Reference no: EM133737180

Lowenstein lays out a strategy for negotiating difference.

She describes her experience as a Jewish lesbian teaching Afro-Caribbean students at Medgar Evers College in Crown Heights, the site of a historic confrontation between the Afro-Caribbean and Hassidic Jewish communities. When she tells her students she is Jewish, they act surprised because she doesn't fit their stereotypes of Jews.

As a strategy for dealing with this antisemitism, she has her students read the graphic novel Maus. For many of her students, the book humanizes Jews, and they can see the commonality between the Holocaust and the historical struggle of slavery. Thus, Lowenstein's strategy for crossing borders is for communities and cultures to develop empathy for one another by listening to each other's stories.

Discussion Prompt
Read the attached essay, review the reading summary above and then address the following question:

Which Project #3 theme best illustrates Lowenstein's strategy for diffusing the borders and divisions between her Afro-Caribbean students and the Jewish community and why?
Instructions
Respond to the question as directly as possible in the first line of your response, referring to one of the project themes:
Communication through fear and withdrawal.
Persuasion and appeals to shared values.
.The construction of sympathy or mutual self-interests.
Contact zones and middle grounds - social spaces where two cultures come together, clash, and ultimately blend to form a new culture.

In the body of your response support your answer by referring to a specific passage from the reading in your own words. Include the page and paragraph number in parentheses.