I chose to read and critique the Wikipedia article titled “Narváez expedition.” At first glance, I noticed a warning at the top of the page that stated that more citations are needed to verify the article’s text. This initially made me skeptical about the article’s credibility, but as I continued reading, I noticed that overall the article is factual and corresponds to what I have been reading in  A Land So Strange. To elaborate on this, all the information presented in the article is relevant to the topic of Narváez’s expedition. It discusses each main element of the excursion chronologically with significant detail, no apparent bias, and little deviation from the subject at hand. The author(s) majorly discuss the part of the expedition that takes place up until Narváez’s death, but do not include much about the part of the expedition that contains great historical significance, as the talk page suggests. Up to this point in the class, we have read up to Narváez’s death and a large section of the book remains, implying that a lot of the later information of the excursion (that was initiated by Narváez) has been omitted from the article. Something worthy of noting is how quickly the article jumps from 80 survivors to only four survivors. I noticed that the later parts of the expedition have subheadings (“South Texas” and “Southwestern North America”) and some information included, but these sections simply need more elaboration and information to complete the story. If these are excluded from the expedition, a major part of history is being overlooked. Further, I checked the links and citations of this article. All of them function properly and do not seem to be outdated, contributing to good reliability and validity. Relevant information is obtained from each of these links. However,  the article does not contain enough citations, as the warning suggests. I noticed this because many of the paragraphs that include factual information that must have been obtained from outside sources do not end with an in-text citation. All in all, I believe this to be an adequate article containing detailed events of Narváez expedition, with two faults being the minimal information about the later parts of the expedition that occur after Narváez’s death and a lack in the number of citations.

     For this assignment, I chose to critique the Wikipedia Article entitled “Narváez Expedition”. While originally reading the article, I thought that some of information was irrelevant to the topic of Narváez’s expedition. The article included small details and tidbits of information such as the four surviving travelers being the first to see the Mississippi River as well as details on the short stops in Hispaniola and and Cuba. After rereading those sections, however, I changed my opinion and figured that “relevant information” does not mean that information has to be the most significant detail in the article. I came to the conclusion that all of the information and data provided through the article pertained to Narváez’s expedition in some way. One question that I did have pertaining to this prompt while reading the article was if everything that happened after Narváez’s death relevant to this article. Sure, the expedition continued after Narváez’s death and Narváez’s brief leadership influenced the expedition even after his death, however, I had a hard time accepting the article’s title of “Narváez Expedition” when so much information was given past his death and under different leadership. According to the Talk page, I was not the only one asking this question.

     As for claims made in the article, I could not point out any instances in which I felt the authors and editors strongly favored one position over another. I believe that it is hard to be biased in an article like this one because most of the information is strictly factual. I do not believe that certain viewpoints could even be underrepresented or overrepresented in this article because a lot of the information are dates and details that could be fact checked through journals, published primary sources and travel logs. I was particularly suspicious about two sections of the article that had significantly less information and data attached than others. The sections entitled “South Texas” and “Southwestern North America” were comprised about 2 or 3 sentences each, describing what appeared to be an important part of the journey. Both sections began to describe the interactions between the Spaniards and the indigenous people in the surrounding areas, but neither section does the topic justice. Because of the known rough relations between Native Americans and Europeans throughout the time period this lack of information and underrepresentation of a very large theme made me, a first time reader of the article, question if the information was purposefully left out or if there really is little known about the relations of the indigenous people and the spaniards at the time (which I personally find hard to believe).

     The article’s talk page addressed a lot of the same questions I asked myself while reading the article. Like I previously mentioned, users on the talk page, questioned the relevancy of all the information written after Narváez’s death to the article. Other than debating on if the article should be temporarily shortened to resolve the prior issue, user’s mostly used the page to discuss factual accuracy throughout the article. Finally, I found myself thinking about how closely the book translate the same topics and themes I’ve read in the book, A Land So Strange, thus far. I tend to think that a lot of information gets lost when it gets translated to Wikipedia, but in this circumstance, I was thoroughly surprised to see so much detail placed into the Wiki article.

The Wiki article on Estevanico is relevant as it talks about his exploration of North America. I feel the article is neutral albeit too short when compared to articles on the other survivors in his party. I feel all aspects of Estevanico’s life are underrepresented in this article because of its length. The links to the cites work although not all of them are used in the article. The talk page has a few extra facts on it but other than that not much activity. It is part of several Wikiprojects and should be updated soon.

The Wikipedia article “Estevancio” is very short especially when compared to the Cabeza de Vaca Wikipedia article. Cabeza de Vaca went back to Spain and lived a full life while Estevancio was forced to stay in North America and eventually died, I was still expecting the trip across America to overall be explained more and in greater detail (like in Cabeza de Vaca’s page). Another problem with the Wikipedia page is it has thirteen sperate sources but only eight of them are used. The fourth source is Handbook of Texas Online and is used four times when the other seven sources are used only one time each. Some good news is that the “Estevancio” article is a part of four WikiProjects and is rated of “top importance” in one of them, hopefully they will improve this Wiki page.

In the introduction to the book” a land so strange”, the writer Andres tells the readers the importance of the story of Cabeza de Vaca who, with other three people, two Spaniards and one Estebanico, has done a great oddesey. The story is of importance because of the fact that it gives the people a brand new persecutive of how the Spanish implement the humane colonization on the native Indian people. And it could be served as a genuine historical source. Though, the voyage was popular and well-known in America and Europe hundreds of years ago, it does lose its reputation since then. The reason for declining fame is due to the reason that there is no context for people to understand and to read like a fiction. Indeed, it is of great importance and the writer is trying to bring it back to what the voyage was like hundreds of years ago. 

The introduction is quite engaging and important. The story of oddseyy could offer a brand new insight and ideas into what it was like in 16th century, instead of being forgotten and causing modest impact. When I finished the reading, I could literally feel the urgency to read the following chapters and start to explore the 16th century world.

In the introduction to the book “creolization”, the writer David discussed the meaning of the creolization and how it evolves from the idea of Acculturation, a theory that “denied the possibility of any African influences surviving the Middle Passage”. That is to say, the theory of the acculturation is that the culture of the Africa is assimilated on the encountering with the European and inferior one just submits to the “superior” one. The idea of acculturation is somewhat prejudiced because of the fact it does not admit the room for “acculturated Africans”. However the following scholars propose a lot of theories. But, they are all biased in someways . In other words, they could not get away from the “donor culture” . Then, in 1976, two scholars assert that there is not a thing called “donor culture” and nothing could transfer between two culture. the following century, we have lots of scholars proposing different views, but they all particularly have some flaws.

The concept of the “Creolization” effectively explains the clashing views about whether there’s a donor culture or we need to excise all the possibilities. Creolization is a syncretic expression in which the pressure to change stimulates the willingness of people to change. And the extent of culture making changes depends on the loyalty toward the original culture. Also the rate of the Creolization is close linked to the material abundance which means that people tend to cliche to their original culture if the material is abundant.

Creolization literally shows in every aspect of the human life, including architecture, agriculture, cooking, cartography, medicine, religion, and etc. In addition, Creolization shows different stages at different time.

I found this theory quite inclusive and true. It is very illustrative and straightforward in defining the cultural interchange and culturally mutual learning. Take the U.S as an example, as the melting pot for all people from different countries with different cultures, the U.S has done a lot to provide an inclusive environment to every one. Though, some critics may contend that the melting pot is actually more like a “salad”, I still believe U.S has done much better than other countries, like my motherland, China. In the U.S, we could see people of different colors and of different beliefs. The each individual displays their own unique culture and special influence upon the culture of the U.S. Each individual with different background provides the united states the power to become the world’s leader.

Within the piece of “Only Connect” by William Cronon, he tries to inform the reader about what he believes a liberal education is and what kind of people that they create as a product of going through a liberal education system. He argues that the liberal education is the best education system as it provides students the opportunity to take classes that prepare them for what they want to do in the future. It gives them the “freedom” to do what they want and progress as a human being in a society that is striving to educate young adults to prepare them for the real world. He uses some citations to help make his piece more credible but while he does this, he also makes the piece persuasive by being so one sided on the part that he only talked about the good things that a liberal education can do for a student and society.

Some things he could do to improve his piece I guess would be to add the other side, or add some negatives about liberal education instead of being so one sided about the argument. He also was a bit hypocritical when creating a list of characteristics that liberally educated students possess after previously writing about how people always make lists about what the education for human freedom looks like.