Meltdowns and Waves

Hello there! My name is Hayat Rasul, and I am from Granada Hills, LA, California. I am a rising sophomore here at Dickinson College. As a first year last semester, I was involved in eXiled Poetry Society, Feminist Collective, Liberty Caps Society, Muslim Student Association, and the Posse Foundation. I am a Mathematics and Earth Sciences double major. Because you really wanted to know, my favorite color is orange and my favorite animal is the snail. Beyond that, I chose to study in this course because of its focus on natural and non-natural disasters and how different communities react to them. Also, as a Californian, quakes and frequent seismic activity have been programmed into my interests as a scientist. I hope to gain knowledge about the differences between the disaster coping cultures within Japan and the United States as well as disaster awareness and preparedness and the way intersectional and diverse identities are involved.

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This is the course blog for the Dickinson College summer mosaic “Meltdowns and Waves:  Responding to Disasters in the U.S. and Japan”

Course description:

Disasters arise frequently, but are there ways to identify post-disaster mitigation that over the long term will reduce communities’ vulnerability to disasters? It is this question, in relation to the comparison of Japanese and American societies, which this mosaic proposes to address during the summer of 2016. Through introductory lectures in Carlisle, you will understand the scientific causes of the Tōhoku earthquake, resulting tsunami and Fukushima nuclear accident, as well as those behind Hurricane Sandy and the Three Mile Island accident. By means of active community-based learning, especially by interviewing community members, you will understand what the social, economic, and environmental effects of these disasters were on their respective societies.