Reflections on a Trip to Paris: What is a journal, really?
Penn Global Seminar: Paris Under the German Occupation and Its Places in [Non-] Memory
Lumi, one of the Spring 2026 Penn Global Seminar Correspondents, shares their experience abroad during the Spring Break. Follow along with the group of correspondents on our blog and look out for their images on the @pennabroad Instagram feed.
What is a journal? This is a question that’s been on my mind since taking part in a course-embedded book-binding workshop with Lisa Rosowsky, a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and a mixed-media artist whose works focus on the rise of antisemitism and second-generation experiences following the Holocaust. As a part of the workshop, we created our own journals using materials Professor Rosowsky provided us, giving us a journal that really feels like it belongs to us, and only us.
In a literal sense, a journal is just someone’s personal collection of notes—notes on intellectual ideas, their everyday lives, checklists, whatever the author deems important enough to write down so they might remember it later. This materialistic view of what a journal is doesn’t really do it justice, though. A journal is a canvas where thoughts take shape before they are fully formed. Where observations, memories, and questions can sit side by side without needing to resolve into anything definitive, because the primary audience (the journal’s author themselves) doesn’t need to put everything in precise terms if they know what their scribbles mean.
At least, this is what I would’ve said about a year ago, before enrolling in the Penn Global Seminar “Paris Under the German Occupation and its Places of [Non-]Memory” with Mélanie Péron. It’s a good conception of a journal, but I think it sells the significance of materiality short now. Sure, paper, leather, and ink are pretty mundane on their own, but this course has shown me the power of people’s scribbles in the margins and anecdotes they wrote in journals, maybe not even thinking about who might read those scribbles in the future. The physicality of the journal makes history concrete and has connected numerous survivors of the Holocaust, and allowed people to reconstruct their history after the Nazis’ attempt to erase it.
As my travel component of this seminar fast approaches, and I look at all the opportunities I will have during the trip to visit memorials and museums and to talk with survivors and experts on the subject, I’m reminded of the importance of physicality and materiality in documenting history. It’s so easy nowadays to feel desensitized to what’s happening in the world around us when we only hear about it through word-of-mouth or as a distant concept. But when you’re confronted with it head-on with testimonies and physical examples, history itself starts to materialize, in turn. You begin to feel more passionate and emotionally touched by what you’re studying—and when studying topics like the German Occupation and the Holocaust, that emotional connection is so important to have. It’s safe to say that these moments to get up close with history by visiting museums, historical sites, and by meeting people will be my most memorable parts of the trip.
As someone who has been studying French in middle school, I’m also very excited to get to put my language skills to use finally. As a low-income student, chances to go abroad are far and few between; this will be my first time in a French-speaking country, an experience which I never thought would be possible for someone of my economic background. Packing my suitcase to go to the City of Lights feels like a surreal experience that I would have only ever experienced in my dreams. But now that dream is coming true, and I’m feeling incredibly honored to be fulfilling that long-held desire while also doing such important work by bearing witness to the events of the German Occupation.