NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

When I teach World History 2 (as I am this summer), we deal quite a bit with America's secret wars. I don't just teach students about them for the facts of it, but also to show them the way in which they are tied to the imperial consciousness of the United States and to a further extent, its imperial expectations. If a nation has an imperial consciousness, then there is an understanding that its influence, its realm extends far beyond its normal and recognized borders. The greater the consciousness, more there is acceptance of every potential corner of the globe being part of the interests of your particular corner or country. That what you expect or desire out of the world is paramount and you receiving it is what makes the world safe or ordered or prosperous. All other national borders are meant to fall beneath your expectations, and those who resist or get in the way, should be stopped. It is only when you have a consciousness like this, that articles such as the one below

Last year I gave a presentation to a high school class here on Guam about the way we can understand Guam history, its trends, its tendencies, its cycles through various Chamorro sayings. For some reason, today I have that presentation on my mind. I undertake a similar activity in my World History and Guam History courses. In order to understand what history as a concept is, I don't give students definitions per se, instead I give them 28 - 30 quotes that people have said about history and its characteristics, its importance or its irrelevance. No single quote is meant to encapsulate everything or explain and cover everything, but rather they each provide some texture to aspects, some structural understanding or descriptions to tendencies. History in the mind of one scholar is an essential part of human activity, for another it is an illusion, a means of trying to imagine control over things you have no control over. I find the complicated mess that the quotes crea

Unu na parehu na sinisedi para hami yan i nobia-hu Isa, na dumangkolo ham gi kumunidat ni' gof gaihinengge yan umeskuela ham gi eskuela ni para i manggaihinengge lokkue'. Para guiya, Lutheran gui'. Para Guahu SDA. Lao gi i kareran-mami gi lina'la', in dingu ayu na lina'la. Hunggan manhohongge yu' gi aniti, yi'us yan todu ayu siha, lao ti parehu yan antes. Gi inestudia-hu gi koleho yan i intaitai-hu/inaligao-hu komo academic, pa'go na meggai mas meggai na tiningo'-hu put i diferentes na hinenggen taotao, lao ti sina dumichosu yu' nu unu na hinengge pat guma'yu'us. Gi i klas-hu put Estorian Mundo, sesso hu kefa'nu'i i estudiante-ku siha put na ti kabales todu i sisteman hinengge gi hilo' tano'. Achokka' un sen hongge na i gima'yu'us Katoliko i mas kabales na rilihon, gi i inestudian estoria, sina ta li'e' na ti uniku ayu na rihilon. Ha a'ayao meggai gi estoria-na yan i kustumbre-na ginen otro ma

I miss teaching history. Guam History and World History were my teaching for for close to five years. I've only recently started teaching Chamorro formally at UOG, and although I enjoy it, for many years teaching history was my passion. I loved the way that history provided a means of probing and opening students' minds by revealing to them the invisible and unknown things that exist within them. The way that a word could be traced back in time and attached certain meanings that might have been unfathomable before. The way a word, a custom has been adapted and altered over time, and how it may unintentionally reflect and refract previous areas without people today realizing it. My most enjoyable experience was to root in the earth and in human meaning, things which people accept to be untouchable, natural, unquestionable. Perhaps not in the sense that they would refuse to entertain any questions about something, but rather the way that thing might persist in the

I am always intrigued at the way American critiques of Japan often time focus on the way that Japanese conservatives are always seeking to erase of minimize sexual slavery during World War II. The women that were forced into sexual slavery across the empire Japan was seeking to create have a tragically complex ideological function. They are on the one hand discursive means through which the nations formerly colonized by Japan reassert their national power. The bodies of those violated women become the means through which a very masculine national honor can be regained. For the Japanese themselves, they are part of their former colonial past that they struggle to both erase but also deal with. For the conservative part of Japan they are something that is tied to the masculinity of the nation. Part of the way the nation was once allowed to act. Part of the way that, for those conservative sectors, it should not have to apologize for. They do not want to erase the sins of the past, but

I've been reading more and more articles by atheists lately. At first I was confused as to why, because while I've been critical of religion for most of my adult life, I never wanted to seek out a new framework for housing my lack of belief. Part of what seemed to spurn me in this direction is my World History classes and to a more limited extent my Guam History classes. In my World History classes we discuss the origins of human religion and the relationships between Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity and even Buddhism. I have an entire lecture in which we compare the historical figure of Jesus Christ, with the religious figure of Jesus Christ. From this we often move into the Bible itself and the notion that so many people whereby they feel the Bible must be true, but haven't thought about the consequences of that belief. We compare the God in the Old Testament to the God in the New Testament. The God of Noah and Job, to the God of Isiah

It's been a while since I've taught World History I at UOG. I'm teaching it again this semester and it looks to be both frustrating and fun. World History I covers a huge amount of time, much of which rarely entices students. Students who love Gladiator or Spartacus won't necessarily love learning about Marcus Aurelius or the real servile revolts. The students who liked the third Mummy movie starring Jet Li or the movie Hero starring Jet Li, don't necessarily want to learn about the actual Qin Shi Huangdi.  As I regularly tell students, tv shows like Game of Thrones don't really interest me because history itself is just as screwed up, bloody and terrifying. Should I for some reason retreat into the realm of fantasy to imagine that the horrors of the world dance and prance about simply for the enjoyment of my gaze? Nope, what use is that? People who enjoy history in the form of tv shows like that or Netflix or History Channel documentaries want history tamed f

I am really looking forward to Django Unchained coming out on DVD so I can make my World History 2 students watch it. Although I'll be showing it to students in a history class, I wouldn't make them watch it because it is the most accurate film. There are several reasons why you might want to show films in a history class. 1. Gagu' hao: You are just lazy and want the films to help fill in the details for things that you yourself should be covering in your class. 2. Ya-mu documentaries: You love documentaries and you think that they are stuffed full of historical details and facts and present them to students in the most direct way possible. 3. Ayu i mas kannu'on: You don't necessarily show documentaries to students but instead popular films, because that is one of the ways they tend to inadvertently consume ideology about history and form their historical understanding. For me the 3rd choice is why I show films in class. Not to show students perfectly hist

I want to write a longer post about how I detest the use of the "Third World" trope to try to call attention to how unfortunate or wrong things are in the United States. One of the reasons why I loathe it is because so much of that complaint is secret exceptionalist strain, an assumption that of all the places in the world where bad things should happen, none of it should be in the United States. Whether natural disasters, shootings and violence, social breakdown, government corruption, whenever something which tests the cognitive limits of people in the United States, the Third World trope emerges to provide some sense of what happened. It is a way of letting a bit of chaos into the homeland, some nasty, brutish, dark slivers of discourse get to sneak in and give some color and some understanding to something which is supposed to be beyond the white-picket-fence-comprehension of Americans. The worst part about this citation of the Third World is how it can help to reinforce

One of my favorite lectures to give in my World History 2 class is the one on Haiti. Especially since the earthquake there earlier this year, I find it truly important to break the silence that surrounds Haiti and its revolutionary history. I was appalled at how through months of coverage over Haiti by media in the United States, the narrative was always the same, tragedy in a third world country. Collapse in a place where collapse and disaster is a way of life. The valiant efforts by the first world in recognizing that suffering and taking steps to alleviate it, to help those helpless souls. Given the scent of human suffering its understandable that they take this angle, but what was left out of their coverage, the historical aspects was also expected but still nonetheless horrifying to watch (or rather to not watch). The media's purpose in this case was to help the people of the US "discover" Haiti. the concept of discovery is always interesting. It has the aura of lea