Gitika Talwar

Gitika Talwar (PhD's!) presentation was such a thoughtful exploration of culture, especially with regard to immigration/refugee status and dealing with broad misconceptions/generalizations about different cultures/identities. I admit that often, when I pictured Afghanistan in my mind, what I processed first were the "war-torn" environments that so often appeared as images in mainstream media: I never took the time to imagine an ordinary city, filled with people going to work every day, children going to school and playing on awesome playgrounds. I feel like this is part of the story encapsulated in the "silence" that Gitika mentioned; that so much of history, life and culture is nested in what we do not hear or read about. The silence here is a positive one; in a way it reflects the "no news is good news" saying - the "normal, mundane" times reveal the times where people can engage most closely and wholeheartedly with their culture. It is worth looking into ways in which we can respectfully get involved with other cultures to see how people celebrate the normal and mundane!

Also, though I do not think Gitika's aim was for us to see Afghani and American culture as the same, she wanted to highlight universal themes across lifestyles, and reveal that changes in ways of thinking in cultures are not caused by the influence of "outside" cultures (which starts to create the negative associations that we hear about today), but by internal shifts within the cultures themselves. All cultures evolve, and to a large extent they do this on their own terms. It's an important consideration that we should keep in mind as we consider the "melting pot" or "salad bowl" of America, and realize that we cannot embrace cultural diversity if we are marginalizing other groups out of unfounded assumptions or fear of losing "American culture".