Thanksgiving is a day where people gather around in a dinner table, express what they’re most grateful of, and devour some delicious vegetable stuffing turkey with people they love – at least that’s what happens in most thanksgiving. Our Thanksgiving is a little bit different with the conventional good old fashion “Turkey Holiday” that is celebrated in the original land, America. This November, we, Graduate Students of American Studies, decided to take Thanksgiving to a whole other level by creating a new tradition of learning without the burden of classroom tension but still holding the essence of Thanksgiving by cutting up Turkey and have a little fun of our own.
Since we are in an academic zone, one of the things that we are grateful of is the opportunity to pick up the pen and acquire new knowledge from our exquisite educators. Thus, in the spirit of bettering ourselves, we take the road less traveled and begin Thanksgiving Day by having a seminar about Death and Dying in America. We realize that we may have gone too far by pairing a gloomy theme with such a thankful and cheerful holiday, but here’s why this is a good idea. We want to work with the irony by talking about death in a day where most people will express their joy by being with their loved ones. As a result, irony works at its best because our seminar in Auditorium C is full of capacity and enthusiasm. A good start of learning a taboo thing.
Our first speaker, Achmad Munjid, Ph.D., talks about cultural, sociological, historical, and even economical cost of being dead in America. Living for 9 years in the land does give him the benefit to refresh the lecture with some of the fun-facts that come personally from his experience. The casual atmosphere in the room brings out the uneasiness of having a deep discussion around morgue and cemetery. It turns out, death is more than just a phase that any mortal will undergo, it actually carries profound values if we can just stop for a while and look at it from a different way of thinking
After absorbing the first life-changing perspective about death, we are “forced” to change our glasses again by looking at deaths which are unreal as they happen in Hollywood. The portrayal of the Grim Reaper in movies is presented by Dr. Kris Budiman by choosing a specific set of movie which we all know and love; Batman. He does not limit himself in one particular Batman movies, but he goes beyond nine different productions of Batman and analyzes the representation of all those movies.
At 7 pm exactly, we begin the Thanksgiving Dinner by having some performances from the students and alumni