Business Across Cultures

Hi folks.So, a few things.Today (April 27th) I’m not at school: I’ve lost my voice. However, I’m hoping to be back for our next class, and here’s what you’ll need to do before then.

  1. Upload your Heart of Darkness-related questions and thoughts to the appropriate folder (you should have gotten an email from Google Docs. If not, try signing into Google Docs using your email address (the one you gave me in class or normally use), and see if you can find the folder for our class.
  2. Upload a copy of your midterm essay to the appropriate folder. You will each be doing a presentation on your midterm essay data and interpretations on a Thursday between now and the end of semester. The presentations will begin on May 6th and continue to the end of semester. The link to an online sign-up sheet was emailed to you. I’m trusting that you won’t delete each others’ names, since anyway if you do I will find out and change back what you changed — whatever changes you make are tracked on the document. By the way, everyone will be responsible for reading your paper before your presentation, and preparing some questions. I expect 20-30 minutes of presentation, followed by discussion for the remainder of the class. Don’t stress out about preparing a perfect powerpoint — if you want to use one, I don’t mind, but the point is not to show off your powerpoint skills, and your time is better spent thinking about how (and preparing) to really to communicate your questions, thesis, research, and conclusions to the other students and to start an interesting discussion. Presenters and listeners alike should come to class prepared to participate in a discussion, which means both presenters and listeners alike should do a little more preparatory research, have some questions and ideas prepared for discussion, and so on. Disagreement is not only acceptable, it’s encouraged: we should all be able to defend our ideas from criticism, as well as to learn from criticism when it is valid.
  3. Review your thoughts on Heart of Darkness.  If I remember right, I said that we would continue that discussion, looking at your questions a little more closely. We can do that for Thursday, and follow it up with something a little lighter next week. (And then followed by more readings and discussions for the rest of semester.)
  4. Begin thinking about your final paper (essay) for this class. You will be required to write one more essay, and it should be different from the midterm essay, though it can be in a related subject. One thing I ask is that you branch out in your approach: if your midterm paper was from a literary perspective, then take an historical perspective; if you talked about real-life business, maybe discuss business as depicted in entertainment media (for example, in the film Thank You For Smoking). All I’m saying is — come at the field of Business Across Cultures from a different approach — literary, historical, political, economic, cultural, cinematic, or whatever.

If everything works out as planned, I will have some reading material copied for you and give it you on Thursday, and it will be required reading for our class meeting for 2 weeks from now. See you soon!

Comments are closed.