On January 3, 2022, myself and 21 other Temple University students logged on to Zoom to attend the first day of the early term start course, Rocking the World: Disrupting Stereotypical Notions of Race Class and Religion, led by Klein College of Media and Communications Public Relations Department Professors Meghnaa Tallapragada, Dana Saewitz and David Brown.
After three days of Zoom class, we left Philadelphia on January 6, 2022, and headed to Washington, D.C., where we went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture and visited some of the monuments in the district.
However, our class was far from over upon our return to Philadelphia on January 8, 2022. My classmates and I began working on our “digital artifacts” to turn in as the product of our learning and experience in the course. These artifacts, ranging from lesson plans to teach the content we learned to young children to poems and infographics, have all been posted in a digital gallery and will be presented at the Rocking the World: Disrupting Stereotypes of Race, Class and Religion Symposium on April 28, 2022 in the Annenberg Hall Atrium from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
“By holding this symposium, we get to share our thoughts with the larger community,” said Saewitz, who organized the digital gallery and symposium as part of her sabbatical project.
The symposium will begin with words from Tallapragada, Saewtiz and Brown before we break off, and attendees are encouraged to walk around the atrium and view all of the projects on display.
The point of the symposium is to not only share our thoughts, but to “teach it forward.” That is, in the class we learned that one of the ways to create change and disrupt caste is through education.
As a College of Education and Human Development student, my reason for taking the course had nothing to do with getting credit toward my degree. I was willing to use some of my winter break and spend some time during the spring semester exploring the concept of caste because I saw the course as an opportunity to challenge myself. Challenge myself by learning about heavy topics, challenge myself by jumping into an environment in which I knew no one; and challenge myself to learn simply for learning's sake. I can now confirm that I made the right decision.
Much of the course was framed around Caste by Isabel Wilkerson, a book that examines the caste systems of India, Nazi Germany and America. Junior PR student Charity McLaughlin (she/her) encourages people to attend especially if they are unfamiliar with the book. Each student’s project is a reflection on the book, the course and our personal experiences; and the symposium is the place to see all the diverse perspectives of the students in the class.
“I think the nature of our projects allowed for individuality, and I think that’s really interesting,” said senior communication studies student Sean Driscoll (he/him).
Driscoll decided to take the class because he had never been to D.C., and he was interested in how he could interact with the content of the course outside of a typical classroom experience.
McLaughlin, on the other hand, is from D.C. She was interested in the course because it gave her an opportunity to explore history, which she doesn’t often get to do in her PR courses, and because the D.C. trip allowed her to be a tourist in her own city.
“I was really excited and really curious to see, like, what exactly I was diving into,” McLaughlin said. Despite not knowing anyone else taking the course before-hand, she jumped right in and said that meeting and learning from so many new people enriched her experience.
As for me, my favorite part of the trip was actually the part that happened by accident. On January 7, we were supposed to go to whichever museum we didn’t go to the day before. However, an inch of snow shut down all the museums. Instead, the whole class sat in a conference room in the hotel and reflected on our experience so far in the course. It was incredible to hear my classmates share their stories. We talked for hours, and could have gone for many more.
McLaughlin, Driscoll and I all agree that the combination of great lectures from our professors, great company on the trip and the opportunity to personalize our final projects made the course an unforgettable experience.
Saewitz is glad to have had the opportunity to collaborate with her colleagues to lead this experience and has been nothing short of inspired by the work the students have done.
“We went to D.C. at the highest peak of the pandemic, we were there in the midst of a snowstorm that shut down every museum in the city, and we were there on the first anniversary of the January 6th insurrection; and despite all of that, we had an amazing trip,” Saewitz said.