion on a tangent on something random but it was entertaining to see how far down the rabbit hole we would go and somehow the topic would relate back to the course discussion.
This class made the students read and annotate many articles, book chapters, take website tours,, and watch long videos. The material given for homework quite frequently felt repetitive and would be difficult to read. Some of the material given for homework to read/annotate would be very graphic and describe in great detail how some people were abused or mistreated. Although some of the materials would be difficult to read/watch, they definitely made clear what the main argument was and it allowed the students to come to class locked and loaded with their own opinions and thoughts they wanted to share with the class.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10jYAYI7ZN4-H-X3L9MrO75PkPqd-qtHZlp3h70vX1pg/edit?usp=sharing
Above is a link to my artifact for this class. This is a link to a presentation that me and my partner gave when discussing the fight for safe places for the LGBTQ+ community throughout history!
Even though the workload of the class was challenging, I can honestly say this was one of the best classes I have ever taken. It was one of my favorite classes of my freshman year. The professor made the information very easy to understand and would lead discussions in such a way that I was always engaged and learned a lot. It was interesting to see how the class would be presented with the same information but because we have all lived different lives, our discussions were filled with many different opinions. Because our class was filled with many different opinions (sometimes completely opposing) we learned very quickly how to discuss respectfully. The professor also taught her students how it is okay to disagree with someone else’s opinion as long as you are not disrespectful, understand that everyone has their own opinion and are capable of forming a different opinion from you. Something that made this class so enjoyable was how the professor clearly showed her love for her career and for her students. She made sure that all of her students would get the chance to speak their opinions, she was always very excited for presentations and was always willing to help in any way she could.