As someone who is not exactly interested in English as a subject, Sam’s talk on the modern primitive was riveting. I really liked how his scope focused on race and gender. He started out by first explaining what each term meant separately. He used images like a train crossing the sea to represent modernity while showing a picture of white colonizers measuring black children for the primitive. It was a very stark juxtaposition.

He then explained how his area of study looked at the intersection of the two, and how different areas of like and art reflected both the primitive and the modern. Some of the things he showed us was the Tiller Girls and Josephine Baker. They were revolutionary because they broke what was then social norms. It was very interesting to see how people perceived these women after the performances.

Sam also talked about how museums affect our perception of the primitive. Sam described how everything we get to put in a museum is taken from someone else for our gain. I think it is also very interesting how museums creates this divide between the viewers and the viewed. It could also be dangerous by thinking that the viewed are no longer a part of society and rather are part of the past.

As a racial minority at  Cornell, I kind of know what it feels like to be talked about as if you aren’t there, especially in classes that have to do with race and American history. The way we learn about it makes it seem like a thing o the past, but sometimes people forget to bing up current events that are still a large part of society today,

I also thought the LGBT+ museum he showed us a video of near the end was really cool. It may be somewhere I would like to visit.