Videos and Maus

During this week in American studies, we watched the student presentations on the 60's and 70's. My video was about the Ind-Pakistani Wars of 1965 and 1971. It dealt with the Cold War aspect of the presentations rather than the civil rights movement aspect. The United States had sided with Pakistan, while the USSR had taken the side of India. The other topics that students had done dealt with other aspects of the Cold War and the Civil Rights movements. They were very interesting because there were many different factors and events that made up both of these topics as a whole. In American Literature, we have been reading Maus. Maus is a personal narrative written by Art Spiegelman on his fathers past experiences. It deals with the struggles of being a Jewish citizen in Europe and tells the horrible recounts of the concentration camps. This also tied into American Studies, because we had just moved on from the end of World War 2, so it's a good story for our understanding as we progress throughout US history. Spiegelman uses a constant metaphor in the graphic novel. He portrays the Jews as mice, and the Nazis as cats, and it is interesting to unpack the use of the metaphor because it can be interpreted in many ways. One way can be the cover of the book, It shows a cat with striking resemblance to Hitler, the enemy of the Jews, creating the fight between cat and mouse