Paper presentation at Yale on “Engaging First Generation Students with Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality”
Paper Proposal: Clearly an outsider looking in, Jean-Jacques Rousseau exploits the adversity and hardships he’s faced as an exile, turning his experiences and observations into a source of empowerment and a means for enlightenment. In “A Discourse on Inequality” Rousseau’s rhetorical strategies, his critical view on hierarchy, and his refusal to accept the status quo, demonstrates for First Generation college students invaluable methods of critique and cognitive processes. First Generation students may often feel over-whelmed and estranged within institutions of higher learning, and a close reading and discussion of Rousseau provides a critical point of connection, shedding light on our own agency of power. While his contemporaries insist on entitlement, Rousseau reveals our own empowerment by illustrating how to engage critically within our community.
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Wednesday, April 27, 2011, 7:30pm
Reading with Rosemary Graham and Rashaan Alexis Meneses for Saint Mary’s College Creative Writing Series,
at Soda Center, Saint Mary’s College of California, 1928 Saint Mary’s Road, Moraga, CA.
Rashaan Alexis Meneses earned her MFA from Saint Mary’s College of CA, where she was named a 2005-2006 Jacob K. Javits Fellow and awarded the Sor Juana Indes de La Cruz Scholarship for Excellence in Fiction. She has recently published in Pembroke Magazine and Growing up Filipino II: More Stories for Young Adults.
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Keynote speech for Saint Mary’s College of California’s Tenth Annual Asian Pacific American Graduate Celebration
Saturday, May 14, 2011
2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Le Fevre Theater
Reception to follow in Delphine Lounge
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Rashaan Alexis Meneses 