Class Reflections

I think this class gave me more of a personal and human perspective to revolutions. Usually we talk about revolutions on a grand scale and as a big entity and we forget that it affects people on the micro level. At the end of it all revolutions are about people. People put them forward, try to impede them, or are affected by them in ways they couldn’t have even imagined. Reading literature really helped in the personal aspect of revolutions, especially The Underdogs, Cartucho, Fire from the Mountain, and The Country Under My Skin. These texts really helped me understand more about enduring and being part of a revolution, even if you are a part of the revolution as some sort of leader or a citizen in a region were a great change is attempting to happen. These texts were in a way autobiographies and this is why they helped me see how revolutions affect people on a personal level. Similarly I also enjoyed Che’s Guerilla Warfare and The Bolivian Diary as they gave me a perspective on fighting for ones cause in the jungle and although Che tried to keep his diary professional we could learn a lot from it. We saw that one has to leave everything behind in the city, everything that is familiar to you, in order to adapt to a completely new environment that is also isolated. This is why Che’s diary was also very personal even though it attempted to be very soldier like and not give away any emotion. This by itself says a lot about fighting in the jungle or revolutionary causes in general when one is the minority. In the course I felt that the literature as well as Che’s more theoretical/diary work complemented each other quite well to give a more balanced insight into revolutionary change.

After taking this class I think that violent revolutions are necessary, or maybe better said, I think that it is impossible to have a non-violent revolution. Although I would like to think that it is possible to enact change without the use of violence, after having taken this class it has become harder for me to see it happening.

The readings got quite hectic at times, but obviously this is due to having other classes. However I do think that this class had quite a bit of reading compared to my other classes. I still think that when we divided into smaller groups and then discussed as a whole this brought better discussion. When we simply went around the class it felt that a lot was repeated rather than forming an overall discussion between everybody. In the go around technique one would just say something and that would be that.

This was my first class that was mostly student led and I think it was a success. I think that everybody put effort in providing interesting questions for our discussions and most of all were willing to engage in the texts. I think this class should be a 300 level course rather than a 200.